A text message offering loans from ‘Prudent Financial Services’ is a fake and has been labelled a scam.
So far we have had the following mobile numbers and email addresses reported to be sending these messages and we suspect they are not the only ones:
- 0450 336 894
- 0424 842 099
- 0424 834 699
- 0424 846 569
- 03 882 05292
- loans@prudentfinancialservices.org
- loans@prudentfinancierservice.com
- info@prudential.org
A savvy person received the SMS and sent a copy to us to be investigated. Then one of our own WA ScamNet team members received one of the messages!
During investigations our consumer fraud liaison officers:
- found numerous other online reports of the mobile phone number claiming to be the business Prudent Financial Services;
- confirmed there is a real Prudent Financial Services Pty Ltd in Queensland and Prudent Finance in South Perth but the text message is nothing to do with them. (Prudent Financial Services have however received numerous phone calls since April 2017 from people who had received the SMS and wanted to check whether it was authentic);
- discovered that at least one respondent who emailed the address in the text message had paid up front fees for a loan to be granted but had never received the loan; and
- reported the email account to have it disabled.
If you get one of these text messages you should block the sender.
You can report spam SMS to the ACMA via their website or by forwarding the message to 0429 999 888.
It’s not the first time we’ve seen loan scams like this in the current economic climate.
Other financial services providers have been impersonated, for example Credit ReStore and BBM Finance and Finance Money Australia.