Some pension scam victims lose more than £1m to fraudsters - MSE News

[Deleted User]

waveydavey48 said:

Silvertabby said:

Are Mr S and I the only people in the UK who have never been cold-called by one of these scammers? I'm almost disappointed - I was looking forward to a good 'discussion' !

We too have never been cold called. After I gave up my career proper I took a little part time job for a few years as a call taker at West Yorks police. The number of calls we took from distressed elderly people who had been exploited by heartless criminals was shocking. Some of the things I heard were simply heartbreaking. 

I only ever had one, a caller claiming to be part of teh government pension review service stating my pension was poorly invested - I asked them who it was with and they said I had to tell them that, hung up. Still get the odd call from accident management firms, relating to an accident that was long ago sorted, just block and report the number. Get a few on the landline but rarely in to receive them so just get these weird messages on the 1571 service

kangoora

I had one from a caller recommending an investment into Fine Art. I kept him talking for about 45 minutes and some of the spiel was breathtaking. For example, Me: I'd like to run this opportunity past my IFA. response: You don't want to do that, it's in their interest to keep all of  your money on their books so you'll miss this "opportunity" because they want to keep all your money!!!! Plenty of other disparaging remarks about IFA's etc along with promises of huge profits, 'fully backed by objects of art'.

After about 45 minutes the cold caller was getting really exasperated with me, 'Mr XXXX, you are a timewaster'. I just replied, yes, and you are a f******g scamming B****d. He then hung up and I never got another call from them

This is one of the very, very few calls I have had that had the patience to sit through my call blocker phone introduction , probably  about 1 of maybe 5 or so cold callers who have bothered to progress to an actual call in the last 3-4 years.

[Deleted User]

Chickereeeee said:

A couple of years ago, a close family member in their 50s was convinced to move a good, DB pension into - what turned out to be - a scam, and lost the lot. They fell fell into a depression and six months later turned to suicide.
You can lose even more than money.

Awful. 

Why didn’t any of the safeguards work? Assume he had to consult an advisor first... Did the advisor not spot that the destination was crooked? Can the commuted value be moved to a non-licensed outfit?

Malthusian

Deleted_User said:

Chickereeeee said:

A couple of years ago, a close family member in their 50s was convinced to move a good, DB pension into - what turned out to be - a scam, and lost the lot. They fell fell into a depression and six months later turned to suicide.
You can lose even more than money.

Awful. 

Why didn’t any of the safeguards work? Assume he had to consult an advisor first... Did the advisor not spot that the destination was crooked?

Maybe they did. Remember that if the adviser gave them a formal recommendation not to do it, that was all the relative needed to fulfil the requirement to take advice.

Alternatively, of course, the adviser may have been in on it. If this was the case and the adviser was FCA-regulated, the relative should have had recourse to the FOS and FSCS, not that it helps now.

Advice wouldn't have been a requirement if it was under £30,000.

*edit*

Can the commuted value be moved to a non-licensed outfit?

A CETV can only be transferred to another registered pension scheme. Setting up your own occupational pension scheme was a favoured tactic of the last wave of pension scams (early 2010s), but I'd be surprised if that was the case in 2018 as HMRC was supposed to have tightened that up.

A transfer to a foreign QROPS would also have been possible.

Ceding pension schemes make more checks than they used to, but in the end they can't stop the member from transferring the money if the receiving scheme is a registered pension scheme.

Chickereeeee

Deleted_User said:

Chickereeeee said:

A couple of years ago, a close family member in their 50s was convinced to move a good, DB pension into - what turned out to be - a scam, and lost the lot. They fell fell into a depression and six months later turned to suicide.
You can lose even more than money.

Awful. 

Why didn’t any of the safeguards work? Assume he had to consult an advisor first... Did the advisor not spot that the destination was crooked? Can the commuted value be moved to a non-licensed outfit?

They were working abroad, for a foreign employer at the time (although the DB Pension was built up over many years in the UK).  It was actually around 5 years ago that they realised it was a scam, so transfer may have happened sometime before. So i am not sure what safeguards would have applied, or why they did not work. I believe they did everything they could to recover the money.
(Often, one of the things about believing you have made a huge mistake, and depression in general, is a reluctance to talk about it. I often wonder if I could have helped, but i did not know about it until too late.)

Malthusian

If it was some time before 5 years ago, it sounds like we're talking pre-pension freedom when there were relatively few safeguards (to answer Mordko's question).

Advice would not have been required to transfer out of a DB scheme and pretty much anyone could set up their own pension scheme.