company offering to chase bad share investments, advice please

happyhero

Hi, I'm helping my stepfather with his investments, basically tidying up and simplifying everything, he is 87 and has the beginnings of Parkinson's disease. He is quite with it some of the time but not always and has said he feels he cannot cope with the investment decisions and wants me to attend to them, basically giving me full power to do what ever I see fit to do.

In the past he was quite knowledgeable about investing and no one dared question his decisions not being as knowledgeable as him, however I have been a keen investor in shares as well and so although not at his level, it has fallen on me - we often interacted in making investment decisions in the past.

Anyway enough background now to the point, in the past my Stepfather was always a person to play it very safe and conservative but oddly over the last 5 to 10 years he seems to have invested in much more risky ventures than he would have done before.

I have tried contacting these companies and they are next to hopeless to get a response out of. I tried to get the share certificates taken over into the electronic system with Hargreaves Lansdown so that they could be sold in there but they have informed me that nearly all of them are "not listed on the London Stock Exchange" so they cannot help and they sent the certificates back to me. Its proving difficult to pin down the size of each investment on each company but from the little information I can put together (my stepfather cannot remember) it looks like most investments were about £2000 to £3000. By using various look-ups online it would appear these companies have not done well, some going bust completely. These don't seem to be regular companies with shares dealt on the market like BT or Tesco at all.

It seems to me like anything you get involved in, once people get to know, everyone in that field starts bombarding you with ads hoping that you will buy from them ( like asking about double glazing from one company and then receiving loads of offers from others). In his case what I noticed was that he received calls regularly in the last 10 years trying to convince him to invest in their new venture, he would talk to them for ages my mother says.I felt he was pulled into too many "doomed to failure" investments because of this. These are all different companies and I can only make a rough guess that the total initial investment into the combined companies would have been about £15,000 to £20,000.

Now a company has sent him a letter titled "Lost Money in risky shares", the company is called Hallbrook Partners. They make several promises and I do realise the FSCS can help with these things for free but it is a mess with several companies, and several small investments, some which have folded so I'm not sure it would work very well with FSCS, whereas a dedicated company may be able to handle it better taking it over completely. I realise Hallbrook will charge but the money is lost if we do nothing but is Hallbrook just another dodgy company like the PIP reclaimer companies or is it reputable. I have checked the net with little in the way of a decision on that.

To give you an idea of the companies he invested in, in case you want to look them up, here they are, IPoint, LX Mobile, Maple Green Energy Ltd, Vaccine Research International Plc (labeled VRI on the paperwork)(I managed to contact this company and they said they were virtually broke so could not buy the shares back but they would see if anyone was interested in buying the shares off us, this response seems laughable to me, needless to say nothing happened), PhiGold, Peer TV plc (These were actually accepted by Hargreaves Lansdown to my amazement, so I could trade them but are worth so little now. They ended up actually listed on the London Stock Exchange). There may be more too as I keep ploughing through paperwork that has prematurely been put into the attic.


I am no expert but these companies appear to me like this if I were to start one, I would come up with a bright idea to invent something, cover the legalities somehow convincing people I'm serious knowing full well it will all fail, then I would get a list of keen investors and target them getting them to invest thousands and then send them paperwork for a year or so to make them think things were happening, before disappearing saying the company unfortunately failed, that’s if anyone could actually get hold of me of course. The amazing thing is one of the companies I contacted that did not respond and we had not heard from in a year suddenly started sending literature for new investments with them, unbelievable... …..so they reacted to my input!

Hard to explain clearly but it’s a bit like being harassed by a door to door sales man with his foot in the door until you buy something, the problem is now how to handle it with only a relatively small amount in each company, its not like I can now make one big case out of it and use a solicitor, we may only be talking about £2000 with each company to challenge, and as I already said they are difficult to get a response out of, so who do you fight and for what, altogether you may have been able to call it amiss-selling case and go through a court but individually?


Hargreaves Lansdown advised contacting the registrars which I did but they were not able to do anything more than confirm a holding.


So is Hallbrook worth a shot or not, I would hate to just make things worse by getting involved with another company just out for itself but I fear that’s what they are despite no evidence

Any info/advice appreciated.

jimjames

You can't use FSCS to get any money back as they do not cover shares.

This company are almost certainly associated with the ones that have scammed your father and will want money up front to chase it. However there is no money there in the companies to get back so anything you pay will be throwing good money away. Unlike PPI claims companies where there is some money that can be claimed back and they take a cut, in this case there is no money and they'll just take your fee up front with no return for you. Bet their contract says there is no guarantee of getting anything back, I'd word it differently - you are guaranteed not to get money from them.

In a nutshell, don't touch them! Sadly you'll have to accept that the money your father invested is almost certainly lost.

colsten

Haven't read your entire post as I can't find my magnifying glass but it could be that your father is on some sort of a sucker list. Lots of googling will probably yield some more helpful information, and perhaps it is worth to briefly speak with the CAB.

ChopperST

Vaccine Research International list a Dr Gordon Skinner as their CEO.

Unfortunately he died November last year. Their website is a basic as can be. Have you tried contacting them?

Google street view just shows a residential address and nothing that looks like a vaccine research facility.

I've found accounts from 2012.

http://www.vri.org.uk/VRIAnnualReport2012.pdf

jimjames

ChopperST wrote: »

I've found accounts from 2012.

http://www.vri.org.uk/VRIAnnualReport2012.pdf

Interesting reading.

Based on that I certainly wouldn't spend any money trying to recover anything from the company.

"Fundraising has not been successful. The immediate financial future of the company is difficult"

Shareholders funds, £20k in 2012 so unlikely to be anything now.

One of the risks of buying shares is that the company can go bust and you lose everything. Buy shares in non traded companies and that risk multiplies massively as there is no easy way to sell the shares either. Unfortunately there is no-one to take action against as you are expected to do due diligence before buying.

ChopperST

Happyhero please turn your original post into normal unoffensive text with a sensible pt size, its even harder to read now than your first post!

happyhero

Thanks guys for all the input, and sorry about the size of print, I copied and pasted it and there were a couple of problems with the pc I started it on but I corrected that and it should be bigger now.

I feared as much as you can probably tell from my initial post but it is always worth a shot on here to see what comes up.

I basically tried phoning and emailing them all with very similar futile results, I cannot remember exactly who said what although I have it documented on my stepfathers PC but if I got through there was always some stupid excuse that they fobbed me off with, i.e. "this is the reception desk you need to speak to one of the directors, try this number", etc etc., or "the guy you need is away at the moment, blah blah blah".

What amazes me is that these companies can get away with it, I don't know if any of them start of genuine or not but it seems a very easy way to raise money without any risk of law breaking unless I'm missing something.

And like I said by contacting one company, after not having any paperwork from them in over a year, I got no response from them but I stimulated something as my Stepfather suddenly started getting letters from them asking for more money for phase 2, truly unbelievable..... .....and i bet they got it from some people.

These are such unknown companies, its so weird that he invested in them, before he stuck to well known companies that we all know. There didn't seem to be any signs of anything wrong with him then, its only happened in the last year or 2 and he isn't that bad really, I guess they must have been persistent and persuasive. And if you knew him you would think he was as far away from being suckered as you can get when he was well. At least he's been sensible and leaves it all alone now.

happyhero

ChopperST wrote: »

Happyhero please turn your original post into normal unoffensive text with a sensible pt size, its even harder to read now than your first post!

Sorry, any better, what is normal I cant detect the normal post font and size to copy it, it just says FONT and Size if I try.?

jimjames

happyhero wrote: »

What amazes me is that these companies can get away with it, I don't know if any of them start of genuine or not but it seems a very easy way to raise money without any risk of law breaking unless I'm missing something.

Problem with unlisted companies is that there is no market in their shares so they are only worth what someone will sell for and what someone is prepared to pay but there is nothing illegal in selling those shares.

If I start up a company I can sell the shares at any price, the buyer needs to determine if that is a good investment or not. At least if you buy on a recognised stock market you know the market price at the time you buy. It may go up or down but the price was determined by the market not the seller.

These are unregulated investments and if you bought via an IFA you may have protection but if you buy direct then you are taking that risk. The sellers are very persuasive and once they know you've fallen for their sales patter they'll keep coming back as you've found.

dunstonh

Unfortunately, there is are companies that are now making money out of reclaiming "whatever" who were the ones that were scamming/misselling in the first place. They can get a second bite of the cherry.

The situation on this is actually quite straightforward. if a regulated adviser gave the advice to buy those investments then the complaint goes to the adviser and you get consumer protection (even if the investments are unregulated as its the advice that you are protected under). If no adviser was used then there is no-one to complain to as no-one gave the advice.

If a regulated investment company has promoted non-mainstream investments then there is scope to complain there as well.

What amazes me is that these companies can get away with it, I don't know if any of them start of genuine or not but it seems a very easy way to raise money without any risk of law breaking unless I'm missing something.

That is why you should always use regulated companies and not cold calling unregulated companies using unregulated investments. Most cold calls I get (which ignore TPS) are scams. Free pension reviews, telling me about eco, forestry or other unregulated investments, telling me of some government scheme that owes me money (which doesnt exist and is made up). People should never act on cold calls.

stator

It is a shame that companies like this are allowed to get away with it for so long. I suspect the authorities start an investigation after they receive lots of complaints but by the time they get close to taking any action the company has been closed down and the scam artists have moved onto selling shares in another company.
You could review the original literature to see if there is anything criminal, but it would probably be impossible to trace the offenders (if something criminal was done).