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For weeks, we've been telling you about the email phishing scams targeting account holders at  Heritage Bank.

And while Heritage sounded the alarm, email phishing scams are a widespread problem in Belize, targeting account holders at all the commercial banks, and BTL.

And, there are shadowy local players who are working with international fraudsters to do the local legwork to clean out your account.

It's enough to have stirred the FIU to make a rare public statement.

It says, quote, "The Financial Intelligence Unit (the FIU) has been made aware of numerous “spear phishing scams” that are being perpetrated by cyber criminals and targeted towards the Belizean public. Persons in Belize have been receiving emails from several sources, suggesting that urgent action must be taken to prevent account loss and requiring the resubmission of personal information including account numbers, user IDs, access codes, PINs and passwords, etc. . There are increasing reports of breached online banking accounts and subsequent fraudulent online transfers. On the other side, residents are being recruited via social media to harvest the proceeds of these crimes such as fraudulent online transfers and to repatriate the funds to criminal third parties, some of whom may reside overseas. 

The public is urged to... Never reply to email messages that request your personal information. Be very suspicious of any email message from an individual or organization that asks for your personal information, or one that sends you personal information and asks you to update or confirm. Financial institutions will never send a link in an email requesting a user to change login credentials including account name, password, PIN number, security questions, etc. • Do not click links in suspicious emails. The link may not be trustworthy."