MCO Capital loan

Eaglemar

Zinor wrote: »

SUCCESS!


Finally something in writing from somebody involved telling me it has been dealt with.


Hopefully that is the last I hear about this.


Furu can, quite frankly, kiss my hairy !!!!.




Dear xxxxxxxxxx(aka Zinor)


I can confirm that Intrum Justitia Ltd were acting on a collection basis only to accept repayment of loans taken out by customers.

The account we have access to has been updated accordingly and you will not receive any communication form Intrum Justitia Ltd in respect to this account.

However, please direct any further concerns you may have to MCO Capital.

I would like to thank you for bringing this matter to my attention. If you require any further assistance, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Kind Regards,

Tracey Smith
Quality and Compliance Supervisor

Intrum Justitia Ltd

That looks exactly like the email reply I got from them. As yet have heard nothing from MCO. Though expect them to be very busy trying to cover themselves and trying to recoup their lost monies.

Eaglemar

jane_sanders wrote: »

Hello there.

Right, bailiffs are 'normally' court appointed, but I would have to know what is involved to be able to tell you what has been going in. In any case, it is more likely that the debt has been 'sold' and a debt recovery agency is after you all. Having just looked up Intrum Justitia, they are indeed a 'credit management' company, and it is my view that they have purchased the debts. What does not, as yet, make sense is why they would act for such a small amount of money, unless they somehow knew they were going to be getting alot of business which would then, as you can imagine, make it worthwhile handling the cases.

Action can be taken, but much more information will be needed, and the bigger the numbers, the more cost effective any action will be.

I look forward to hearing from you

All best

Jane

Thanks Jane, I shall be contacting you with my story in due course.

geomacl

jane_sanders wrote: »

Hi there

There are a host of areas of non compliance that I have thought of as regards the FSA, and because I specialise in dealing with disputes involving the FSA, regulation and, indeed, the Financial Ombudsman Service, there is clear scope for claims to be made there, so get in touch.
I look forward to hearing from you all shortly.
Jane .

I have made contact as per Ian's post. Like you, I am frustrated that no regulatory action has been taken against a company trading oputwith it's licence!!

GomerPyle

I'm quite gobsmacked that this company is trading and still has a licence to offer loans. For it's own protection it ought to be suspended otherwise it might as well chuck bundles of cash out of its office window.

Has the world taken leave of its senses ?

Are we meant to believe that this company has been receiving thousands of duplicate loan applications and duly sending cash to one bank account and not noticed ? - or are we to believe that scammers have opened up a myriad of scam bank accounts - bearing in mind the current stringent KYC regulations that apply to opening an account nowadays. Come to think of it - how does this company stand as regards KYC regulations ? How deeply do they check that they aren't funding people they shouldn't ? Considering that they appear to pay anyone but the intended applicant they must have a near perfect KYC failure rate which would cause a bank serious regulatory repercussions.

I fully understand the effect that legal demands for repayment would have on people though I would give a very short response to anyone unable to make a proper legal demand on me for repayment of money I had never received.

This company's business model is seriously flawed and misusing the UK's debt recovery laws to remedy it is an abuse, though the more serious question that needs to be answered is whether or not they are doing so intentionally. I'll plump for the less controversial view that they're too incompetenmt to be allowed to continue be licenced as they have proven themselves incapable of properly identifying their clients. More importantly - why should innocent victims be forced to clean up the mess created by such a company ?

Send me a claim - I double dare you. I've never been to court.

GomerPyle

A couple of interesting points I noticed but I can't be sure they've not already been highlighted but I promise to look back over the thread in more detail later

The CC Licence details specify

Nature of Business:
Cheque Cashing Services

That appears to be incorrect

A second apparition

https://secure.balanceloan.co.uk/Default.aspx

Personaly I prefer the green version

In my opinion they should be registered to undertake KYC checks and they have a lot of work to do with a likely 9,000 odd breaches to report.

Hard to believe - but you can't even give money away without upsetting some regulatory authority. Every claim they have issued that's been successfully refuted is likely to represent a KYC breach. I suspect it could be a record.

Also from the Licence records

Current Organisations that run the organisation:
Name Company Registration Number
OÜ Prossimo Investments Registrikood 11191724

Worth looking at in more detail.

The thought that a company could seriously threaten legal action against people for money they've whimsically given away to strangers without any serious ID check is ludicrous, and it's outrageous to suggest that this represents ID theft. This is a failure in ID checking and nothing to do with any failure by the victim.

On so many levels - words fail me.

Debtfreeatlast_2

jane_sanders wrote: »

Action can be taken, but much more information will be needed, and the bigger the numbers, the more cost effective any action will be.

Cost effective for who? Seems like thinly veiled client aquistion.

GomerPyle

This situation flabbergasts me, and I' m not using the word for comic effect.

From what has been revealed, it's suggested that 9,000 individual fraudsters have used their own personal bank accounts and gone to the trouble of scouring the electoral rolls of the country to find a 'doppelganger' and then managed to persuade a loan company to send them money. Apart from the fact that the barmiest of fraudsters wouldn't be daft enough to leave a trail to their identity in that way, to suggest that 9,000 people individually, or even as an organised fraud, would do this, is not credible.

The fact is that banks are legally obiged to perform KYC checks on customers wanting to open a bank account, so fraudsters are unlikely to have use of such a vast number of bank acoounts, and if they do banks face swingeing punitive action by the regulators.

Using the UK's debt recovery laws to remedy a situation created by what was always a business proposition that wouldn't have lasted a second in the Dragons' Den'. It's utterly laughable, if not for the victims - and to suggest that ID theft can be performed purely by knowing someone's name and address is ridiculous. KYC rules are there, not only to protect the public, but also the institution supposed to be scrupulously administering them.

I would hazard a guess that these 'debts' (and I use the term loosely) were on sold to a separate debt recovery company for a proportion of their book value. Of course the buyer would have been unaware that the manner in which the loans were taken made their real value - zero, but they ought to have checked. It's commercially prudent.

spike7451

MCO loans have been flagged up on the NIDirect.gov website;

This was posted on the PSNI Ards Facebook site.

http://www.nidirect.gov.uk/index/newsroom/news-nov10-be-wary-of-fake-loan-scam.htm

You should be wary of a fake loan scam. If you've received a letter from MCO Capital Limited asking you to repay a loan that you haven’t taken out, don't pay any money but don't ignore it. It may affect your credit rating and you may find yourself subject to debt recovery proceedings if you don't take action. You should report the fact that a false loan has been taken out in your name.
Surge of complaints

There has been a surge of complaints against a company called MCO Capital Ltd trading as 'Help Loan' and 'Balance Loan' in recent weeks. People have reported to Trading Standards that they have received letters from this company demanding the repayment of a £300 loan plus £213 interest for a loan that the consumer knows nothing about.

The matter is currently being investigated by the City of London Police, and MCO are working closely with the police as part of the ongoing investigation.

grahamqat

Hi Gomer - agree with your views. Debts were supposedly sold on to Intrum Justitia, and they answered the phone when I rang the number on the second letter from Helploan. I have seen it somewhere on this thread that a typical going rate is 10P/£ so if they bought all 10,000 fake loans, they are £0.5M down on the deal.

It is very difficult to believe the official version of events, and not really credible to give 10,000 loans to ID fraud applicants accidentally. I'm not convinced the loans exist - the applications, both genuine and ID fraud probably do and it is these that have been sold to IJ, who have terminated the MCO contract at the end of this month.

Dont forget the 2 off SMS messages at £3 each to apply for a loan - that's £60,000 + £0.5M from IJ. Add to this proceeds from ID sales. No wonder the web-site is still running and probably attracting ID fraud applicants. It's making MCO a lot of money, and being completely tolerated by the authorities as well.

grahamqat

I thought you were being a bit harsh there Debtfree... A few of us here have been asking for professional help and guidance and Jane is only responding to that. Clearly there will be a cost associated with this, but if we are collectively successfull then this should ultimately be borne by MCO. (We probably need to check that they have got some money or third party insurance before getting too far down the road).