The Trinidad and To­ba­go Se­cu­ri­ties and Ex­change Com­mis­sion (TTSEC) is warn­ing the pub­lic about in­creas­ing­ly so­phis­ti­cat­ed in­vest­ment scams, in­clud­ing the use of ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence to cre­ate fake en­dorse­ments and in­ter­views fea­tur­ing promi­nent pub­lic fig­ures and me­dia per­son­al­i­ties.

In its sixth in­vestor alert is­sued on Thurs­day, the TTSEC said fraud­sters con­tin­ue to adapt their tac­tics through fake so­cial me­dia pro­files, im­per­son­ation of le­git­i­mate fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions and pro­fes­sion­als, de­cep­tive in­vest­ment ad­ver­tise­ments, and mis­lead­ing on­line com­mu­ni­ca­tions.

One of the lat­est scams in­volves Guardian Me­dia ed­i­tor Ke­jan Haynes, with a fake on­line pub­li­ca­tion de­pict­ing an in­ter­view with for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley. Guardian Me­dia has dis­avows any as­so­ci­a­tion with the pub­li­ca­tion and warned that it is fraud­u­lent be­cause no such in­ter­view has hap­pened.