Investment in "Investment Opportunities

BananaRepublic

Reaper wrote: »

There is a difference here between theory and practice.

As Dunstonh has said it has no office address and a director living abroad, so there is nobody to sue in this country. The FCA has 370 pages of unauthorised companies illegally targeting UK traders, mostly based abroad. Only a handful will ever appear in court.
https://www.fca.org.uk/consumers/unauthorised-firms-individuals

I haven't downloaded the brochure for this investment and have not attempted to validate the claims, but if you want to take it further then do and if you believe it is fraudulent get it added to the FCA warnings register, and pass it on the Action Fraud. There is little more that can be done.

Given that we have an extradition treaty with Spain, and fraud is a crime, then were this person to commit fraud - and this is hypothetical - then they could be prosecuted by the UK police, once the crime had been committed of course. You seem to be implying that in practice they are likely to get away with it, assuming of course that it is fraudulent.

I know from experience that it is easy to get ripped off by a trader who is essentially a crook, having almost lost a modest sum when I bought a bath from a dodgy shop.

Reaper

It's a question often asked. Why don't those 370 pages of warnings on the FCA register result in 370 pages of prosecutions?

The only explanation I have heard is lack of resources. As this article (click here) points out losses of less than £100,000 are unlikely to be investigated. Action Fraud won't even pass on the details unless it seems to involve a criminal network, and the Serious Fraud Office won't look at a case unless it involves losses of over £1m or even £10m. And as soon as it involves people abroad the prosecutions becomes more complicated and even less likely to be pursued.

There also tends to be a long investigation time giving the individuals plenty of time to close the web site, move to another country and set up again under a different company name.

dunstonh

It's a question often asked. Why don't those 370 pages of warnings on the FCA register result in 370 pages of prosecutions?

The FSA was damned slow and didnt care about the major issues. It was too interested in whether a terms of business had a spelling mistake or a letter didnt have decent formatting where a paragraph heading was on one page and the paragraph on the next. It micromanaged the insignificant and ignored the major issues.

The FCA does appear to be more interested and quicker to respond. The last company on this board that were doing similar was reported and within 3 days, the FCA had a warning up about them on their site.

However, that does seem to be where they stop. There seems little interest to go beyond that and actually prosecute. If you went to the police to report a fraud then they wouldnt know where to start and would fob you off by saying it is a civil matter.

talexuser

BananaRepublic wrote: »

... wind up the company having taking out a healthy salary and dividends, then carry on as normal?

Ask Philip Green and Dominic Chappell Thought the time it takes to sort anything gives them lots of opportunity to leg it to no-extradition territories if they want.

Seriously though, there have been plenty of consumer programs where eg builders and double glazing companies either don't do the work or do it so badly people lose lots of money. then go bust, and set up under a different name serially. Unless a TV company gets involved with publicity and passes on their investigation, or a customer has the single mindedness and great effort to follow through the authorities and courts they seem to get away with it. And this kind of financial fraud doesn't even need a premises here.

jimjames

Reaper wrote: »

I haven't downloaded the brochure for this investment and have not attempted to validate the claims, but if you want to take it further then do and if you believe it is fraudulent get it added to the FCA warnings register, and pass it on the Action Fraud. There is little more that can be done.

I'm not sure there is little can be done but it is a balancing act. Google could be stopped from taking their adverts and the website could be taken down or the payment processors could be targeted. It's a cat and mouse game though as they'll setup another one and it also might can the odd legitimate company trying to raise finance but I certainly think any pensions investments should be far more closely validated than they are currently.

BTW I'd imagine the name is a very deliberate choice to make it hard to search up on Google. If someone is looking for "Investment opportunities scam" they will get pages of results

BananaRepublic

talexuser wrote: »

Ask Philip Green and Dominic Chappell

It will be interesting to see if Philip Greed retains his knighthood. Lord Archer, a convicted crook, is still a lord.

Glen_Clark

Reaper wrote: »

It's a question often asked. Why don't those 370 pages of warnings on the FCA register result in 370 pages of prosecutions?

The only explanation I have heard is lack of resources.

It isn't so much a lack of resources as wasting resources on overpaid beauracrats like the rest of the Government does. But of couse the net result is the same in having less resources to do the job. And anything that obstructs the investigation and increases costs, like the Director living abroad, reduces the chance of any action.

Glen_Clark

BananaRepublic wrote: »

It will be interesting to see if Philip Greed retains his knighthood.

If a cow's *rse can be knighted why not Sir Philip Green?
('Sirloin' is so called because it was knighted by King James I).

bowlhead99

Glen_Clark wrote: »

('Sirloin' is so called because it was knighted by King James I).

Nice myth, but it is really just a play on words written after the fact, and not how the beef got its name.

If you are going back as far as the world Sirloin has existed, it was originally written 'surloyne' or 'surloine'. This came from the middle French 'surlonge'. The French word came from 'sur la longe', with la longe being the loin, and sur meaning on or over.

If you were to say to a french person that ce morceau de boeuf est sur la longe (apologies if the grammar is mangled as it's a long time since my GCSEs), they would get that you meant this piece of beef is on or over the loin, like la pomme est sur la table means the apple's on the table. In a restaurant you would probably ask for faux-filet which is above and forward of the tenderloin or filet.

What does this tell us about investing in a company called 'investment opportunities'? Not much, but with such a generic name and a low profile online presence they are clearly not someone that wants to be easily found or remembered. So either they have zero business nous and you should avoid because of the poor business skills, or they are trying to be hard to pin down and you should avoid for that reason instead...

Glen_Clark

bowlhead99 wrote: »

Nice myth, but it is really just a play on words written after the fact, and not how the beef got its name.
If you are going back as far as the world Sirloin has existed, it was originally written 'surloyne' or 'surloine'. This came from the middle French 'surlonge'. The French word came from 'sur la longe', with la longe being the loin, and sur meaning on or over.

Well Sir Philip Green should still keep his title as he represents their Honours system. As does Sir Jimmy Savile OBE KCSG, James Stuart Hall OBE, Patrick Mercer OBE, Sir Mark Thatcher, Sir Roy Meadow, Sir Cyril Smith MBE, Sir Malcolm Rifkind, Samantha Cameron's stylist etc etc