ProSearch Scam

simonspeakeasy

Received a Prosearch letter today but it did not provide details of the company that I had an interest in.
As per suggestions in this thread, I called Equinity (0371 384 2233 / 0121 415 7065) and, although I had a 35 minute wait in their queue, when I *did* speak to someone, they sorted everything out immediately.  The shares were for National Grid which I think my father must have purchased in my name back in the 80s or 90s.
The backdated dividend payments are worth ~ £1000 out of which Equifax will take ~£100 to cancel & reissue the cheques.  The shares themselves are worth ~£1300.
A great result made much less painful because of the people contributing to this thread.

Chordeiles

This scam has been going on for many years.  The example I turned up (whilst going through the papers of a deceased relative) started in 2005 (when Equiniti was called "Lloyds Registrars" and Pro-Search was called "Trust Research Services").

Same deal, they won't tell you what the "find" is about until you have fully committed to use their services.  But as this thread shows, it's always about an investment held through the registrar "Equiniti".  So go to Equiniti first to check if they think they've lost contact with you.

Pro-search will claim they have no connection with Equiniti - but the free information on the Companies House website will always show that they have directors in common.

It's easy to believe that my deceased relative could have neglected to send back a voting form relating to the takeover of a company in which he had a stake (his wife happened to be dying at the time), giving them the excuse to assume they had lost contact with this particular shareholder and slide his file into the "scam" pile.  But the point is that he also held shares in several other companies which used the same registrar, and they continued to correspond with him about those shares !  In the whole of this period his address never changed, so how hard did Equiniti try to re-establish contact with him ?  Of course this is the same address that Pro-search found him at.  Easy money !

The word "scam" really does seem appropriate.  But from where I'm standing it looks like Equiniti are more than equal partners in this scam.  How have they got away with it for so long ?

However, perhaps the real moral of this story is "don't hold certificated shares", use a nominee account at a reputable broker.