Architect victim of £140,000 fake firms swindle

The 66-year-old self-employed victim has been forced to cancel his retirement plans after being tricked into investing in “cloned” firms set up by criminals to appear like thriving overseas businesses.

It is the second heavy financial loss to befall his family, after he lost £80,000 following the near-collapse of the Equitable Life pension company in 2000.

Detectives are to make enquiries in Spain, but admit there is little chance of recovering the money.

Boiler rooms are bogus stockbroking companies which call investors out of the blue, often several times, and convince them to buy fake shares over the phone.

The victim, who lives in South Yorkshire but has asked not to be named, said he was drawn into the scam in January 2010 when he began receiving a series of cold calls.

“They advised us that there were opportunities for investment and money to be made in shares of companies that were likely to do quite well on the back of trends in the stock markets.

“The suggestions were for two or three companies. One was a gold-mining company, which, on the face of it was promising.

“Another company I was offered shares in was one of the biggest manufacturers of batteries in the world. It was another reasonable prospect.

“When I went on the web to check, it seemed these companies did exist, but unfortunately the people who approached me had cloned the companies – all their details – and they were operating from a ghost address in London.”

The architect and his wife became suspicious after paperwork failed to arrive.

“We did more and more investigation and made more and more calls only to find that these companies didn’t actually exist. They were fictitious companies.”

One of the cloned companies was based on a business in Italy registered with the Financial Services Authority.

Contact email and web addresses given to the victim were found to terminate in Panama, where detectives have been unable to take the investigation forward.

“The fraudsters were very specific and they had clearly spent a lot of time setting up the cloned company,” the victim said. “I think cold calling should be stopped as there is no earthly need for it.”

The architect called on politicians to take a tougher approach to boiler room frauds, and to put more pressure on the Spanish authorities to help investigations.

“I find it disgusting,” he said, “that if you commit a crime, you can go to Spain and not have anything to worry about.

“This hasn’t bust us, but it clearly isn’t good news.

“I had been planning to retire, but I guess the reality is that I’ll have to carry on working now.”

The victim last heard from South Yorkshire Police in June, when the district commander for Rotherham, Chief Superintendent Richard Tweed, wrote to confirm his case was still being investigated.

Mr Tweed said South Yorkshire was working with three other forces including City of London Police’s anti-fraud unit.

“I have now had sight of a report by the investigating officer as to his desire to pursue enquiries in Spain, and more importantly attempt to recover some or all of the stolen funds,” the letter continued.

“As you may imagine, this work is not an easy task and does take some time. Furthermore, all advice provided to my officer, from those agencies more experienced in such cases, was that such enquiries were likely to be fruitless.”

Mr Tweed added that he had given the officer permission to investigate in Spain because “such an enquiry is completely justified, regardless of the chance of success, when set against the substantial loss that you have suffered”.

A South Yorkshire Police spokesman said the investigation was ongoing and a number of potential offenders had been identified.