We've seen increased use of sophisticated forms and letterhead to send what appears to be legitimate Bank Group correspondence, as well as several schemes that reference the Bank. Also, scam artists sometimes falsely represent themselves as World Bank auditors or members of the World Bank West African Regional Delegation.
Recently, correspondence was sent by fax to creditors of West African governments, claiming that the senders were empowered by these governments to repay past debts. Official-looking World Bank letterhead was used.
Typically, the solicitations asked potential victims to provide personal information such as signatures or bank account information, and to pay certain advance fees, often described as "processing fees." In return, the potential victim was promised sums of money that the person soliciting the "fees" had no intention of paying. In some cases, those seeking the funds used the names of actual World Bank staff members to sign the letters in order to bolster their credibility.
Here's an example of such a scam using official-looking Bank letterhead and signature. See example (pdf).
We have no involvement in such schemes, and we caution the public to be wary of these and other similar solicitations that falsely claim to be affiliated with the World Bank Group.
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