MCO Capital loan

Rouncy

As a complete newbie - here & on any other forum - please can I
add my thanks to all the other contributors for their advice, information & support.

I've had the same letter (received on 25th Sept) as a lot of other people, showing the £300 loan & £213 fees - the repayment date being 5th October, and the bank details quoted were HSBC, sort code 404319, account no. 73663361.

I've followed the recommended process of contacting ActionFraud for a CRN (I got through straight away - thanks to the "hold on" tip - & received my email confirmation from them within 12 hours).

Where I differ though is that I became aware of MCO's existence before receiving their demand - I received a statement from a mail-order catalogue firm which I knew I hadn't been in contact with. When I rang them, I was put through to their Identity Theft dept who - after closing the account - advised me to get a copy of my Credit Report to check that everything was in order. I ordered this through Experian on 16th Sept & - lo & behold - there were the 2 searches by MCO ! So - the following day I sent a recorded-delivery letter to MCO's Kingsway address to let them know that I hadn't either requested a loan or received any money from them. I didn't have a reply, but did get an email from Niklas Furu when I sent a pdf copy of the same letter once I'd received the demand for payment.

Like some of the earlier contributors on the topic, I've also experienced credit-card fraud earlier this year-although this was resolved without any loss to myself.

Hope this hasn't gone on too long & there's something of interest in it.

Like a number of other contributors, I would also like to know a bit more about the who/what/how etc of this fraud once it's been finally resolved.

geomacl

Thanks for sharing your experience with us Rouncy. This forum has been a great help to many people, myself included. Since I resolved my issues, I have tried to help as many others as possible - aided and abetted by many other stalwarts of this forum - too many to name individually (other than Colinho, Grahamqat and Oldbloke, that is:T)
Let's hope that the worst is behind us and resolution (and explanation of what actually happened) is now very close.

grahamqat

Hi Rouncy, I posted my theory in an earlier post, for what it's worth as follows:

MCO set up a legit company (non-trading) or just hi-jack an existing one. As it can use trading styles (Helploan, Balanceloan etc) it doesn't make a lot of difference. Companies House and DTI Investigations are non-policing Qangos. They dont care, they are just there to collect revenue. There need be no connection between bank account names and company names - making fraud even easier. MCO create the web-sites offering the crazy loans, with a view to Identity Fraud. (Getting name, address, DOB, bank account etc). They may get a mixture of real and ID fraud applicants. The real applicants get scammed for 2 off £3 SMS messages, loss of ID (which is sold on), and an apparent real debt which can be sold on to a debt collector. The ID applicants get scammed for 2 off SMS mesages, but also may impart an ID that can be sold and a debt against that ID that can be sold on. Some phone calls are answered as they may get your telephone number too, you may be a real loan applicant in which case they are ready to take your credit card details. You would never see the loan but would get your bank account hacked. E-mails are answered to extend the illusion that MCO was a victim of ID fraud. This bought them about 3 weeks time with AF. I would now estimate about 10,000 people involved. (There have been 20,000 views of this thread). If most of these were real/ID fraud applicants that's already £60K from the SMS scam. May be £100K to £1M from ID sales plus some peolpe actually repaying the loan they didn't have, out of fear etc. This leaves a residue of false loans that can then be sold on to debt collectors. So the letters are really the fraud (which is why AF can give you the CRN) and is also why the letters contain mistakes and dont look professional. All you can do is contact AF to get your CRN. Further letters may follow, some may be from the scam some from debt collecters who have bought false debts. Just ignore them - your real ID will be reasonably safe unless you completed the web-site loan application or entered into a detailed dialogue with MCO. Take measures to secure your identity (plenty of advice on this forum), probably best not to check credit rating with Expirian. They will want your credit card number (even though it is a free service), and have been involved in customer fraud before in the US where they settled out of court. MCO probably did do some credit checks to increase saleable value of loans, and to try to filter out real applicants from ID fraud applicants. Doubt they ever paid for the searches - they would have used credit card details already stolen and would have presented as free self checks.

Not much bank roll to finance - £5000 for letters and a fiver for some school leaver to do the web-site. (Sorry forgot £15 to Companies House). Hope this answers some questions. May be wrong but AF are going with this at this time. - Good luck!

grahamqat

Just noticed you're using a lot of exclamation marks these days Geomacl!!!! Surely no substitute for the humble hyphon - you see you can slide these in - between sentances - but the weakness of the exclamation mark is that it can only reside at the end of something profound!!! - even then you can slide a hyphon in and continue the thread; still have some time for the semi-colon though (just a shame that semi-cylon is hyphonated)!!!!! - using brackets quite a lot now as well!!!!

jahman

Got my CRN today having been phoned up by ActionFraud at long last. There wasn't much new information available. The guy just said that there were thousands of these letters and they were inundated. No real ideas as of yet as to how the fraud was intended to work. I'm must say I'm very curious about it all but I guess we'll just have to wait until there's an article in the press at some point.

Cheers,

jahman

grahamqat

Hi Jahman, if you look a few posts up you'll find my theory on the fraud (it is only a theory). One thing for certain MCO is at the centre of it. If ever there was a company set up specifically for fraud. that would be it. It has never traded (non-trading SICC code), has no capital, and the secretary/owner lives in Finland. There is also no accounting paper-trail on Riskdisk for it. The fraud investigators should find out a lot by investigating the Helploan HSBC bank account, although that could be a smokescreen as the MCO letter asked for payment by credit card. Will post anything I find out on here.

geomacl

grahamqat wrote: »

Just noticed you're using a lot of exclamation marks these days Geomacl!!!! Surely no substitute for the humble hyphon - you see you can slide these in - between sentances - but the weakness of the exclamation mark is that it can only reside at the end of something profound!!! - even then you can slide a hyphon in and continue the thread; still have some time for the semi-colon though (just a shame that semi-cylon is hyphonated)!!!!! - using brackets quite a lot now as well!!!!

Just showing off my undoubted skills in using punctuation marks!?()()===:D
I still have not received an email from AF <sulk>

grahamqat

Hi Geomacl - I think I would ring them again, it's worth getting the printed CRN for additional peace of mind. In the very unlikely event you should get a visit, it's something tangible you can give the debt collector before you slam the door in his face

geomacl

grahamqat wrote: »

Hi Geomacl - I think I would ring them again, it's worth getting the printed CRN for additional peace of mind. In the very unlikely event you should get a visit, it's something tangible you can give the debt collector before you slam the door in his face

Grahamqay: I have rung (or is it ringed or ranged) them 3 times and am still no further forward. Let the debt collector try! I am in a small (3 house) development in the garden of a (bit) bigger house and there's only one way in past a Weimeranar (sp?) - aka BIG dog!! Then they will have to get past my wife <cringe>.:mad:

Oldbloke_2

Hi guys,

I don't know, I go away sailing, and come back and there's all this exclamation mark, punctuation thing going on....

Anyway, like colinho, I'm just keeping an eye on the thread now. I think this MCO saga will just melt away; we'll probably hear no more about it, which will be disappointing considering the effort we've put in.....so I'd just like to say thanks to all of you for your posts, they've been a great read!