Thoughts on Finance, Current Affairs and General Consumer Ripoffs - Damn Lies and Statistics

 Some more excellent investigation work by Jim Armitage at the London Evening Standard highlighting the £70million lent by London Capital & Finance to Prime Resort development which was run by 2 convicted fraudsters. Any genuine lending company would be doing due diligence on their borrowers! The 2 individuals were Paul Seakens and Terence Mitchell. Read the full article here https://www.standard.co.uk/business/london-capital-finance-lcf-fraudsters-lakeview-cornwall-fraud-sfo-b936592.html LCF was setup by Simon Hume Kendall who has been interviewed by the SFO about his role in the collapse Simon Hume Kendall who setup LCF

 The administrators of the companies in the Buy2Let Cars group have released an initial report of the situation which doesn't make great reading if you were an investor. B2L Cars in numbers 834 investors 3609 investments (loan agreements)  596 vehicles listed Only 435 vehicles actually leased out £40 million owed to investors  So each investor had on average made  over 4 separate investments into the company yet overall only 596 vehicles existed for 3609 investment agreements.  Average amount per investor is £47,961 Average cost per vehicle is £67,114 These are quite astonishing numbers particularly the value per vehicle. If £40 million was invested and only 596 vehicles exist then the average cost per vehicle is is £67,114. Based on the credit worthiness of the borrowers paying high rates of interest there is no way the cars they leased were anywhere near that number. As I pointed out back in 2019 when I was offered an opportunity to invest at a seminar this wa...

 I've seen a number of these pop up over the last few weeks where people have been contacted by email or phone to offer what are described as guaranteed bonds paying high rates of interest allegedly from high street companies. These are all scams. In all of these cases the criminals will take your money and leave you with nothing. Unlike scams such as London Capital & Finance they won't even bother to make any interest payments, they will just walk away with your money as the bond doesn't exist.  High Interest Scam Bonds - Email Phone Call Offers - SSE/M&S/Morgan Stanley/Tesco/BT If you look up on Google you may find some of these companies do have corporate bonds with coupon (interest) payments that look high. However these bonds are not available with those rates now and if you bought them through the stock market you would be paying well above the offer price thus getting a much lower interest rate. Most importantly you would have no guarantees of the value. If y...

 Investors in London Capital & Finance ISAs may have recently received an email from HMRC that they thought to be a scam message but in reality was genuine. HMRC previously stated that the LCF ISAs that were not actually ISAs because the bonds LCF sold were not a valid ISA product had been voided meaning that the investors would have lost that ISA allowance even if they had been compensated by FSCS or HM Treasury. HMRC have now come to the common sense conclusion that the bonds inside the ISA wrapper were voided but the ISA wrapper itself remains valid.  This means that anyone who invested in an LCF ISA will still have an allowance for the value of the compensation that they receive from FSCS or the government. The email explains the steps that need to be taken to ensure that the ISA allowance isn't lost although this is probably only really relevant for anyone who invested substantially above the annual £20,000 ISA limit. If you invested £5,000 you can just pay the money ...

 The UK Government has today (19th April 2021) announced a new compensation scheme for investors in London Capital & Finance (LCF) where they will be compensated up to 80% of their investment to a maximum of £68,000. This ties in with the FSCS maximum compensation of £85,000 for failed savings & investment schemes. Any payments already received from the administrators (the 2.5% dividend) and any interest payments will be deducted from the compensation payments made. The government have stated that they expect payments to be completed within 6 months of the law enabling the compensation being passed in Parliament.. Some worked examples are below: Investor paid £10,000 to LCF just before they collapsed. No interest payments received from LCF.      Compensation from government = 80% x £10,000 = £8000. Investor paid £10,000 to LCF and received their 8% interest for a year so a total interest of £800.       Compensation from government = 80% x ...

 The Serious Fraud Office (SFO) have announced that they are investigating suspected fraud in relation to Raedex Consortium which includes the companies Buy2Let Cars and Wheels4Sure. This follows the companies going into administration in March 2021. One person was arrested and interviewed in connection with raids in premises connected to the investigation. This website has previously highlighted the dubious sales tactics used by Buy2Let cars to target investors (as shown by the ad below) and the speed of the collapse of the company when they were prevented from taking in new money would suggest that there may have been a Ponzi scheme at work if a constant flow of new investors were needed to keep the company afloat. A number of car leaseholders have posted on the MSE forums very worried that their cars will be taken away but also struggling with the servicing and taxing of their vehicles which was meant to be handled by Wheels4Sure the leasing arm of Buy2Let cars. It now looks lik...

This blog had previously highlighted the promotion techniques of Buy2Let cars and warned that these sort of promotions to unsuspecting investors were a possible disaster waiting to happen. It looks like that has now come true with the company going into administration because it was insolvent. The FCA information below shows some serious discrepancies over the details provided by the company compared to the officially listed records of vehicles. https://damn-lies-and-statistics.blogspot.com/2019/11/buy2let-cars-investment-seminar.html There are some worrying bits of information coming out that suggest the model publicly promoted by Buy2Let cars wasn't actually what happened in practice. Investors may have thought they were buying an actual car but the cars weren't owned by the entity that they handed money over to. The FCA statement on the supervisory notice that they have been told thet Buy2Let cars had 1200 customers and 1200 leases. There are 4 companies in the group, Raedex...