The CMVM Warns That Investment Scammers Now Arrive With AI Video, and It Never Writes to Anyone on WhatsApp

Portugal's securities regulator issued a general alert on Tuesday about a rise in investment fraud, and the detail that stands out is not the scale but the method. The Comissão do Mercado de Valores Mobiliários says the schemes now arriving in Portuguese inboxes and phone notifications are built on unsolicited contact and deceptive online advertising, increasingly assembled with artificial intelligence.

The CMVM describes a recognisable pattern. Fraudsters open with a cold approach by telephone, SMS, WhatsApp, email or social media (Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and TikTok are named), then work to build a relationship of trust, exploiting inexperience in financial matters. The offer that follows is deliberately attractive: high or guaranteed returns, and no risk. Technical vocabulary is used to project competence.

The warning signs the regulator lists

Two behaviours matter most, in the CMVM's account. The first is pressure to decide quickly, without time to consult family, friends or a professional. The second is isolation: an active attempt to move the target away from anyone who might raise doubts. Fraudsters may present themselves as friends, distant relatives, neighbours or representatives of well-known institutions, and use conversations, presentations or demonstrations to manufacture familiarity.

The regulator then makes an unusually specific point about fabricated media. It warns of advertising campaigns containing videos, news items and other false content that misuse the names and images of public figures and recognised institutions. Artificial intelligence is spreading these schemes, the CMVM says, and investors should not treat a video, news report or interview as genuine merely because a familiar face or an official logo appears in it.

How the CMVM says it actually contacts people

The most practically useful line in the whole alert is a rule about the regulator's own conduct. The CMVM never contacts investors through WhatsApp. Its communications come exclusively from senders on the @cmvm.pt domain, and it warns that similar but illegitimate domains are in circulation.

Its other instructions are blunt. Do not download attachments, follow links or click on advertising from a suspicious contact. Do not grant remote access to a phone or computer through screen-sharing applications. Do not hand over banking credentials or personal data. Do not transfer money for supposed recovery of earlier investments, or for alleged commissions, insurance, taxes or administrative charges. And do not deposit funds with anyone reached through an unverified contact.

Before investing, the CMVM asks people to check the entity against its published list of authorised financial intermediaries, available through the Portal Institucional and the Portal do Investidor. The same portals can be used to verify whether a piece of supposed news actually exists.

What this means for expats

• You are a preferred target: a foreign resident with savings held abroad, limited Portuguese and no long-standing local banking relationship is close to the ideal profile for these schemes.
• Authorisation is checkable in two minutes: any firm pitching you should appear on the CMVM's intermediaries list. If it does not, that is the end of the conversation.
• "Recovery" offers are a second fraud: victims are routinely re-approached by people promising to retrieve lost money for an upfront fee. The CMVM lists this explicitly.
• Crypto pitches sit under the same roof: since Portugal brought crypto-asset services under the EU's MiCA rulebook, the CMVM shares supervision with the Bank of Portugal, so an unlicensed crypto platform is checkable too.
• Report it: a suspicious approach can be sent to the CMVM's investor support line, and to the police once money has moved.

The alert lands under two weeks after the tax authority extended its own fraud warning to telephone calls, and follows a WhatsApp scam trading on the Prime Minister's name in June and the Bank of Portugal's proposed blacklist of accounts used in payment fraud. Three regulators are converging on the same message from different directions: the channel is now the tell, not the pitch.