Fraudulent investments?
M.Elliott
Forumite 27 Posts
Would be very grateful for some help with regards to an upsetting and highly stressful time for my parents. On the advise of their financial adviser they invested their entire life savings into two separate sister companies: helix investment management and munio capital. These are companies then invested their money in a payday loan company called privilege wealth plc. Privilege wealth plc have now claimed that due to fraud within the company that they essentially have no money left and need to liquidate the company. Where this leaves my parents money is anyone's guess. Their financial adviser is useless and has no answers to their questions. It seems helix are currently in a court case with privilege wealth to try and gain whatever assets there are left. Munio have dropped off the face of the earth, no website, emails getting pinged back to us, phone number not working. My parents are thinking now it's solicitor time and to possibly try and sue financial due to poor advice, he assured them this was a completely safe investment and nothing could go wrong and being green about these things they trusted him. Both these companies seem to be unregulated and i want to know does that make a difference. Please any advice is more than welcome as my poor parents are literally ready for a break down with worry !!!128577;
0
This discussion has been closed.
Latest MSE News and Guides
Replies
Which adviser was it, and are they FCA-regulated? If so, you can complain to them that ultra-high-risk unregulated investments were not suitable for your parents' risk profile. If they fail to make good their losses (which they almost certainly will), you can take your complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service, who can award compensation of up to £150,000. If the adviser goes bust (which they almost certainly will), the Financial Services Compensation Scheme can award compensation of up to £50,000.
However all of this assumes that the adviser they used was FCA-regulated.
If the adviser was FCA-regulated, there is no need to waste money on a solicitor. The FOS and FSCS claims processes are, by design, very simple and do not need legal assistance.
Your parents are on a suckers list and should be extremely wary of any cold calls they receive claiming they can get their money back.
Was this a real financial adviser or someone pretending to be?
These are the sort of things put in place by cold calling scammers pretending to be something they are not usually. Have you checked the FCA register to see if it is a real adviser? If not, name the advice firm and we will check.
How did your parents get into this investment? was it via a cold call?
No need to do that if it is a real financial adviser as there is a regulated complaints process.
"FSCS immune" doesn't make sense. Does it say they are FSCS protected (which would be a lie) or FSCS unprotected (which is true)?
Any chance you could upload the PDF somewhere (e.g. scribd.com/upload-document)?
If a regulated advice firm makes recommendations to use unregulated investments then you can complain about the advice given. So, that is the next stage. Make a formal complaint to the advice firm as to why the investments were not suitable.
Remember that it suitability that matters. Not that they lost money. Recommendations to consumers need to be suitable. A high risk investor who is very experienced with investing may take some punts and lose the lot and that is fine. Whereas using such an investment with a low risk and/or inexperienced investor would be unsuitable.
The firm will probably find a way to reject the complaint and that is when you refer it to the FOS (or if there is no outcome within 8 weeks).
Plus, it will likely be harder through the courts.
if the FOS cant do anything then the court option still exists. If court is used and fails, then the FOS will not be open to use.
1) you have lost substantially more than £150,000
2) the firm who gave the advice is a big company which won't simply go into liquidation when the award is made (which means you are back to FSCS protection of £50,000 per investor, only now you have to pay a big legal bill).
If either is not the case then any reputable solicitor would tell them to go down the FOS route.
The investment is not covered but the advice is - if the adviser was FCA-regulated. If the advice was bad (which it is), and the adviser is ordered to pay redress by the FOS, but goes bust without paying, the FSCS will step in up to £50k per investor.
You can photograph the paper copy with a smartphone or camera and upload it somewhere.