I've been absent from here today, looking into an offer by phone & e mail, which I have concluded is a fraud.
They were saying I had a stock option to purchase shares in a company that took over a company I used to hold shares in.
Extremely convincing & I nearly fell for it, despite me always being incredulous of people that do fall for scams.
Anyway, no one wants to do anything about it. It's pathetic.
I reported it online to The FCA who possibly do diddly squat.
I reported it to The Scottish police as the fraudsters gave an Edinburgh address. They said report it locally.
I reported it locally & they were very nice, but said I needed to report it to actionfraud.police.uk.
I reported it online to them & the info requested was worse than useless & no way could they investigate anything from that. It was just to record an attempted crime imo.
So I phoned them up, held on the line for 5 mins, then the line went dead.
Absolutely ******* useless !
If anyone wishes to commit a fraud I suggest you go ahead as it appears no one is in the least bit interested.
And breathe.
PS Should I delete the e mail ? Is there a risk in keeping it ?
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Then when you get prosecuted you can explain exactly why you did it.
You could email tony.hetherington@mailonsunday.co.uk. as he looks into all these scams
The FCA has a large Enforcement Department and publishes warning lists of such scams. They should take note of what happened to you. Was the firm that contacted you on here? fca.org.uk/consumers/protect-yourself/unauthorised-firms/unauthorised-firms-to-avoid Or here: fca.org.uk/consumers/protect-yourself/unauthorised-firms/foreign-warnings
Action Fraud is now the correct police contact point nationally. If they've been rubbish and their complaint form was useless, start a complaint about them! Mind you, the concept has to be better than the old system. No individual police force apart from the City of London properly resourced their fraud squads with officers with a brain. Many Forces actually shut down their fraud squads entirely!
Two further things: first you weren't actually a victim as you sussed it out. It's quite likely that the authorities will already be aware of this matter and will have received other complaints, so they won't see you as a priority.
Second, it is highly unlikely that the Edinburgh address has any real connection with the fraudsters. It's probably just a mail drop at most. In the past, most of these scams were set up in Spain to take advantage of differences in Spanish law that meant the local authorities could not investigate unless there was a local victim. But I think that an EU directive closed that loophole.
If you still get no joy from the authorities PM me the details and I'll make sure someone at the FCA gets them.
Action Fraud is your main point of contact. Very much doubt they will even begin to prosecute - they probably get reports of email scans a thousand times a day and can't investigate every one. Boiler room scams only seek to get shut down when enough people have been duped in handing over cash as 'Police discover £100m scam' is better PR than 'Police uncover 5 quid scam, spend thousands in order to prosecute'.
Fraud is historically hard to prove and prosecute for. I would only expect to see an email scam and the perpetrators taken to court if enough money has been stolen and there is enough evidence to prove they were acting fraudulenty.
Each new complaint adds to the likelihood that they will do something. The FCA employs a large group of people in its Enforcement Division dealing solely with unauthorised and therefore illegal activity. Other people deal with the investigations into the authorised community. The FCA can and does do both. If you look through its list of press releases, it will give you an idea. In particular they like to look out for new trends in fraudulent activity so they can be stamped upon from a great height. The FCA's success against so-called land banks is a prime example. The fraud was flourishing but has now almost disappeared. If people don't tell them, of course, they won't know.
The local police took scant details and gave me a reference number, but said they wouldn't investigate.
I filled out the Action Fraud "form" online, which was basically : contacted by landline, followed up with an e mail, from a purported financial institution & was requesting me to send money. That was it. You can't investigate anything from that. A complete joke.
If I wanted I could possibly get the bank details from them, if I rang them & said I wanted to send the money.
I could investigate it & already have a damn site more than any authority "appears" to want to.
I don't care about me personally, but I'm pretty certain as I type this, people are sending money to them & it makes me very angry.
I've been rather busy today, but maybe I'll e mail Tony Hetherington tomorrow.
The thing is the legislation the FCA works under contains confidentiality provisions that preclude them from letting you know, well, anything at all really. (Although there are get-outs to the non-disclosure rule it remains the default position so I'm not bothering you with the exceptions here.)
I know that sounds stupid. But the legislation is there for a reason. Primarily, it's not beyond the realms of possibility that the FCA could get an entirely plausible but frivolous or malicious complaint about a firm. Merely by announcing that an investigation was on-going or planned it is possible, perhaps even likely, that the announcement itself would put a small firm/individual out of business. That would not be right if it later transpired that that complaint was unfounded.
I hope that helps you to understand their position. A member of staff at the FCA would commit a criminal offence by disclosing information and they could lose their job and be banged up for two years - that sanction tends to make them very cautious indeed about what they say and to whom.
(What is less clear is why the Police aren't required to operate under a similar regime. Perhaps, then, we'd be spared the fly on the wall "traffic cop as cheap entertainment" shows and TV cameras following plod around when they make a high profile arrest.)
@Covered End sorry you felt that no one was interested and Action Fraud and police services are far from perfect in their customer service/complaint handling for stuff like that but anyone who does get targeted should stick at it as it can only help with investigations like the above.
The more pertinent question is, are those @LoOkOuTs monogramed slippers in the article? I always wondered how he afforded that private island...