Have you been the victim of a pension scam?

lesleystv

From April 2015 you have more choices about how you can access your pension pot than in the past. But fraudsters are taking advantage of these new rules by trying to persuade people to cash in their pension - either the whole lot or a large sum - and hand the money to them to invest.


There are different types of pension scam but they can all lead to you losing a lifetime’s worth of savings in a moment.


Have you fallen - or almost fallen - victim to a pension scam? Please get in touch for a new television series that is aimed at uncovering the types of scams that are being used by the fraudsters.


Please call Lesley in confidence on 0141 300 3811 or email me at [EMAIL="Lesley.shields@stv.tv"]Lesley.shields@stv.tv[/EMAIL]
Thank you.

jamesd

lesleystv, your account is not currently on the list of journalists allowed to post here so I've asked MSE to take a look and sort it out.

Former_MSE_Zorica

Hi jamesd,

Thanks for flagging. I can confirm that lesleystv is an MSE approved journalist. The list is currently being edited.

I hope this helps

atush

There are thousands of posts on here from people caught in scams and others who just barely avoided one.

So I suggest the OP does a little back reading?

lesleystv

hi there
I have already cleared everything with MSE - please advise.


thanks
lesley

mgdavid

lesleystv wrote: »

hi there
I have already cleared everything with MSE - please advise.


thanks
lesley

Good - see post #4

lesleystv

Hi there


I am reading previous posts. What can often be challenging however (understandably) is finding someone who is happy to appear on television. Asking people to come forward who are already happy in principle with that idea of dealing with media is half the battle!


thank you
lesley

Conrad

I run a small financial services business and have been posting for some time about the pension pot scamming tsunami that will deluge the nation.


Lots and lots of people despite having had the sense to save, are none the less very vulnerable to scamming. Even I, a fairly sophisticated investor and business owner lost money with a group of very capable others on a less than robust foreign property 'investment'.


I know of totally unqualified people planning to get into recommending foreign property projects to pension pot owners and the real worry here is these 'brokers' are naïve themselves. For example a common narrative is to claim a development has 'Bank guarantees' but these are often worthless.


Recovering money from a far away developer in a foreign land is nigh on impossible.

Lots and lots of people are going to loose their money.

Conrad

Lesley, something you may want to ponder for the future;


Since about 2008 I have been in vain trying to highlight how overly zealous mortgage regulation would lead to millions of people being cast into the arms of Landlords as they are unable now to access a mortgage.


The vital point to recognise is that even at the height of the crunch, we still had a tiny minority of repossessions and an orderly mortgage market.
In summary for the sake of a very modest reduction in repossessions we have frozen millions of people of out of home ownership. All organisms prize control over their own bit of territory.


The FCA's overarching principle is 'treating customers fairly'. Casting millions into a life of rental servitude is hardly fair.

dunstonh

Like Conrad, i run a financial services company and have seen an increase in pension scams. Three in the last year. Two of which were reported and the FCA are taking an interest. The other was less scam but more stupid unregulated investments is playing ping pong at the FOS as the FOS cant decide who is responsible and both firms involved are blaming each other.

However, as the two that are invested in Cape Verde property could lead to a criminal prosecution, I cant give any details.

Virtually every adviser I know has come across someone being scammed unwittingly or willing to be scammed to break pension rules.

Aegis

I'm fortunate in that my clients have not been scammed. The closest I came to that was rescuing a client from a previous "adviser" that had invested pretty much entirely into unregulated rubbish that had pretty much all failed when the credit crunch came around. c. 90% loss.

Not really a scam like pension liberation schemes, but would have been just as harmful if he hadn't gone through the complaints process and won compensation.