Important Notice

Scammers may pose as legitimate organisations, like Goldman Sachs, and create fraudulent websites, or financial product offering materials, send emails, or make phone calls to solicit monetary payments. These scams are complex as the perpetrators often use real employee names, corporate entities and replicate proprietary documentation.

Scammers may also pose as domestic or international financial services firms offering high-yield bond investments to investors. Goldman Sachs is aware of scammers targeting investors in Australia falsely identifying an association with products issued by Goldman Sachs and advises consumers to inform themselves about whether the product being offering could be fraudulent or a scam.

Common tactics deployed for such bond scams include:

• sending professional-looking fake prospectuses or other offering materials with unrealistically high returns, an absence of risk factors or other mandatory disclosures;
• falsely stating the bonds are issued by prominent or legitimate financial services firms or licensed holders when this is not true and there is no underlying investment;
• falsely claiming investor funds will be pooled to invest in government bonds or the bonds of companies with AAA credit ratings;
• falsely claiming the purchase price of the bonds is protected under the Commonwealth Governments Financial Claims Scheme; or
• using contact details gathered online through fake investment comparison websites to call people and pressure them to invest or risk ‘missing out’.

To help consumers inform themselves as to whether an entity or product that they are considering investing in could be fraudulent or a scam, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) recommends the following steps be taken before investing:

• Check ASIC’s Offer Notice Board to see if a prospectus relates to a recent offer registered with ASIC.
• Check ASIC’s register of Australian financial services licensees to make sure any party promoting or issuing the financial product is licensed or is authorised by a licensee.
• Check ASIC’s Moneysmart list companies you should not deal with.
• Seek independent financial advice.

If you think you or someone you know has been scammed, you may lodge a report of misconduct with ASIC and report the matter to police. You can also make a report to the Australian Cyber Security Centre at ReportCyber.

Please refer to the Financial Markets Authority (FMA) website to understand more about investment scams in New Zealand and reporting it to the FMA here: https://www.fma.govt.nz/scams/scam-basics/

For additional information, please refer to the ‘Security and Fraud’ awareness information at https://www.goldmansachs.com/security/index.html