Anatomy of a Scam

[ReformedCharacter]

I posted a few years ago about a friend, who having inherited some money from his mother, was ripped off by an IFA who helped him make a number of unsuitable investments, including one in Panamanian forestry (that one managed to get into a SIPP!) and Store First. Incidentally the IFA is no longer registered by the FCA.

Anyway, a few weeks ago my friend received some post which purported to be from the Chartered Trading Standards Institute, the paperwork all looked credible and included a phone number for him to call regarding Store First. He called the number and was promised a return call. The return call came and he was sent some more paperwork from a company claiming to be the official liquidator for Store First and requesting a £1200 refundable fee for a certificate to get on the claimants list. He paid up.

On the day he was supposed to get the funds from fraudco (I would mention the company involved but I daresay the site owners would not appreciate that, PM me if you are interested) he contacted me to ask if I thought he had been scammed. It took only a few minutes for me to see that he had. He then received another contact from fraudco asking for a further £2700 to claim the £9000 apparently owed to him. He played along with this and was sent the details of a Natwest account for the funds to be transferred to.

When I looked at the website of fraudco it had some pictures of the company luminaries, none of which appeared on the list of directors at Companies House. The directors according to CH included a number of people from the Czech Republic most of whom had resigned. For my own interest I did a Google image search on the pictures of the fraudco luminaries as shown on their website and found that one works for Warren Buffett, another is a plastic surgeon and another a Getty stock image of a 'thoughtful businessman', he was apparently 'Head of Law'.

So far I have contacted:

The Insolvency Service.
Action Fraud.
Natwest bank (fraudco supplied the details of an account at their Chatham branch).
The registrars of fraudco's website.

Trying to get through to Natwest's fraud department when you are not a customer is a trying experience to say the least.

I'm open to any suggestions of how to get justice to catch up with fraudco but that's all I can think of. It goes without saying that my friend is too gullible for his own good but I think he's learnt a lesson for now.

RC

[UncleEbenezer]

That's pretty-much pure-bred 419. I first encountered it on paper 30 years ago[1], before scammers[2] ever discovered email. I guess your friend lives in a different world to those of us who frequent Lemonfool?

On a more serious note than my customary flippancy, perhaps there might be folks here who'd be vulnerable to the first part of that scam: namely, 'phoning a scammer's number?

[1] It was sent to the proprietor of a bar where I was a regular. It was written in English and posted from Nigeria. The proprietor asked my opinion 'cos he thought I, as an English speaker, might make more sense of it than he could.
[2] Unless you count student pranks and the like as scams.

[XFool]

The lesson is, as ever, if you get identified as scammable you will be scammed. Just as, if you ever get identified as a recipient of SPAM email/phone calls you will thereafter be SPAMmed.

The 'trick' seems to be: never get to be so identified in the first place.

[ReformedCharacter]

That's pretty-much pure-bred 419. I first encountered it on paper 30 years ago[1], before scammers[2] ever discovered email. I guess your friend lives in a different world to those of us who frequent Lemonfool?

Yes, he's a musician

Just an update, friend took his head out of the sand and reported the fraud to his bank - the only thing I couldn't do on his behalf. He might get a some money back, maybe not. I've had a 'thanks we're looking into it...' from the domain registrars. The supposed company headquarters in 4-12 St. James Place London looks like a row of shops and the registration address of the remaining director listed by Companies House appears to be an apartment in Upper Berkeley St, Marylebone.

RC

[DrFfybes]

I.... he was sent some more paperwork from a company claiming to be the official liquidator for Store First and requesting a £1200 refundable fee ....

I would hope that as soon as an unsolcited communcator asked me for money up front I would walk away. I find it terrifying that after all the stories in the press and the publicity people still pay up front to strangers for something they haven't seen.

Paul

[ReformedCharacter]

I.... he was sent some more paperwork from a company claiming to be the official liquidator for Store First and requesting a £1200 refundable fee ....

I would hope that as soon as an unsolcited communcator asked me for money up front I would walk away. I find it terrifying that after all the stories in the press and the publicity people still pay up front to strangers for something they haven't seen.

Paul

Yes, well my friend was trying to reclaim funds from the official liquidator so it didn't appear totally unsolicited. And the paperwork looked very genuine. I hope I would walk away too but these people are clever, I spoke to the fraudster on the phone and he almost made me believe him. I think as we get older we probably get more vulnerable to these sort of frauds, a friend of my wife - a highly intelligent woman - was almost persuaded to give her bank details to someone who called her but was stopped just in the nick of time by her husband who overheard the conversation.

RC

[ReformedCharacter]

I'm glad to say that following my complaint to the website registrars, two of fraudco's websites have been removed. A small victory but one that has pleased me this morning.

RC

[ReformedCharacter]

A happy ending for my friend, he received a 'refund' from his bank. I note that both the domains used by fraudco are now shown as 'clientTransferProhibited' which if I understand correctly, means that fraudco cannot just transfer them to another registrar, although I don't know how permanent this measure will be. I spent quite a lot of time on this and it's good to see a positive outcome.

RC

[UncleEbenezer]

I'm glad to say that following my complaint to the website registrars, two of fraudco's websites have been removed. A small victory but one that has pleased me this morning.

RC

I'm severely out of date on this, but my experience is that outright fraudsters like this expect their domains to have a lifetime of a few days, sometimes less. Those that journalists complain don't get taken straight down are more in a grey area.