Fraudulent schemes that promise high returns from trading complex financial products — but force victims to pay excessive fees and taxes to collect earnings — increasingly target people working from home or who have lost jobs amid the coronavirus pandemic, a US regulator said.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission said it has received hundreds of complaints about such fee frauds in recent months and warned individual investors should be particularly aware of the schemes, which promise easy ways to make money with no trading experience, the agency said in an advisory note.