This faked photo has had to be labelled “AI Generated” by the Financial Times because FT readers may have taken it as an incident that really happened and not one generated to capitalise on support for Farage by his hardcore of followers.

It is not just Nigel Farage whose trust is being abused, Martin Lewis is well known for being faked on adverts on social media, the FT have run an article this morning asking what is being done to protect people from the scams that these false images lead people to, We can hardly blame Farage or Lewis.

Andrew Tait has been active in arguing that those like Andrew Bailey are the type scamming up with their salaries paying them for nothing. His alternative is to buy into various crypto adventures asking us to put our cash to work to save us from ever having to work for other people in salaried jobs.

The FT article decides to follow up the scam behind the fake news of Farage and Bailey. The Farage-Bailey ads promote an “investment platform” called Ledgerholm. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) registration number listed is fake, and there is no evidence of any such company existing beyond the advertisement and the registration website.

But there are various sales people in place to help you to send money to accounts. I was myself caught behind an equally fanciful  legal firm that claimed to be acting for a Farage photographer who claimed rights on photos of Nigel Farage. I was asked to pay a substantial amount of money by reprinting a photo of the leader, a threat that I investigated only to find that the only open link on their website was to the scammers bank account.

So it goes, those who operate in a manner that is trusted (whether Nigel Farage or Martin Lewis) have that trust abused by scammers. I know that you will be springing to comment that Farage has dubious links to crypto currency and Martin Lewis is not that way inclined but in being abused they are as one, they have become a point of trust and so a focus of scammers.

The irony is that the fake photo of Farage and Bailey may have excited you to read this article, the advert is scam-bait and it can be click-bait for me and even the FT. The only excuse to promote it is to remind anyone who reads this far that none of us are immune from the scammers attention and scammers know what excites us to send our banking details.

Though the images may be bizarre, the power of such messaging is unsurprising, says Simon Miller, director of policy, strategy and communications at fraud prevention agency Cifas — they tap into real issues.

“Whether it’s frustration about the economy or worries about household finances, criminals can use legitimate consumer concerns as a gateway to promote high-risk investments, fraudulent schemes or inaccurate financial advice”

Of course they will include pensions and retirement finance in general. We have Andy Agethangelou’s Transparency Taskforce set up these past ten years but it can do little to combat the power and speed of the web and social media to get the scammers into play.

If you want to read the article in the FT on a free (not scammed) link, there are a limited number of reads on this one.

It seems that as a nation we are distrustful of financial services. I suspect that that makes financial scammers’ job a tad easier

Geopolitical shocks, including from the ongoing crisis in the Strait of Hormuz, have driven inflation, hitting UK consumers.

But the scam ads speak to a deeper sense of distrust — which appears to be especially prevalent in Britain.

According to a recent survey by the OECD, only a third of people in the UK have high or moderately high trust in public institutions, lower than the average of 40 per cent among the 38 developed nations.

At the same time, just 36 per cent of Britons think most financial firms treat them honestly and transparently, according to a 2024 survey by the FCA.