Help with scam investment Loans please

System

This discussion was created from comments split from: Struggling with debt? Ask a stepchange debt adviser a question.

riskavoider

Hi, I wonder if you could offer any advice:

My husband was scammed out of c£100,000 which he took out in personal loans from several banks.  

We bought our current home without a mortgage but now need to find a way to consolidate the expensive personal loans, currently costing around £2,200 per month.  He is 66 but still working and receives some pensions.  Because of his age and the fact we live in a non-standard property we have been unable to get a mortgage so far.  I am very reluctant to enter an Equity Release plan, so we are considering secured loans, which seem largely to be capped at £50,000.  This would be helpful as we could pay off the most expensive loans.
Can you help, please?

sourcrates

Hi @riskavoider,

I have moved your post to a new thread in the general forum as you will not get a response from Stepchange till at least next week.

Having read your posting history it seems your husband fell for an investment scam, and the scammer continued to dangle the carrot of big profits to ensure more investments from him, the hits just kept on coming until he got wise to the scam, a very sorry tale I can imagine.

Well when your in a hole, stop digging, you really don`t want to borrow any more money, its never going to help you get out of this.

What you should do is report the loans as being scams to Action Fraud, get a crime number, and simply tell the lenders you cannot pay the contractual repayments.

You can then work out what you can afford to pay, and offer that instead.

If you can provide more information about the loans, how much is borrowed and from who, what your income/expenditure is etc, we can see if that would be feasible.

ManyWays

I agree with @sourcrates that the first step is to report to Action Fraud and get a Crime Reference Number.

Then if you can list the loans taken with the date as well as the lender, amount, monthly payments and interest rate that would help.

It may be possible to argue that some of the loans were clearly unaffordable for someone coming up to pension age, winning this would get interest removed from the loan and you may be able to repay at a slower rate. Because a secured loan would be expensive and put your house at risk so should be avoided if at all possible.