Black Rock scam

tesshack

I just wanted to put it out there, that there's a company called Black Rock Advisers (UK) Ltd. who are trying to scam people into buying BlackRock Fixed Rate Institutional Bonds with guaranteed returns of 3-5.5% on deposit of large lump sums of money.  This product actually doesn't exist and these people are not really from BlackRock.  They are running an incredibly sophisticated scam.  They are using the BlackRock company address and even using names of people who work or have worked at BlackRock.  Their literature is all styled to look like BlackRock information and they come across as being totally believable.   They either cold called me or I think I may have put my email into something on line advertising fixed rate bonds with great returns.  I finally grew suspicious when I read the prospectus in detail and found a few very minor spelling and grammar mistakes, I then looked at the BlackRock website and couldn't find the product anywhere. Also their email addresses weren't genuine - they weren't @blackrock.com, but @br-ne.com or @br-am.com (also the phone number was not the BlackRock head office number).  When I called the real BlackRock they said it was definitely a scam, and they were aware it had happened before and that they'd been in touch with the FCA, however I just feel there isn't enough visible information about this scam out there to warn people.  I'd looked at Companies House etc. and the company did seem to be genuine and the conversation I had with the caller was really normal and believable.  I unfortunately did give them some personal information and have now informed the FCA and ActionFraud and am doing whatever I can to protect my information from being misused.  I feel very relieved that I paused for a moment to do some more research before handing over a large lump sum to these people, but it's also made me incredibly nervous about who to trust on the phone /internet and who not to, given that the whole thing was so sophisticated. I just wanted to warn anyone else out there who may have been contacted by these people. Beware! 

eskbanker

tesshack said:

I just feel there isn't enough visible information about this scam out there to warn people.

For what it's worth they are included (from yesterday) on the FCA warnings list at https://www.fca.org.uk/news/warnings/blackrock-advisors-uk-ltd-clone, along with hundreds of other clone companies.

It's a common scam, if in doubt and needing assurance from an independent source, search the FCA's list via https://www.fca.org.uk/scamsmart/warning-list/search?opp=inv

tesshack said:

They either cold called me or I think I may have put my email into something on line advertising fixed rate bonds with great returns.

You'll be on one or more sucker's lists now, so be extra vigilant in future about such opportunities being presented to you....

Reaper

tesshack said:

 They either cold called me or I think I may have put my email into something on line advertising fixed rate bonds with great returns.

That's not a good way of searching. A lot of the results (and almost all of the ad placed ones) from Google searching or Facebook ads for high fixed returns will be dodgy unregulated mini-bonds which have a consistent history of losing investors all their money, though they won't be described like that, instead they will say something like Guaranteed Fixed Rate 8%, 100% asset backed.