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

 The FCA seem to be powerless to act on stopping financial scam advertising but Google is taking action to ensure that anyone advertising to UK consumers is FCA regulated or has been validated against the opt-out conditions. This wouldn't have stopped the likes of London Capital and Finance but many current advertisers are promoting unsuitable products to UK consumers such as the one below. Dear Advertiser, Google will be updating the Google Ads Financial Products and Services policy in August, 2021, to introduce new verification requirements for Financial Services advertisers targeting the UK. We will publish the policy update on August 30, 2021, and enforcement will take effect seven days later. Advertisers that have not successfully completed the updated verification process by the time enforcement begins will no longer be allowed to show financial services ads of any kind in the UK, including showing ads to UK users who appear to be seeking financial services. You can learn mor...

 Adverts for Hawthorne Harper Consulting are appearing on Facebook targeting pensioners suggesting that you can get: 12% fixed returns yearly FCA regulated trustee Fully asset backed Corporate guarantees If this list looks familiar then it may be because London Capital and Finance used many of the same phrases when advertising their mini bonds. The key information missing is that your capital is at risk and that it is not FSCS protected. A regulated trustee does not guarantee that the investment will return your capital. If you search the FCA register to check if Hawthorne Harper Consulting are registered with the FCA you will find no entry for them or for their company name Willow & Blake Associates Ltd. This means they are not authorised by the FCA to sell savings or investments to UK consumers. Hawthorne Harper Consulting review This advert has been reported to the FCA as being misleading and not complying with their requirements that unregulated investments must not be...

Review of Landal Greenparks Lodge Investments There was a recent query about Landal Greenparks lodge investment and asking if it was a scam. Some very good feedback was provided which would be useful to summarise to help anyone considering putting money into this investment in park lodges. They are claiming to be FCA regulated but it's important to make sure what the FCA regulated business actually is. London Capital & Finance were FCA regulated but not for issuing bonds and used that to give a veneer of respectability. That's not to say that  LANDAL BELVEDERE DEVELOPMENTS LTD  are doing the same but the FCA approval isn't anything to do with lodge investment. Update from further info it appears there are a number of different entities offering different things to investors for the same lodge park in Scotland. As well as the one mentioned for investment in lodges directly another more established company is offering bonds for what appears to be the same site. This com...

Scammers seem to have given up trying to sell their own mini bonds like Blackmore Bond or London Capital & Finance and are now impersonating actual genuine investment companies like Tilney to promote their scam investment bonds. The latest one is using the name of a real Tilney employee called James Dawkins but the scammers have nothing to do with Tilney and the emails are a fabrication. The emails do not use the real Tilney email addresses but a new one registered in May 2021 as fixedincome-tilney.co.uk so any replies to their fake emails will go to them not Tilney. You can see the details here  https://who.is/whois/fixedincome-tilney.co.uk The fake Tilney scammers seem to be operating via Facebook adverts and a website called  https://www.bondrates.co.uk/  Once you register for information you will get called by someone where the called ID shows as Tilney - Mayfair London. This is NOT the real Tilney investment company calling you! If you hand your money over to the...

Blackmore Bond has featured in this blog for a number of years as it was clearly making fraudulent claims about the security of the investments that it was offering and selling them to unsuitable investors rather than those that were sophisticated or High Net Worth. The journalist Paul Carlier has published some astonishing allegations of fraud by the FCA at the hightest levels to attempt to cover up the true situation at Blackmore Bond. If these are true it is absolute dynamite as to how the FCA is working and the techniques its staff use to deal with such cases. His article includes summaries about the position of the Capital Guarantee scheme that Blackmore Bond claimed would compensate bondholders should the company fail. The insurance company for that guarantee is based in Costa Rica and has stated that no valid claim has yet been made on that policy. According to Paul it appears that the FCA is deliberately withholding evidence of fraud to prevent the policy from being voided and ...

 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...