You've come across a great deal regarding the use of weight loss injections to lose weight, you feel it is time to try them out ahead of the festive season. However, the issue lies in cost.
But it seems alternatives exist rather than getting a prescription and visiting the chemist. A text message arrives providing a URL to a site with much cheaper drugs – and requiring no necessity to go through official channels. You also noticed a similar ad on social media the other day, so you decide to go for it.
The problem is these ads are almost certainly scams. In the best-case scenario, you'll receive nothing and forfeit whatever money you paid. In the worst, you obtain a fake version, containing unspecified components that could lead to serious medical issues.
The widespread use of legitimate weight loss medications has led to a rise in counterfeit products entering circulation and scams established to simply take people’s money.
Medical regulators have advised avoiding purchasing these illegal weight loss medicines without a prescription from aesthetic clinics, bogus online chemists or through social media, saying they could contain “toxins and other ingredients that could cause genuine injury”.
Recent statistics from a high street bank reveal a significant surge in the quantity of clients who have been affected by the fraud. The bank says, the amount of money lost to fraudulent activities related to slimming jabs, injector pens, pills and lipid-reducing solutions during the third quarter this year, was over twice the overall amount lost in the prior quarter. The average scam sets back sufferers £120, it says.
“Fraudsters are deliberately targeting people’s insecurities and medical worries, with these scams skyrocketing in the past few months,” says a financial institution's fraud prevention lead.
What it looks like
The majority take place on messaging apps and social networks. On socials, an account may imitate the company that you are looking for, but there will typically be slight variations in text or brand marks.
These communications or posts will frequently use pressure-inducing language such as “time-sensitive deal”, “special promotion” or “complimentary gift”.
As the price of some legitimate weight loss jabs, has increased recently, the scammers will set the cost of their “product” lower.
“Purchasing from unapproved vendors on the internet can come at a serious monetary, medical and emotional cost,” says the fraud expert.
What to do
Like any deceptive scheme, the wise saying holds true: should something seem too good to be true, then it probably is.
Health regulators have cautioned people to be extremely cautious when buying medicines online. They should only be obtained from a registered pharmacy using a prescription provided by a medical practitioner, it says. When procured from other sources, they may pose significant dangers to health.
Fraudsters can expend considerable effort to make their site or social media page appear completely genuine. If they claim to be an internet-based chemist located within Great Britain, it's possible to verify the online portal of the medicines oversight organisation to ensure this is correctly licensed.
