London Capital and Finance

eskbanker

GDB2222 wrote: »

I received an email from a firm I had never heard from, and I could do with some advice please. It reads as follows: [lengthy copy/paste of scam email]

Perhaps I'm missing some well-concealed irony or relevance but my advice would be not to clutter up a thread about LC&F with an unrelated unsolicited 'too good to be true' investment 'opportunity'....

eskbanker

Seabee42 wrote: »

The government cannot and will not ever be able to police the crooks appropriately and has never shown any signs of being able to do so.

Point of order: it's not government's role to police crooks - government sets up the legislative environment but enforcement is up to the police and (in this case) the regulator, and ultimately the independent judiciary....

Seabee42

eskbanker wrote: »

Point of order: it's not government's role to police crooks - government sets up the legislative environment but enforcement is up to the police and (in this case) the regulator, and ultimately the independent judiciary....

I know but the government decides on resources for these organisations. Its like its against the law to steal but clearly the government has no intention of stopping it or even punishing it. Should everyone who has been the victim of robbery be compensated by the tax payer?

Catrina777

What exactly was Lcf regulated for, credit broking appeared on one ad. Thank you.

GDB2222

eskbanker wrote: »

Perhaps I'm missing some well-concealed irony or relevance but my advice would be not to clutter up a thread about LC&F with an unrelated unsolicited 'too good to be true' investment 'opportunity'....

I posted the email in response to
"To regulars on here it was obvious from the start it should be avoided, but to the average punter it was not."

Yet, that email came in yesterday. I assume that it must be effective, as otherwise the senders would not bother. The FCA definitely can't be everywhere, so perhaps they are right that their best approach is to educate people.

rr755507

GDB2222 wrote: »

Yet, that email came in yesterday. I assume that it must be effective, as otherwise the senders would not bother. The FCA definitely can't be everywhere, so perhaps they are right that their best approach is to educate people.

I'd say FCAs educating is failing.

For a lot of people the only reason they felt safe investing was because the LC&F material all had "Authorised & regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority: 722603" everywhere, which could be validated on FCAs website.

jimjames

AnotherJoe wrote: »

To me the issue is, FCA allowed parallel advertising of their FSCS protection and FCA regulation alongside non regulated/protected products, for what, three years before pulling the plug?

I believe it has been picked up previously but LCF did NOT advertise that they were FSCS protected, they specifically said they had no FSCS protection if you looked at their site

eskbanker

jimjames wrote: »

I believe it has been picked up previously but LCF did NOT advertise that they were FSCS protected, they specifically said they had no FSCS protection if you looked at their site

Indeed - right back at post #5 in 2015!

george4064 wrote: »

I got this from their website disclaimer, says it all really:

[...]

From their FAQs page:

Am I covered under the financial service compensation scheme?
No, this product is an unregulated investment and is not covered under the FSCS, we suggest you always seek independent advice from a regulated adviser before investing.

Malthusian

Seabee42 wrote: »

Should everyone who has been the victim of robbery be compensated by the tax payer?

They are. Most tax payers have home insurance (and car insurance if applicable). When you claim for a robbery on your insurance you are compensated by the general population via their premiums.

Catrina777 wrote:

What exactly was Lcf regulated for, credit broking appeared on one ad. Thank you.

Credit broking, arranging investments, and advising on investments - but (and this is crucial re potential claims on the FSCS) they were not authorised to deal with retail investors and were authorised for corporate finance business only. That restriction about corporate finance business only doesn't apply to their minibonds which were unregulated.

AnotherJoe

Malthusian wrote: »

They are. Most tax payers have home insurance (and car insurance if applicable). When you claim for a robbery on your insurance you are compensated by the general population via their premiums.

That's disingenuous. It's not the "general" population it's those who insured

Credit broking, arranging investments, and advising on investments - but (and this is crucial re potential claims on the FSCS) they were not authorised to deal with retail investors and were authorised for corporate finance business only. That restriction about corporate finance business only doesn't apply to their minibonds which were unregulated.

The problem (and this has been brought up many times here) is that if FCA does cover companies like this then people can be even more gung ho about the investments they buy into.
To me the issue is, was FCA complicit in this fraud by allowing the misleading adverts to run for so many years and not taking action for all that time?