The former offices of European Fine Wines Ltd in Bromley
Former clients of EFW/European Fine Wines Ltd are being targeted by a variety of scamsters – all dedicated to thinning clients wallets even further. Most overpaid for the wines they bought from EFW. It is very clear that client lists including not just contact information but also details of the wines they purchased have been passed around – sold on etc.
Over-high valuations and Chinese sales
Some like Lewis Samuels of Samuels & Parker Ltd are making remarkably high offers on portfolios. Samuels, based in Downham and Dubai, tend to claim that he has a Chinese buyer for these wines – unfortunately the Chinese buyer has a tendency to be rather fickle and change their mind. More recently he has also found a UK buyer to pay around £72,000 for a portfolio valued by another, long established broker at £55,000.
London City Bond – fake employees
Other scamsters have pretended to be employees of London City Bond claiming to have located wine that they say they can sell for the client. Of course an advance fee is required to facilitate this sale. Needless to say – see the letter from David Hogg from London City Bond below – this is a lie. Like the famous Nigerian 419s this is looks to be advanced fee fraud.
Dear Customer
I am writing to you as the former storage
provider for European Fine Wines.
As you will be aware European Fine Wines have now been placed into Liquidation and we are currently working with the appointed Liquidator.
However, it has been brought to our attention that some customers have received telephone calls and letters (see below) from unknown individuals, claiming to be from London City Bond (LCB) and offering to buy their wines or in exchange for a fee, secure your stocks from the Liquidator.
These people do not work for LCB and we never cold call any customers offering such services.
Should you receive any such calls, we would urge you not to accept any offer under any circumstances.
If you are able to ascertain any details about the caller, number used etc we would be grateful for this information in order that we can pass this on to the Police.
Please feel free to contact our Customer Services team on 0843 659 3617 or at vtcustomerservices@lcb.co.uk for any further assistance.
Many thanks.
Regards
David Hogg
As you will be aware European Fine Wines have now been placed into Liquidation and we are currently working with the appointed Liquidator.
However, it has been brought to our attention that some customers have received telephone calls and letters (see below) from unknown individuals, claiming to be from London City Bond (LCB) and offering to buy their wines or in exchange for a fee, secure your stocks from the Liquidator.
These people do not work for LCB and we never cold call any customers offering such services.
Should you receive any such calls, we would urge you not to accept any offer under any circumstances.
If you are able to ascertain any details about the caller, number used etc we would be grateful for this information in order that we can pass this on to the Police.
Please feel free to contact our Customer Services team on 0843 659 3617 or at vtcustomerservices@lcb.co.uk for any further assistance.
Many thanks.
Regards
David Hogg
Sales Director
Text of letter above
12th Feb 2015
Dear Mrs
We write to confirm that we have located fine wine assets under your name which have been within our bonded warehouse. The storage for your assets are now due for renewal and so can you please inform us how you wish to proceed. We can offer you an option to sell your case of wine and we have been approached by an interested buyer who would like to present a formal offer of £7,228.91.
If you are happy to accept this offer of sale, a fee of £722.89 will be due to cover fees for the sale of which we will complete on your behalf.
Should you have any further queries, please contact us on 0207 859 4313.
Kind regards
James Reynolds
Storage Management
Abbott Fielding/Grant Thornton – fake employees
This is a variant of the fake employees at London City Bond. This time the scamsters claim falsely to be employees the liquidators and for a fee can release clients' wines. Again this looks like advanced fee fraud.
Message from Nedim Ailyan of Abbott Fielding Limited:
12th Feb 2015
Dear Mrs
We write to confirm that we have located fine wine assets under your name which have been within our bonded warehouse. The storage for your assets are now due for renewal and so can you please inform us how you wish to proceed. We can offer you an option to sell your case of wine and we have been approached by an interested buyer who would like to present a formal offer of £7,228.91.
If you are happy to accept this offer of sale, a fee of £722.89 will be due to cover fees for the sale of which we will complete on your behalf.
Should you have any further queries, please contact us on 0207 859 4313.
Kind regards
James Reynolds
Storage Management
Abbott Fielding/Grant Thornton – fake employees
This is a variant of the fake employees at London City Bond. This time the scamsters claim falsely to be employees the liquidators and for a fee can release clients' wines. Again this looks like advanced fee fraud.
Message from Nedim Ailyan of Abbott Fielding Limited:
'Evolution of Conmen
I am writing to you to see whether you could give assistance, as we have noticed over the last week or so a worrying development in the evolution of conmen in relation to commodity fraud and in particularly wine fraud.
As you are aware I am the Liquidator of in excess of a dozen wine frauds, the vast majority have been dealt with by the Police. We have had disturbing calls from creditors over the last 3 or 4 days, where creditors have been contacted by individuals purporting to be from Abbott Fielding and requesting they pay across a sum of money to release their wine.
I have contacted other insolvency practitioners and established that Grant Thornton have also been the victim where third parties have contacted creditors of companies they are dealing with alleging they are from Grant Thornton and requesting payment of small sums of money to release their goods.
We have contacted the relevant authorities to advise this and are currently collecting the names and phone numbers which will be forwarded on to the Police.
Nedim Ailyan
Abbott Fielding Limited
