Advance-fee and fake loan-offer scams

What an advance-fee scam looks like

You are offered a business loan — often unsolicited, often for more than you expected and with barely any checks. To 'release' the funds, you are asked to pay a fee first: an insurance premium, an admin charge, a tax, or a deposit to 'prove you're serious'. Once you pay, the funds never arrive, and the scammer disappears or invents another fee. The whole scheme exists to extract that upfront payment.

The red flags

• An upfront fee demanded before any money reaches you.
• An offer that seems too easy — large sums with little or no assessment of your company.
• Pressure to decide and pay quickly.
• Contact from a lender you never approached, via personal email or messaging apps.
• Requests to pay the fee by bank transfer, gift cards or crypto.

How genuine lending works

A legitimate lender assesses your company before offering terms and takes any arrangement fee from the loan itself or on drawdown — never as a separate payment you send before receiving anything. At Credit Corp, fees are disclosed clearly in your agreement before you sign, and you are never asked to transfer money to 'unlock' your facility. You can read exactly how our charges are presented on the apex site, and you only ever apply through our real application.

If you have been targeted

Do not pay. If you already have, contact your bank at once and report it to Action Fraud. If the scam used Credit Corp's name, tell us so we can act — see reporting suspected fraud. To understand genuine costs, compare against real figures using the Credit Corp calculators.