Alliance Private Equity LLP. Genuine ?

keithc440

I have been contacted by phone by Steve Hansen from Alliance Private Equity LLP in the United States advising that they are acting on behalf of a client in the takeover of Pro-Active Solutions INC. They say I am the shareholder of 30,000 shares of the company and want me to sign either a notice of default to say I decline their offer to buy the shares or sign to accept the offer.
I have no recollection of owning these shares and am reluctant to sign either way. I am worry it is some kind of scam. Can anyone advise please ?

keithc440

That's what I'm thinking. One signature from me and next thing I will find out is that I have agreed to a large purchase of shares in something I know nothing about that is probably worthless.

PlutoinCapricorn

Google "shareholder takeover scam" and you will get your answer. For example:

http://www.askaboutmoney.com/showthread.php?t=166252

bowlhead99

......Scam.

I'll expand on that comment.

There are a whole load of ways that boiler rooms can scam you (some described in the link above) but it always starts with a cold call. Sometimes it will even be for a company where you were once a shareholder ; others it is not. But either way they are just preying on your greed.

Imagine for a moment it was a real company that you do not own but you go ahead and sign to accept their offer because you are greedy. You write a contract to sell them 30,000 shares for $30,000 in which you will warrant that you are the owner with full title to the shares. And it will also say you agree you will not sue them...

Then there is the small matter of delivering the shares. How are you going to do that? What are the penalties for not delivering? What if you find out that the shares are actually worth $2 each but you promised to sell them at $1 - are you going to buy them in the market so you can fulfil the contract? Or sign another contract to buy them at only $1.50 from someone else so you can deliver on your side of the contract and only lose a few thousand?

How is this random cold caller going to be able to pay you without getting your bank details and personal information and signature 'of acceptance'? What 'arrangement fees' or 'transfer agents fees' will they charge you before disappearing into thin air? What dodgy 'escrow' agent will they use, who will want paying before releasing your alleged proceeds?

Why would you ever sign a document to say you decline the offer, rather than just refuse to sign one accepting an offer? Answer, you wouldn't, but they are hard-selling you a great opportunity, so they have to make it sound like if you don't take their hundreds of thousands of dollars right now they will take it off the table and you won't get the opportunity again.

Just look up this scammer's website and see if it stacks up. Well, firstly they have named themselves as an "LLP", which while common in the UK is incredibly uncommon for a US group; US registered business partnerships such as legitimate private equity firms would typically be LLC or LP. But as the layman you might not know that.

So look around the site a bit more. http://www.alliancepe.us/ Does it seem legit?

Who are their deal team? You don't think they would name some of their partners and principals with biographies on the website, like all private equity firms do? Surely with a great track record of deals, comes a great ego?

What do they actually do? Well firstly they say they have a glittering track record of closing deals since the 80s and in their current form, 115 deals since 1997 with lots of institutional clients participating in multiple funds. Which businesses did they acquire? You don't think they would name some of the high profile portfolio companies they have been involved with, like all private equity firms do ?

When you read the website, does it really tell you anything? How about the news headlines with all their glittering press releases over the years? Oh, that third of every page devoted to 'news and updates' is just a Reuters feed for general world news and has absolutely nothing to do with their company. It's just filler.

How about the centre section - "why choose us"? Well, the headline takeaway is "Alliance Private Equity is a global legal firm specialized in mergers, acquisitions, and operations... blah blah... in diverse industries." Not only is that the headline, but directly below it, it's the body text as well, duplicated as more filler.

Do all the links work, or do some just take you to 404 errors? Hmm, this isn't looking like a great site.

But they've closed over 100 acquisitions in the last couple of decades so maybe no time to update the site. No wait, a simple whois lookup shows me the web domain was only registered in March 2013.

Well perhaps the recent domain name registration was because they rebranded, which explains how these hundreds of high profile acquisitions snuck past Google and the only thing you can find about their company is their website and some guy on a free legal advice forum copypasting a contract from when he signed up with them to sell some shares in a tinpot company for hundreds of thousands and doubted its legitimacy...

Maybe they just accidentally blew their $$multimillions of success fees on incompetent web designers. Or perhaps they spent all the website budget on photography to get professional smart looking images up there, photos of their team in action, right? Not just a stock photo they bought or nicked from another site?

Oh, what a surprise, if I look up their header image http://www.alliancepe.us/images/head.jpg on a Google Image Search or using Tineye.com, I get over 540 hits on other websites for the exact same image. Hardly the classy work of leaders in their field.

The second cheesy image, on their 'About Us' page? I can get that from istockphoto.com. Its name on the istockphoto directory is
"stock-photo-7485325-closeup-of-happy-businesspeople-clapping-hands". Both Dell and Bank of Texas have used it.

Hopefully by this stage, even by overlooking half of these points, you would have resolutely decided not to ever give these guys your information or sign any contracts involving thousands of dollars, on the back of a too-good-to-be-true cold call.

ColdIron

bowlhead99 wrote: »

......Scam.

Shortest post ever from you bowlhead

jimjames

keithc440 wrote: »

That's what I'm thinking. One signature from me and next thing I will find out is that I have agreed to a large purchase of shares in something I know nothing about that is probably worthless.

It's a scam but do you own many shares in the USA that you don't know about?

bowlhead99

ColdIron wrote: »

Shortest post ever from you bowlhead

Don't worry, I've updated with some specifics so my fans know I still got it :beer:

bigadaj

bowlhead99 wrote: »

Don't worry, I've updated with some specifics so my fans know I still got it :beer:

So this is now your shortest ever post!