HEAT IS ON FOR 'BOILER ROOM' CROOKS

Calls to Crusader from worried savers have multiplied recently and last week the Financial Services Authority (FSA) issued a warning about dramatic increases in ‘boiler room’ crooks’ activities. 

 

These unauthorised firms, based overseas, are now posing as legitimate UK businesses - sometimes partially cloning an authorised company’s website - and use hard-sell tactics to persuade investors to buy worthless or non-existent shares in bogus companies. Cold-calling investors, either to buy or sell shares, is illegal. Consumers investing via unauthorised overseas companies have no protection from UK regulation.

 

International crackdowns and greater consumer awareness are believed to have fuelled the new surge, forcing fraudsters to become more inventive. And Crusader can confirm readers are getting savvier. The latest reports to us have all been from savers who, having had suspicious calls, hung up.

 

Derek Bryant, from Canterbury, thinks he was subjected to a new twist when he got an offer, from someone claiming to be part of Douglas Ellis Inc in New York, offering to buy old shares he had in a firm he thought had folded. “They want to pay me, what’s going on?” he asked.

Some crooks are now settling for a long game, seeking investors’ trust with offers to buy, and may well make a legitimate payment. But once someone’s guard is down, that’s when a boiler room con could really kick in. 

Douglas Ellis is on the FSA’s register of unauthorised firms - for more visit www.fsa.gov.uk . Crusader, however, has no evidence Douglas Ellis’s call to Derek was part of a boiler room fraud.