Anyone heard of Kitchen Arts

Mr_Crunch

ML15TH wrote: »

...he talked to some people in the fraud department and they admitted that this is low priority and really they don't even treat it as a real crime, reasons they gave for this attitude are:

1/ buyers who paid by bank transfer did so willingly, there was no actual scam involved in the payment stage.

2/ they know who the trader is, they know his address etc and they say that because he used his own name and ran the business for over a year before this happened, they doubt that if they arrested and charged him that it would ever make it to court.

3/ they said that they could not really investigate yet anyway, they have to allow 28 days for delivery and then another 28 days for a refund before they could even say if anyone has actually lost money.

4/ the police don't really consider this to be real crime anyway and resent having to get involved, they admitted that just because you get a crime reference number does not mean that a case will ever even be investigated at all.

Lastly, and this is unbelievable, they said that they will watch out for any future activities of this trader and if the same thing happens again they may be able to act. They said they thought it strange that the website was in business for a year and only went wrong in Feb, where as a typical scam website would get the Xmas sales and then use the Xmas post as an excuse. They said that luxury kitchen items do not fit the "MO" of a fraud site as it would usually be electronics or games, all this makes it not worth the effort to investigate.

This is really quite alarming. Presumably the police are setting their own priorities but I would be surprised if the CPS would agree with that approach.

• Although people willingly paid by bank transfer, it is still fraud if they paid and the intent by the supplier was not to deliver the goods and retain the monies, which certainly seems to have occurred in many cases. It's no different to paying in advance by cash and then the supplier walking away.
• if they really know who is behind it with an address then they have a suspect so they should at least interview him
• it seems rather blinkered only to prioritise scams which involve electronics or games. Domestic appliances are similar in value and ideal products for exploiting the more vulnerable who may not be interested in electronics or games

It may be that time needs to expire before it is worth their taking action, in which case re-reporting to Action Fraud after 56 days might prompt some action ('Action' Fraud seems a bit of a misnomer!). But perhaps those directly affected might wish to contact the CPS directly to spur this on, local address here :http://www.cps.gov.uk/index.html. The only other thing I can think of is to raise it with local MPs.
Good luck.

PS - afterthought:
Actionfraud is 'owned' by the National Fraud Authority which is part of the Home Office so if anyone thinks that they are not getting a proper response to their fraud reports then there is a route to complain here: http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/agencies-public-bodies/nfa/contact-us/
(further down the page). Maybe one for Wham...

Incidentally, Action Fraud seems to be basically a call centre. They pass on reports to the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (NFIB) which is part of the City of London Police. So individual reports like on here are competing with financial fraud in the City. Nice quotes here http://www.cityoflondon.police.uk/CityPolice/Departments/ECD/Fraud/:

"At what point in a fraudulent act is it considered ‘complete’?

If a fraudster causes funds to be moved out of the control of the victim, the fraud is complete, though the funds may have never been in the possession of the fraudster, and the victim secures their recovery immediately.

Should I report an attempt to commit fraud, even if it was unsuccessful?

The question is whether or not a fraud has been committed does not, therefore, depend upon whether a loss of funds has been incurred. An unsuccessful fraud may still constitute a complete offence, and police can take action. Whoever believes that reporting attempts is a waste of time must remember that the fraudster will learn by experience and will be successful next time."

cornishpasty99

Yup - Im as foolish as the rest of us and have been duped.....Does anyone have an email or telephone no. for kitchenarts - the contacts on my confirmation email no longer exist - as well as the website, and I guess that this is the only way I will have any chance of getting my cash back?

I made the report to the fraud website, and also reported to HSBC, who have said that my complaint has been passed to another department. This dept. will NOT contact me to confirm any actions taken against this account because of data protection, but she did suggest the account would be shut down if fraud was proven but taht I would not be able to retrive my money.

I suggested that the bank was implicict in the fraud becasue this forum suggested that they had already been made aware of this scam but continued to let this account operate.

Therefore It woudl be interesting to know what account number people have been paying to to see if HSBC have not been actioning these complaints

HSBC Bank: Account 91778552, Sort Code 40-02-03

If there is a history of payment being made to this account then surely HSBC arent acting properly?

Any help to retrive my £139.99 appreciated, or atleast help me to put some pressure on HSBC to stop this from happening again via watchdog/trading standards for instance?

Conned_by_KA

cornishpasty99 wrote: »

Any help to retrive my £139.99 appreciated, or atleast help me to put some pressure on HSBC to stop this from happening again via watchdog/trading standards for instance?

This is right up Ann Robinsons street. Hundreds of people the victim of on-line fraud. Has anyone tried contacting watchdog about this, i would think they would be interetsed in taking this up.

ML15TH

Mr_Crunch wrote: »

This is really quite alarming. Presumably the police are setting their own priorities but I would be surprised if the CPS would agree with that approach.

• Although people willingly paid by bank transfer, it is still fraud if they paid and the intent by the supplier was not to deliver the goods and retain the monies, which certainly seems to have occurred in many cases. It's no different to paying in advance by cash and then the supplier walking away.
• if they really know who is behind it with an address then they have a suspect so they should at least interview him
• it seems rather blinkered only to prioritise scams which involve electronics or games. Domestic appliances are similar in value and ideal products for exploiting the more vulnerable who may not be interested in electronics or games

It may be that time needs to expire before it is worth their taking action, in which case re-reporting to Action Fraud after 56 days might prompt some action ('Action' Fraud seems a bit of a misnomer!). But perhaps those directly affected might wish to contact the CPS directly to spur this on, local address here . The only other thing I can think of is to raise it with local MPs.
Good luck.

PS - afterthought:
Actionfraud is 'owned' by the National Fraud Authority which is part of the Home Office so if anyone thinks that they are not getting a proper response to their fraud reports then there is a route to complain here:
(further down the page). Maybe one for Wham...

Incidentally, Action Fraud seems to be basically a call centre. They pass on reports to the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (NFIB) which is part of the City of London Police. So individual reports like on here are competing with financial fraud in the City. Nice quotes here.

"At what point in a fraudulent act is it considered ‘complete’?

If a fraudster causes funds to be moved out of the control of the victim, the fraud is complete, though the funds may have never been in the possession of the fraudster, and the victim secures their recovery immediately.

Should I report an attempt to commit fraud, even if it was unsuccessful?

The question is whether or not a fraud has been committed does not, therefore, depend upon whether a loss of funds has been incurred. An unsuccessful fraud may still constitute a complete offence, and police can take action. Whoever believes that reporting attempts is a waste of time must remember that the fraudster will learn by experience and will be successful next time."

Fraud is a description of a type of offence, there is no charge of fraud. Typically a fraud is charged as a deception, however it's impossible in law to charge someone with attempted deception.

Most attempts are charged under the Criminal Attempts Act, however that does not allow for attempted fraud and penalties are laughably low.

The theft act is useful, however in order to charge with theft there needs to be a clear intent to never repay, because the definition of theft is to take with the intention of permanently depriving, this is upset by the clear fact that a lot of people were actually refunded and hence it's unlikely that would be a successful charge. The defendant can simply claim that they went bust and were unable to repay, that's not considered to be unlawful by the police.

I think we need to assume that the person or people concerned in this are possibly far from stupid. If the business opened one day, took everyone's money and then disappeared it may be cut and dry, but this business ran for at least a whole year before anyone appears to have been stung. That suggests every an incredibly elaborate scam, or the exact opposite.. a business that failed. If its a failed business then the police absolutely will not act, and if its an elaborate scam planned for over a year then it's likely that any persons are fictitious and any id used would have been fake or worse, stolen.

There is ZERO chance of getting a refund from the bank, and it's absurd to think they would have any duty to do.

Abitai

Conned_by_KA wrote: »

This is right up Ann Robinsons street. Hundreds of people the victim of on-line fraud. Has anyone tried contacting watchdog about this, i would think they would be interetsed in taking this up.

What about BBC/Fake Britain or the press?

Mr_Crunch

Thanks ML15TH. The style sounds more like ex-CID ML15TH rather than the earlier Mrs ML15TH!:) Apologies if I'm mistaken.

ML15TH wrote: »

Fraud is a description of a type of offence, there is no charge of fraud.

I don't want to appear a barrack-room lawyer because I'm not, but I thought that the 2006 Fraud Act wrapped up a lot of older Acts and simplified matters, although charges could still be brought under other offences as well. http://www.cps.gov.uk/legal/d_to_g/fraud_act

ML15TH wrote: »

There is ZERO chance of getting a refund from the bank, and it's absurd to think they would have any duty to do.

Absolutely agree, the transfers were willing, although I didn't actually suggest that refunds should be expected from the bank at all.


Presumably the people behind the website could still be charged with Fraud by False Representation (it seems to be a charge which is widely used today) under the Fraud Act, if product or refunds have not appeared after 56 days, if there is sufficient evidence. If it was a genuine website which went bust then customers are then just creditors unless the website had continued to trade and encourage bank transfers while insolvent, but that would be a hard one to prove.

Not trying to be 'clever', but the Fraud Act 2006 does seem quite specific.

But yes, it does all seem to be a lost cause if they have just shut down and done a runner.

kerfya59

Surely they also fall foul of distance selling regulation if goods not received in 'reasonable' time??

mo786uk

The Fraud Act 2006 is very simple - basically you just need to make a representation that you know is false in order to try and make a financial gain or cause loss. Money doesn't even need to leave your hands (but clearly in those cases they may be lower priority to follow up).

the difficulty is proving that the person knew what they were doing was dishonest.

There are n offences under the Distance Selling reg for failing to send the goods.

ML15TH

Mr_Crunch is correct, my information is a bit out of date!

The 2006 Fraud Act does help to clean up definitions of fraud.

However, fraud in this case is a state of mind at the time the transaction takes place. If the seller had no intention of fulfilling the order then it's fraud.

It seems that Kitchen Arts was not a company, so trading whilst insolvent is not the same as if it were a company.

Kerfya59, the Distance Selling Regulations are not criminal law and are fairly meaningless to the police.

If Kitchen Arts has gone bust then we are creditors like Mr_Crunch says, though if they encouraged payments to be made in the knowledge that they were not going to be fulfilled then that's criminal.

The bottom line here is that we were duped and the police are unlikely to put any effort at all into helping us. In my case the product was cheap, but not so cheap that it should have rung alarm bells. I have read posters who say the prices were so cheap that it should have been an obvious scam, but I do not recall that to be the case.

We cannot expect any feedback from the police or the bank on this. A crime reference number does not mean that a case is considered a crime, just that it's been reported as one.

I don't know if its been mentioned before, but the bank details we were given did not include an account name. We do not even know who we paid the money to, and the bank are not allowed ( by law ) to tell us!

Kellygem

Some very interesting discussion on this issue!!!

Can I just mention that I paid in person at a HSBC Branch.
When the teller asked me for the account name I showed her the email from Kitchen Arts with the Acct Number and Sort Code.

I know she probably broke the rules but the teller then asked me if the name "T Valentine" rang a bell.
She even wrote it on my deposit slip in the section "Customer's Name" which I still have as evidence of my deposit.

I can't say which branch I went to, but the account details for anyone interested are:

Account Name: T Valentine
Account Number: 91778552
Sort Code: 40-02-03

If anyone else has paid into this account then it was opened with the ID T Valentine.

I know there have been mention of posts earlier this thread of emails from Thomas Valentine who claims to be the owner.

I'm not sure if this helps anyone, just thought I'd put it out there.