Scammers are using “sophisticated liberation models” to trick savers into handing over their pension funds, HMRC has warned.
The message comes hot on the heels of figures released by Citizens Advice which said 40% of its pension staff had dealt with people who were being targeted repeatedly by suspected fraudsters.

In its latest newsletter, HMRC stated: “Pension liberation and pension scams continue to put pension savings at risk. Promoters are using sophisticated liberation models to encourage taxpayers to access their pension savings early or transfer their hard-earned savings into scam pension schemes with little or no return on their investment.

“Pension scammers are continually looking for new ways to target individuals and their pension savings. Whilst the action we are taking to prevent these sorts of arrangements from operating goes some way to help protect pension savings, the responsibility for getting the right advice lies with the pension scheme member.

“We want members to make the right decisions about investments and to understand the consequences of not seeking proper advice.”

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Officials said they would keep on working with the industry and other government departments and agencies to identify intelligence and look at ways to cut down on the crime.

Two weeks ago City of London police revealed that losses due to pension scams more than tripled to nearly £5m in the month after the pension reforms took effect. In May £4.7m was reported to Action Fraud as being lost by members of the public.

It rose from £1.45m in April and was roughly three times more than the highest figure since March 2013 £1.6m in October 2013 Anti-scam officials said, however, that it would be premature to be drawing definitive conclusions about the level of this crime and the recent changes to retirement income legislation.

City of London police said: “The monthly loss figures are not representative of the threat of this fraud type. The figures are extremely varied due to the nature of the fraud, whereby victims will have varying amounts of money in their pension pot.

“With regards to the recent pension reforms and the affect that this will have on Pension Liberation fraud, it is at this stage difficult to draw any conclusions; this is because it can sometimes be months or even years after the crime, that the victim realises that they have been defrauded.”

A survey of more than 460 local Citizens Advice managers, staff, volunteers and Pension Wise guiders found that people were most likely to be contacted by cold call, followed by email. Of those who saw people who had been contacted by scammers:

• 4 in 5 said people were contacted by phone call
• 1 in 3 said people were contacted by email
• 1 in 3 said people were contacted by post
• 1 in 5 said people were approached by text message.