Car Hire - too good to be true?

Alan_Bowen

It seems the bank accounts are empty, so taking legal action may be pointless, has anyone contacted West Sussex Trading Standards as they have an active fraud team who may make a vist to Crawley? The best hope is criminal proceedings which can possibly include orders to compensate losses in return for lower prison sentences, but my fear is the money and the people are long gone, and despite being a previous Guardian reader for 20 years and a current Independent reader, both of whom ran a series of advertisements, I think expecting any payment from them is clinging to straws. Unless the police, the Insolvency Service or Trading Standards can find and arrest those behind the scheme, the prospects are not good. It would be interesting to discover what the banks thought of accounts which suddenly had thousands if not millions of pounds pouring into them and then being immediately withdrawn, usually that acts to trigger a warning but if has been said above, the account is empty it may be even the bank didn't notice because the scheme operated for such a short period of time.

dacouch

Alan_Bowen wrote: »

It seems the bank accounts are empty, so taking legal action may be pointless, has anyone contacted West Sussex Trading Standards as they have an active fraud team who may make a vist to Crawley? The best hope is criminal proceedings which can possibly include orders to compensate losses in return for lower prison sentences, but my fear is the money and the people are long gone, and despite being a previous Guardian reader for 20 years and a current Independent reader, both of whom ran a series of advertisements, I think expecting any payment from them is clinging to straws. Unless the police, the Insolvency Service or Trading Standards can find and arrest those behind the scheme, the prospects are not good. It would be interesting to discover what the banks thought of accounts which suddenly had thousands if not millions of pounds pouring into them and then being immediately withdrawn, usually that acts to trigger a warning but if has been said above, the account is empty it may be even the bank didn't notice because the scheme operated for such a short period of time.

I'm not a banking expert but it would look to me to be a perfect storm, they have built the respectability of the business up to capitalise on the
Christmas trade in hire cars. The winding down of bank staff and probably amount of staff could have helped in not noticing the large amounts of money going in. They also had the benefit of the extended Christmas holiday giving them time to transfer money, possibly leave the country and also meaning they could arrange "delivery" of the cars on the couple of days before xmas. This then gave them the opportunity to fob customers off until the extended Xmas break.

If you have not already done so it could be worth starting a facebook group to help find other victims who may have information beneficial to the investigation.

gossi

To be clear, everybody advertising this should have done basic checks (getting a VAT number off them, doing a credit check) for their own sake, as now they won't be paid either. I put this to The Guardian, and was told the guess was due to the timing of the adverts the checks weren't carried out as usual.

With regards to the bank accounts being empty - not sure I believe that. For example, the Halifax wouldn't know if a HSBC account had any money in it.

The two banks involved here (HSBC, Natwest) are actually the best way for the police to identify who did this. To open those accounts, they will have needed a passport which should have been photocopied.

Freesoho

gossi wrote: »

To be clear, everybody advertising this should have done basic checks (getting a VAT number off them, doing a credit check) for their own sake, as now they won't be paid either. I put this to The Guardian, and was told the guess was due to the timing of the adverts the checks weren't carried out as usual.

With regards to the bank accounts being empty - not sure I believe that. For example, the Halifax wouldn't know if a HSBC account had any money in it.

The two banks involved here (HSBC, Natwest) are actually the best way for the police to identify who did this. To open those accounts, they will have needed a passport which should have been photocopied.

This is absolutely right. I don't feel much inclination to let people off the hook here, the publications or the banks..call it self interest if you like!

I have clearly explained to the Natwest Fraud Team that they may hold the only useful piece of identification and the longer they wait, the less chance there will be of catching up with the people that did this.
I urged them to contact the police (DC Russell) so that the police can make a formal request for account information. (As I have asked the Islington police to do)
Unfortunately, I have no idea if and when Natwest will do this. They will only log my complaint, and say they will investigate it. They will not offer me any further information, advice or assistance.
I may be wrong, but when I speak to them, I get the distinct impression that they don't believe what I'm saying about Rentmac/Diamonds by Design.
Honestly, as others have intimated, I think the moment to get these guys is long gone - we were too slow to recognise it as a scam and the Police and Banks moved far too slowly once we did.
Hopefully the police will eventually catch up with them one day.

abhijayjain

Guys - first all thanks to people who started and contributed to this thread. Without this it would have probably taken me a few more days to realise I had been scammed. I have a similar story to a number of other people (great offer and very polite customer services team to entice; excuses about the credit card company to force a bank transfer and then no car and no contact). Not v happy about losing £650 over this but I guess the money and the people are now gone...

I am a HSBC customer too so have lodged a complaint with them. I am also waiting to get a call back from the local police station (Tower Hamlets) so that I can lodge a crime report there. Have also notified Fraud Action. Let's see what happens, although am not holding my breath....

I will do my bit to highlight to the authorities the widespread and organised nature of the crime. Will post the crime reference numbers and any update from HSBC here when I get them.

Cort

VMT Sussex 1 for Bank addresses,

I have been advised by the Guardian to contact DC Russell CID at the Main CID Office in the Borough of Islington on 0207-421-0296. Unfortunately she's off shift until Monday 11 January 2011. Source: Met Police Central Control Room on 0300-123-1212.

Mark Finney of the Guardian (mark.finney@guardian.co.uk) rang me on 6 January 2011 and apologised profusely. He said that they had done a full Dunn & Bradstreet check on RENTMAC because the Guardian had been asked to give them an advertising credit for the newspaper advert. The Guardian gave them advertising space and time to the value of circa £100,000.The company had been assessed as highly reputable and creditworthy being linked to another reputable car hire/lease firm. FT and Guardian have very red faces, but if you believe them, they did actually do their checks. Can't comment on depth or rigour of check, but it's always is easy to be wise after the event.

I have asked that the Guardian consult their lawyers and let us all know how best to pursue them in the Courts. For some, this procedure is easy small claims court stuff, so all Guardian's lawyers need to tell us is an address to which we can issue our writs/statement of claim. What we need now is for DC Russell to ensure that DBD are paid a visit to check they're physically still there: just in case they've gone to the Caribbean.

I'm also writing to HSBC for help with my £3k loss in case the money has been frozen and we haven't been told. Banks keep things pretty close to their chests in these cases and if they have flagged up the account as fraudulent there might still be funds squirrelled away. Thanks again to all who have contributed, this forum has helped me more than any effectively more than any other source. Best of luck in getting your money back, whichever way you can.

gossi

Cort, that's great information. My questions from that are (and this is purely to build a better picture as to HOW they did this, I'm not sure The Guardian would want to give out this information but they should in my opinion):

- Could we get a copy of the Dunn & Bradstreet report? This is a new company, they've filed no accounts, the address they've used is a virtual office and I believe the director of "RentMeAnyCar.Com Ltd" is a made up name (with no address set) so whoever credit and company checked this failed. The report could be interesting as they give more information and provide the risk assessment reasonings.

- Who asked The Guardian to give them an advertising credit? Was this placed via an advertising agency? The people behind this scam clearly gamed the advertising system somehow, I'm wondering if they used a professional advertising agency to do it.

I did look at the address in Brighton, it's had 5 people living in it over the last ten years according to the Electoral Role so it's probably a rented property (or used to be).

dacouch

gossi wrote: »

- Could we get a copy of the Dunn & Bradstreet report? This is a new company, they've filed no accounts, the address they've used is a virtual office and I believe the director of "RentMeAnyCar.Com Ltd" is a made up name (with no address set) so whoever credit and company checked this failed. The report could be interesting as they give more information and provide the risk assessment reasonings.

Many companies use D&B to give them information on the credit worthyness of a company. If you ask around friends who own a company or who are in accounts departments. You will find one who has access to it so they may be able to print off a current report. Obviously D&B may have updated it since the problems.

gossi

Good point. I didn't even think of that. My work use them. I'll investigate.

hammy8677

We have also just been done by Rentmac , I spoke to several people on setting up car rental.
Luckily they let us down earlier enough as could have been worse.
we'd paid £204 which we managed to get refunded. They agreed to pay towards next car rental costs and refund deposit of £500.
Some of this was done on phone and other bits on e-mail.
I will have to check notes I made at time but do remember speaking to Lee Stevens, Andrew Ryan, Phil Thompson (area manager?) and a lady called me about agreed refund refused to give her name ????.
On returning from Holiday no refund of deposit as had been promised and no cheque to cover replacement car hire that they agreed to cover.
I thought this was strange when I was unable to get contact numbers for supervisers or company linked e-mail addresses as they claim it's so they can all deal with it rather than just one person.

I also queried how long they had been set up and Andrew told me he'd worked for them for 10 years, It was a proper office etc etc

I may not have lost as much as some but please let me know best ways to report, and who to as this may increase chances of a conviction for these fraudsters