Conditions could hardly be better for investment scammers.
Rock-bottom interest rates mean that many savers want alternatives to bank accounts, and crooks are just waiting for them to search online.
The perfect storm is completed by the speed at which dodgy investment websites are set up by fraudsters, who then pay Google to promote them, and the fact the regulator is always a step behind - as if it's playing Whac-a-mole but not very well.
I dipped my toe into the shark pool this week by searching online for Post Office bonds.
The first hit, above the official Post Office site, was a Google ad for ukpremierbonds.com, which promised - falsely - that your savings will be protected by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme.
“Start building your family's future and take advantage of a saving plan with a regular and steady income," the site tempted.
It offered a range of bonds from trusted outlets, including a Post Office one paying 8% interest.
No such product exists. And if you can find bonds with those sort of returns offered by anyone else they will be high risk and not protected by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme.
The Post Office offers online savings bonds with rates from 0.35 to 0.45%, and growth bonds with rates from 0.4 to 0.5%.
Besides the fake bond, there were plenty of red flags that Google should have spotted before accepting payment to promote this site, such as the fact it does not give any company details or phone number, uses a fake address and is a copy of other recent scam sites.
Ukbondmarket.com offered the same non-existent 8% Post Office bond and carried the same stock picture of a young family on its home page.
On February 9 it was added to the Financial Conduct Authority’s consumer alert list, but I saw it still being promoted by Google ads four days later.
Both of these sites have cut and pasted the same testimonials, though there was an intriguing blunder on UK Bond Market.
This has someone called Jake Commande saying: “Extremely happy with the services offered by UK Bond Value. I have been working with them for more than three years and the results makes me trust them 100% every time.”
Who are UK Bond Value? Jake Commande was supposed to be endorsing UK Bond Market.
The answer is that UK Bond Value is yet another scam site – one that was added to the FCA alert list on February 3. It was also promoted by Google ads and offered the fictional 8% Post Office bond.
The conmen were in such a hurry to get their new site up and running that they forgot to change the business name used in the bogus testimonial.
A fourth site using the same testimonials is bond-compareuk.com, which was added to the FCA's alert list on January 29.
As for all these sites having a happy customer of three years standing, none of them existed last year, yet alone three years ago.
Bond-compareuk.com was created on January 25, ukbondvalue.com on February 2, Ukbondmarket.com on February 4, and ukpremierbonds.com only this Monday, February 15. That shows the ease and speed with which scammers operate, and also the futility of acting against individual websites rather than tackling the people who set them up.
Bond expert and consumer finance campaigner Mark Taber is scathing about the lack of action to halt the tide of scam websites.
"Fake comparison sites advertised on Google appear to be the main source of leads for the investment scams and toxic unregulated investments which have resulted in billions of pounds of losses for victims in recent years," he said.
"Many of the sites are run by UK-based unauthorised lead generators in breach of financial promotions, data protection and business names laws.
"Yet no effective action is taken against them and the FCA has never prosecuted a financial promotions offence. As a result they carry on with impunity creating ‘sucker lists’ of potential victims who will be targeted by scams for life."
Google insisted that protecting consumers was a priority.
"We take dishonest business practices and misleading ads very seriously and consider them to be a violation of our policies and recently updated our policies to enable verification of businesses promoting financial services in the UK," said a spokesperson.
"When ads do not comply with our policies, we take action to remove them.”
Sure, but how about not running them in the first place? It's not be difficult to identify the crooked ones, as the examples above show.
The Post Office says it contacts website owners and domain providers when it spots suspect websites, but said that it could be weeks before this results in any action.
“There are an increasing number of comparison sites with inaccurate and misleading information,” it warned.
“The simplest advice is that if a savings rate looks much higher than the typical rate others are offering, then it is probably too good to be true.”