WATCH | Authorities unveil scam awareness website
New website ScamAlert.mt offers people scam warnings, real-life case studies and reporting guidance
by Paul Cocks
Scams are getting smarter, so should you, the MFSA has said at the launch of ScamAlert.mt, a website set up to help the public spot, avoid and report scams.
The website, set up by the MFSA, is in collaboration with the police force and the Office of the Arbiter for Financial Services.
The site includes a section on common scam types, from business e-mail compromise to romance fraud, each with red flags and practical prevention steps. A second section hosts real-life, anonymised case studies, while a further page links to MFSA warnings and IOSCO's international investor alert database, so people can check whether an entity is authorised or a website has been cloned.
The platform also directs people to the right authority, be it the MFSA, the police or the arbiter, and is available in both Maltese and English. There are also a number of complaints that were received by the Police force, now anonymised, in case studies featured on the new site.
Simplicity, accessibility and practicality were the three principles behind the site's design, according to Sarah Pulis, head of conduct supervision at the MFSA and the country's financial literacy ambassador, who said it was built to work equally well for a student or a pensioner.
Speaking to BusinessToday, Sarah Pulis said scams are constantly evolving, with fraudsters growing more creative and innovative. She traced the shift from old email lottery scams to today's romance scams and impersonation of public authorities, but said the clearest red flag across all of them is urgency.
"If someone asks to do something very urgent, it means it's implying the person not to think," she said, adding that people should always stop, think and verify rather than rush into a decision. "A quick click can cost you thousands and thousands of EUR."
She said vigilance needs to keep pace with the scams themselves. "Scams are evolving, they're all the time on the increase, so our sense of vigilance needs to increase as well."
Speaking on the website, Permanent Secretary for Finance Paul Zahra said Awareness, not enforcement, was the theme. ScamAlert.mt, he told guests, is what "cross-government cooperation" looks like once it leaves the page. "For the residents' perspective, these are separate issues. They are one problem," he said, adding that the government's job is to simplify the system, not add to it.
Permanent Secretary for Home Affairs and Security Joyce Dimech described receiving a text message, only weeks earlier, claiming to be from the tax authority and urging her to click a link. She paused instead.
"I stopped for a moment and asked myself a very simple question. Is this genuine?" That pause, she said, is often the only thing standing between a person and a loss they cannot undo.
Deputy Police Commissioner Sandro Gatt also spoke at the launch, saying that "Online scams no longer target specific groups, relying on the exploitation of trust and urgency rather than technology." He urges victims to report scams, as each prevented one spares them financial loss, emotional distress, and suffering.
Geoffrey Bezzina, arbiter for financial services, recalled a moment as consumer complaints manager at the MFSA when a 70-year-old man walked in after sending 70,000 Maltese lira to fraudsters posing as a foreign lottery.
"The recovery of those 70,000 Maltese lira was impossible," Bezzina recalled. The man had asked staff to keep the loss from his terminally ill wife as the money was their life savings.
Bezzina said the case illustrates why the arbiter's model, introduced in 2024 to split liability, has gained international interest. The office has eliminated its complaint fee, reduced case times, and received a record number of complaints this year, many of which are scam-related.
Bezzina mentioned that international arbiter networks exchange scam complaint notes and that Malta will host its next global conference in early October. He noted that Singapore and Australia already hold telecoms and social media firms, as well as banks, liable for scam losses.
Concluding the launch, MFSA chief executive Kenneth Farrugia described one case in which funds moved from Malta to Estonia, then Thailand, then China within a single hour before being withdrawn as cash. He tied the platform to Malta's 2022 commitment to the Financial Action Task Force and argued that financial literacy has become a basic life skill, calling on the public to act as "ambassadors" for the site
