The friend was real. The message wasn't.

In October, Switzerland's National Cyber Security Centre received more than 50 reports of WhatsApp accounts being taken over, with the bait sent from friends' real accounts that had already been hijacked. In the UK, SRA alerts show fraudsters offering their own fake way to check a solicitor. A familiar sender, even a real account, does not show who is asking: check what the message asks you to do.

Issue No. 2 gathers the 22 records filed from 19 October to 4 November: the Swiss WhatsApp warning leads, with FINMA's portfolio-manager cases, the SRA's anti-money-laundering report and Monaco's exit from the FATF grey list. On 17 November: our study of every SRA scam alert since January 2025. Our first Swiss study, on how exposed Swiss wealth managers and trustees are to impersonation, follows later in November.

Sina Tadayon, Editor