Forensic Review Limited - Pension Transfer

Wyldekitty

This is a long shot!

Back in 2011, my husband was contacted by Forensic Review offering £3k to transfer his frozen pension with a guaranteed 5% annual return. Sounded too good to be true so I hit the net. Couldn't find anything on the company so saw that as a good sign - problems usually hit the net before the news!
We signed all the papers and returned them in December 2011.
In January 2012 we received notification that our forms had been received and were being processed. By March 2012, the funds were being transferred and by April, we were contacted by an Irish company stating that they were now the trustees of the fund and all accounts had been frozen. This was due to unusual lending activity against the pension funds.
We contacted Money Matters who were overseeing the transfer and they advised that the money was in the account and they could see no reason why Forensic Review should release the £3k. Forensic Review stated that they hadn't received any notification of transfer and so couldn't release the £3k but said they would investigate.
Needless to say, we haven't had the £3k and the pension account is still frozen. We have been advised by the trustees that they have received permission from the courts to use the fund to fight the legal case to release the pensions.
We believe we've lost everything!
We understand that we have no redress either as the company operated outside the FSA.
Totally gutted :mad:
Is there anything we can do?

molerat

Sit and wait for a bill from the tax man for unauthorised pension payments even though you have never received anything ...... this looks like it is only going to get worse from here on.

jamesd

Here's what the Financial Services Authority has to say about the firm: don't deal with them, they are not authorised to carry out business int eh UK and appear to be cold calling from Spain.

I suggest that you contact the Pensions Advisory Service.

The Irish company may be acting to try to protect the money that has been transferred to it. If it happens to be a legitimate company. Which it might not be. Part of the way money is being taken from you may be by the loans, which a scammer might never repay.

An easy way to protect yourself from many scams is never to do business with any cold callers.

Good luck with recovering some of the money.

mjdh1957

It seems a bit naive to me to assume that finding nothing 'bad' about a company on the Internet means that they are 'good'.

It sounds like you have paid the price for that naivety and have been royally ripped off.

I hope you get some recompense, but I also hope others reading this can learn from your mistake. If something seems too good to be true, it almost certainly is a scam....