Is my dad being led into a SCAM?

michael7941

Hi All,

Signed up to get a bit of advice to help out my Dad,

My dad has some how 'Found' (i think she found him by cold call) a pension adviser who is apparently helping him get a better return on his pension. He said she called him after he had been looking online about pensions and then came around to his house to speak to him about it.

Now i don't have the exact details until i speak to him later but this is what i know up to now..

So far she has 'Helped' him move the money from where it was previously (will confirm where asap) into a SIPP with Avalon. She is now looking at helping him invest it into some other investment (again i don't know what this is yet until i speak with him).

What has me concerned is:
- I cannot find any info the company who she originally worked for when she contacted him. It was "pension review centre"
- The website for the above company no longer exists
- She has told him that she no longer works for them anymore, but the email she has used to contact him since day 1 has never changed, it has always been ***@AGSGROUP.CO
again i can find no info on "AGS group"

The reason i decided to look into this was he asked my opinion on a separate investment she offered him, which was some "hush-hush" scratch card business, almost certainly a Ponzi scheme of sorts.

What sort of adviser offers a customer an investment into SCRATCHCARDS!?

I will update more details of the pension situation asap, but for now any advice would be great,

Thanks!

redux

I'm rather uneasy about this.

pension review centre sounds like one of those deliberately generic names that will be impossible to look up on search engines, much loved by phone spammers

dunstonh

My dad has some how 'Found' (i think she found him by cold call) a pension adviser who is apparently helping him get a better return on his pension. He said she called him after he had been looking online about pensions and then came around to his house to speak to him about it.

Cold calls are nearly always scams as genuine companies just dont cold call.

- I cannot find any info the company who she originally worked for when she contacted him. It was "pension review centre"

They are not regulated to give advice. They are marketing company that sell details on. They claim to refer them to IFAs. They may well do that. However, the dodgy cold callers out there tend to say the same but pass on to unregulated people. However, it is also a name that could be used by very many firms as it is fairly generic and it would be hard to locate the real one unless you have real contact details.

The reason i decided to look into this was he asked my opinion on a separate investment she offered him, which was some "hush-hush" scratch card business, almost certainly a Ponzi scheme of sorts.

The vast majority of IFAs will use regulated investments from regulated providers. All the scams and dodgy stuff comes on unregulated investments with no consumer protection. This sounds dodgy.

I will update more details of the pension situation asap,

Please do. So far, you are right to be on guard as all the usual alarm bells on scams appear to ringing.

atush

I think this is a scam.

You must run, not walk. Get your father to call the new IFA, and stop all investments being moved. Be there with him to speak tot he people if you can. keep it in cash in the pension for now, so it can moved elsewhere to somewhere safe.

I am very worried for your father and his money.

DigForVictory

Sure sounds like it.

If you have POA, drop in on dad, and have a clear chat.
If you haven't, *run* over to dad and have a clear chat.

michael7941

*UPDATE*

Hi guys,

Thanks for the replies so far, here is abit more info,

The company before Avalon was Phoenix Life, who he was unhappy with due to minimal gains, hence him looking to relocate his pension.

The new investment proposed by her, he's not sure what product it is thats being invested into until he see's her on tuesday but what he remembers her saying is the following..
- guaranteed 3% per month return
- Guaranteed not lose initial investment
- She says the company is regulated.

Im glad you all agree that im right to be alarmed, is the money safe as it is in Avalon? As long as he doesnt allow anymore changes?

Another thing worth noting, in the past when dealing with her, when my dad was saying he wasnt happy with the returns of investments offered previous she mentioned to him about the chance of using an unregulated investment!!

She also mentioned that if he went ahead with an investment, a financial adviser would contact him to talk about it. Does this mean she ISNT a financial adviser?

She sounds worse the more i hear..

bigadaj

Quick google of Avalon pensions doesn't look good, brings up pensions regulator with the word scam prominent.

atush

- guaranteed 3% per month return
- Guaranteed not lose initial investment
- She says the company is regulated.

SCAM!!!!

No guarantees anywhere in t he real world with 36% per year (ie 3% a month). If something sounds to good to be true, it isn't true.

No one would write the guarantee (no one who could pay) and if is isn't regulated, no group or body would make them pay if they reneged (which they will do as there is no guarantee of 36% pa out there).

Why would they need his money? If they had a way to make 36% a year, they would use their own money and even borrow money to do it themselves?

If there is an actual IFA in this chain (between her and the investment) you need to contact them and tell them to STOP any movement on the money going forwards.

And then file a complaint, as IFAs have rules as to what happens when you file a complaint so the sooner you start with the only person in this chain who can stop things (and has insurance and a regulator to pay if they dont) the better.

dunstonh

- guaranteed 3% per month return
- Guaranteed not lose initial investment
- She says the company is regulated.

There is no such thing. Has to be a scam.

She also mentioned that if he went ahead with an investment, a financial adviser would contact him to talk about it. Does this mean she ISNT a financial adviser?

Most of the pension scams have an unregulated individual do the sell on the investments. They then use an adviser only for the setting up of the SIPP with you instructed to tell the adviser that it is for self selected investments and that investment advice is not required. In worse case scenarios, the adviser can be in with the scam although in most cases they are not. (we were given compliance guidance to not deal with people in those cases given the high fraud rate)

atush

They then use an adviser only for the setting up of the SIPP with you instructed to tell the adviser that it is for self selected investments and that investment advice is not required. In worse case scenarios, the adviser can be in with the scam although in most cases they are not.

Exactly.

And why I said to get in touch with the actual IFA who is moving the money. And tell them to STOP which they will do if they are not part of the scam, and if you have done (and do get a recording or a copy of an email follow up to a call) that you have done so. This will help you with your complaint down the road if they are part of it.

And if they fold/go bust then you will be able to claim with the regulator.

Good luck, sorry you asked this near the WE. i will worry for your father til next week now

agarnett

This does look like a very worrying scam in progress and I second all that has been said about acting very very quickly.

It led me to Google Avalon and that quickly led me to a determination notice from The Pensions Regulator about two individuals involved with Avalon named Fellowes and Becker.

But I skimmed through other determinations and stumbled upon one relating to Sheffield Forgemasters Pensions Scheme.

I concluded that there are many types of scam that are not so easy to identify as the one which is the subject of this thread.

We already learned that the reason this particular pension was unhappily moved in the first place was because of how poorly it appeared to be performing at Phoenix Life. We must ask whether that apparently poor performance was itself a kind of scam. Were Phoenix sorry to let the Transfer Value go? Or did it suit their agenda?

With Sheffield Forgemasters (the company which Nick Clegg refused government bail out money) we find that deferred members of the pension scheme are now officially being denied by a determination by the Pensions Regulator the opportunity to transfer out. What kind of scam is that ? No scam but just rough luck ? Who did manage to transfer out, and when I wonder ? How much of the bail out application was necessary because of the pension scheme deficit I wonder? We didn't hear much about that at the time did we?

The posh boys don't understand what they are playing with. They create the opportunities for the upset described in threads like this, plus a whole lot more that we often don't hear about.