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Hello All
Not sure quite where to begin here as I have only just began to piece together what has been going on. Also I wasn't totally sure on the best place to post this due to it's complexity! Please feel free to move to a more appropriate section if you feel it's necessary!!
A little bit of background on my uncle:
Had whooping cough as a child - caused some brain damage which led to developmental problems. He had lived with my grandparents who were able to take care of the financial side of things for him until my grandmothers passing in '97 and my grandfathers shortly after in '98. Despite his issues he was able to continue to work, live and manage a mortgage ongoing for many years.
In 2011 my father became concerned as my uncle began mentioning a series of phone calls about product/stock purchases organised over a number of months via telephone. Now due to my uncles issues in communicating it was not entirely clear what was going on until eventually my dad was able to come up with a few bits of information which I then researched online to discover he had been scammed.
We were unsure at this point of precisely how much money he had lost, and how and who to but began by reporting the fraud via action fraud. This put us in touch with a (now ceased) police investigation called Operation Archway. We gave what little information we had to them and were advised it was unlikely the money would be recoverable. At this stage however we were working under the assumption it was around £3000 that had been sent in cash to an account somewhere in Germany.
We met with my uncle and explained the situation, explaining that he had been scammed and that he must be very cautious when taking telephone calls. There was some discussion of changing his phone number to help ensure he could not be contacted but due to his issues it would have been far too difficult for him to change his telephone number as he would not remember it.
Anyway, besides that more recently I have been able to get a more realistic idea of what was going on and discovered he had been making a series of payments by going into the bank and arranging one-off international bank transfers. We were shocked to find that he had sent a total amount of £19,450.
We have also learned he has taken out some loans with the bank. It would appear as though he has taken out 3 loans, amounting to £30,000 - I have very little paperwork to go by and am not au fait with these things. It could also be that he has made only one loan of £10,000.
Soon he is due in court as he has now made his payments on this/these loan(s) and we have now put him in touch with his local CAB who are hopefully going to assist him in this matter.
I feel very strongly that the bank are totally wrong here for a number of reasons:
Firstly, having looked at the paperwork the payments he had made to these scammers were in person, in the bank (my uncle wouldn't know the first thing about using a computer) so he would have been assisted in person.
The payments were totally out of the ordinary for him, and so many things would have made me question their validity.
Sometimes making two payments in differing currencies to different bank accounts based in Europe. In one case a payment was converted to USD but made to an account located in Cyprus. To me, this would immediately flag up as suspicious. However the payments were authorised, no questions asked.
Secondly, regarding the loans - it would certainly appear very little financial assessments were carried out despite the great national uproar about banks giving out loans 'willy-nilly'. Without wanting to be rude about my uncle it is usually quite apparent he has issues with communication, and again I believe the bank behaved totally irresponsibly by accepting the loan application.
There is more to the story (hence the subject) however at this point I suppose my question is - is there anything that can be done to help my uncle here?
Onto the next bit - as mentioned when we initially discovered the problem we did report this to the police. I have now seen a lot of documents relating to the money sent and discovered the payments made were in fact investments in land, valueless shares and stock purchases.
Pertaining in particular to the land purchases, I have been able to directly connect one of the land investments to an ongoing FCA investigation being carried out to a company based in the UK. I'm not sure at which stage this investigation is at but absolutely know that my uncle was one of the "investors" in this case. Am reluctant to say much about it in a public forum for safety reasons (am happy to provide links to the information via PM if this would be helpful)
From what I can gather however the company involved are still involved in a dispute - I suppose my question here is, if the FCA win would my uncle be eligible to receive his money back through the compensation? Please ask for more details concerning this.
I hope this makes sense though to be honest the shock of the situation hasn't really sunk in and I'm not able to make sense of what is going on.
Well - if you've made it this far without your head spinning - thank you for reading and well done. I will try and be as clear as possible if you have any questions or need any more information.
Thank you for your time!
Rob
Not sure quite where to begin here as I have only just began to piece together what has been going on. Also I wasn't totally sure on the best place to post this due to it's complexity! Please feel free to move to a more appropriate section if you feel it's necessary!!
A little bit of background on my uncle:
Had whooping cough as a child - caused some brain damage which led to developmental problems. He had lived with my grandparents who were able to take care of the financial side of things for him until my grandmothers passing in '97 and my grandfathers shortly after in '98. Despite his issues he was able to continue to work, live and manage a mortgage ongoing for many years.
In 2011 my father became concerned as my uncle began mentioning a series of phone calls about product/stock purchases organised over a number of months via telephone. Now due to my uncles issues in communicating it was not entirely clear what was going on until eventually my dad was able to come up with a few bits of information which I then researched online to discover he had been scammed.
We were unsure at this point of precisely how much money he had lost, and how and who to but began by reporting the fraud via action fraud. This put us in touch with a (now ceased) police investigation called Operation Archway. We gave what little information we had to them and were advised it was unlikely the money would be recoverable. At this stage however we were working under the assumption it was around £3000 that had been sent in cash to an account somewhere in Germany.
We met with my uncle and explained the situation, explaining that he had been scammed and that he must be very cautious when taking telephone calls. There was some discussion of changing his phone number to help ensure he could not be contacted but due to his issues it would have been far too difficult for him to change his telephone number as he would not remember it.
Anyway, besides that more recently I have been able to get a more realistic idea of what was going on and discovered he had been making a series of payments by going into the bank and arranging one-off international bank transfers. We were shocked to find that he had sent a total amount of £19,450.
We have also learned he has taken out some loans with the bank. It would appear as though he has taken out 3 loans, amounting to £30,000 - I have very little paperwork to go by and am not au fait with these things. It could also be that he has made only one loan of £10,000.
Soon he is due in court as he has now made his payments on this/these loan(s) and we have now put him in touch with his local CAB who are hopefully going to assist him in this matter.
I feel very strongly that the bank are totally wrong here for a number of reasons:
Firstly, having looked at the paperwork the payments he had made to these scammers were in person, in the bank (my uncle wouldn't know the first thing about using a computer) so he would have been assisted in person.
The payments were totally out of the ordinary for him, and so many things would have made me question their validity.
Sometimes making two payments in differing currencies to different bank accounts based in Europe. In one case a payment was converted to USD but made to an account located in Cyprus. To me, this would immediately flag up as suspicious. However the payments were authorised, no questions asked.
Secondly, regarding the loans - it would certainly appear very little financial assessments were carried out despite the great national uproar about banks giving out loans 'willy-nilly'. Without wanting to be rude about my uncle it is usually quite apparent he has issues with communication, and again I believe the bank behaved totally irresponsibly by accepting the loan application.
There is more to the story (hence the subject) however at this point I suppose my question is - is there anything that can be done to help my uncle here?
Onto the next bit - as mentioned when we initially discovered the problem we did report this to the police. I have now seen a lot of documents relating to the money sent and discovered the payments made were in fact investments in land, valueless shares and stock purchases.
Pertaining in particular to the land purchases, I have been able to directly connect one of the land investments to an ongoing FCA investigation being carried out to a company based in the UK. I'm not sure at which stage this investigation is at but absolutely know that my uncle was one of the "investors" in this case. Am reluctant to say much about it in a public forum for safety reasons (am happy to provide links to the information via PM if this would be helpful)
From what I can gather however the company involved are still involved in a dispute - I suppose my question here is, if the FCA win would my uncle be eligible to receive his money back through the compensation? Please ask for more details concerning this.
I hope this makes sense though to be honest the shock of the situation hasn't really sunk in and I'm not able to make sense of what is going on.
Well - if you've made it this far without your head spinning - thank you for reading and well done. I will try and be as clear as possible if you have any questions or need any more information.
Thank you for your time!
Rob
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