Good news: 'Nuisance call fines increase threefold'

Clampdown on cold calls: report from BBC News

'Fines by the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) against nuisance call firms have increased by more than three times this year.

The watchdog imposed fines of £1.14m for nuisance calls and texts compared with £330,000 of penalties in 2014.

It comes after a change to the law in April made it easier to penalise firms.

The biggest fines were for companies selling pharmaceuticals, call blocking services and payment protection insurance (PPI) compensation.'

Read the rest here.

Police warning on commodity fraud

Don't sell your alternative assets – wine, art etc.

 – to cold callers!

Yesterday an Essex CID officer asked investdrinks to help to pass on the message above. This CID officer is involved in investigating multiple companies, who cold call investors offering to sell their assets at inflated prices. He described how the initial investigation into a company offering commodities including 'graphene!' for wine has seen those involved set up a myriad of dubious companies once the original company was complusorily wound up. "Like an octopus," the officer said.  

The likelihood is that once the investor releases their asset to these cold callers for the promised sale they will never receive a penny nor see their assets again. 

The Police message is that if you want to sell your alternative assets do it through an established, reputable company.  Never, ever, use of company that has cold called you no matter how tempting their offers are. 

Fortunately it has never been easier to do your due diligence on companies. Now made even easier with the trial launch of Companies House Company Information Beta Service.

The Beta service is much easier to use than the old Companies House search site and furthermore all the documents are free of charge.     

 

Financial Conduct Authority on Cold Calls: hang up chances it's a scam

Excellent and unequivocal advice from the UK's Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) on Cold Calls: 'the safest thing to do is to hang up'. 

'If you have been cold colded about an investment opportunity, the chances are it's very risky or a scam.'

Sadly advice that thousands of people who who fallen for investment scams will now wish they had heeded.

The very persistent 'George Richards' of Prime Trading 5 Ltd

A message from AT about Prime Trading 5 – a company I would avoid at all costs not least because it breaks the 2013 Consumer Contract Law.
  

'I came across your blog as I was searching the web for information on the above company. I wondered whether you would want to learn of my recent experience of them. I have had persistent phone-calls from 'George Richards' trying to convince me what a profitable investment fine wines would be were I to engage with this company.

Always wary of unsolicited phone-calls from unknown sources, I asked him whether he had any information which he could send to me to confirm that he and the company were genuine. This information did arrive in the post, but as I didn't find it to be very convincing, I tried to find the company via the internet. Instead, I only found your blog with its warnings about this company.

'George Richards' is still phoning several times per day. Sometimes he calls from phone number 07795817103. At other times the call is identified as "withheld". I've stopped answering when the number is displayed. When "withheld", I have answered and when he has revealed his identity I hang up.'

2014 Happy New Year + a couple of resolutions

Best wishes for a scam-free 2014. To help to keep it scam-free here are two resolutions for 2014:

Never accept cold calls

Ignore asset exchange schemes run by companies such as the recently formed Mayfair Worldwide Trading Ltd – formed in mid-August 2014 and already claims to be 'trusted worldwide'! Exchanging cases of Château Lafite, which should in time recover its value, for a risky investment such as graphene cannot be sensible. 

What would make a phone call about wine investment to a non-client acceptable?

Following a meeting before Easter with some members of the WIA and two members of the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau, here is in draft form (comments and suggestions are greatly welcomed) the conditions that I think would make a call to a non-client call acceptable.

A cold call is one to a stranger who does not anticipate a call and has not expressed an interest in wine investment. Such calls are not acceptable for the purposes of investment and are a high-pressure sales technique.

Calls can be made to non-clients who have expressed an interest in wine investment and who are aware that having expressed such an interest they can reasonably expect a follow up call. Increasingly this interest is likely to be expressed through a website. Companies should keep records of these leads to show that they were properly established leads and be able to produce them if challenged. If adopted by the WIA, these records should form part of the annual monitoring process.   

Obviously there have to be the necessary safeguards in place to ensure that potential client is not subject to inappropriate and high-pressure sales. At the start of the call the potential client must be given the opportunity to end the call. If calls are monitored then those called must be made aware that the calls are monitored. The threshold of high-pressure sales should be lower for the elderly and vulnerable.  

When a client places an order over the phone they must be made aware of their right to cancel as in line with the Distance Selling Regulations’ legislation.

This draft of acceptable conditions will have to take cognisance of any proposals and changes that are made by the new The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), which has now taken over from the Financial Services Authority.  

***

Hugo Rose MW, chairman of the WIA, has called on the fine wine trade to support self-regulation and the WIA here in Harpers. A prerequisite of getting such support should be ruling out cold calls – ie those to strangers who have no reason to expect a call about wine wine investment.

Cold calls: excellent advice from Tony Levene (lovemoney.com)

'Never, never, ever respond to anyone who phones you with an investment proposition of any sort.

It does not matter what they say! Real financial advisers do not and are not allowed to do this.

Now, if everyone were to remember that, then no one would lose a penny to fraudsters like the Wilmots.'

From an article on the busting of UK's biggest boiler room scam. 

Patience please

Many thanks to those of you who have emailed me with enquiries and questions over the last ten days or so. I have been away and with little time to deal with these emails. I will now try to answer them as quickly as I can. However, my advice is that if you have the slightest doubt about a wine investment company or a proposed deal is either to decide not to go ahead or, at least, do plenty of research before proceeding.

Furthermore, I would never buy from a cold caller.  

2011 suggested resolutions

a) Don't accept cold calls

b) Don't buy from companies you have never heard of, especially if they phone you up out of the blue.

c) Do your research before you buy.

BBC Inside Out: Olympic Land Scam

Investigation by BBC Inside Out London into a land scam based around the London Olympics in 2012 ruined victims. Illustrates again the dangers of cold calls and the ease by which victims can think they are speaking to someone in the UK when actually they are connected to a boiler room scam in Spain.

Click here.

Don't get caught by cold calls – hang up!

Advice from the Police and the Financial Services Authority

'If you receive an unsolicited phone call about an investment that seems too good to be true put the phone down on them. It is almost certainly a scam.'

Actually I would go further than that hang up on any cold calls about investments. Almost everyone who contacts me with concerns about wine investment companies has been cold called.

Four news clips from the BBC website about boiler rooms and share scams – here, here, here and here.

How to spot an investment scam

Here is a link to the transcript and podcast of an interview with Jonathan Phelan, Head of the FSA's Enforcement Division, on the Motley Fool site.

Much of the interview concerns share scams but Phelan's comments on cold calling are well worth noting and as well as ponzi schemes that promise you guaranteed profits.

Cold calls

'David:

So when somebody is contacted by a scamster, what are the things that they should be looking out for? -- what are the things they should be aware of?

Jonathan:

I think the first thing to be aware of is, why has this guy contacted me? People don't do that out of an abundance of benevolence, they contact you because they're trying to sell something, and sometimes you've got a legitimate salesman; in the investment world that we're concerned with at the Financial Services Authority, people shouldn't cold call, so you should have invited that call, so the first red flag for you is, where you get a call out of the blue from someone you didn't expect to call you, a legitimate broker or a legitimate advisor shouldn't be calling you out of the blue -- that's a red flag to start off with.'

Ponzi schemes
'David:
So, let's have a look at some of the typical scams, I mean one that will be, I think, at the forefront of a lot of people's minds is pyramid selling, particularly in the case of Bernard Madoff. Now, how do these pyramid schemes work? A lot of people have heard about them, but they say, "What exactly is a pyramid or a Ponzi scheme?"

Jonathan:
Well, they can work in different ways, I'll illustrate it with one fairly typical example, which might be that I know someone who says, "You're only getting one and a half percent saving interest in your bank, that's a bit rubbish, isn't it? Why don't you give it to me and give me £1,000, and at the end of the year I'll give you £1,500" It sounds fantastic, so you give him the money, and then he goes to someone else, or I tell my friends, and they give him £1,000.'

(Go to the transcript for the rest.)

Cold calls

Many dubious wine investments start with a cold call. The company may have got your name and details from a share register. In 10 years of dealing with wine investment enquiries the vast majority of unwise wine investment buys started with a cold call.

My strong advice is to not to buy anything from a company that uses cold calls.

The best way to deal with a cold call is to put the phone down. A more fun alternative is to say that you are not the right person to speak to but you will go and find the person they need to speak to. Then just put the phone on hold – the caller will soon give up.

You may wish to get your number blocked from being added to future mailing lists through the Telephone Preference Service.