Trader goes missing after £130m of clients' cash disappears
Discussion
youngsyr said:
bigandclever said:
When I got done over it was a combination of many things. Not sure I'd consider myself a 'victim', as such and certainly my greed played a major factor in being involved in the first place; but at the other end was my crooked accountant who ran the scheme. I was lucky, the FSA froze his accounts before all the 'investments' were spunked away, but he still managed to take over £1million (from everyone, not just me).
It's also tricky for the non-financially literate (and even the financially literate, sometimes) to spot frauds..
Look at some of the new items..
"The businessman, who traded from a smart residential address in Istanbul with views over the Bosporus, is understood to have left Turkey some weeks ago."
"One client, who invested £570,000 in the now-collapsed scheme, said the name Joe Lewis Trading led him to believe that the business had links with the multi-billionaire Joe Lewis – the British businessman who is based in the Bahamas and runs the Tavistock Group, which owns Spurs"
"They were promised very healthy returns of 36 per cent a year."
But it was difficult to spot. Riiiggghhhhttt...
sugerbear said:
But it was difficult to spot. Riiiggghhhhttt...
The fact is for some it is, evidently. Just because people are thick, financially illiterate, naive or in some other way compromised does not mean they are fair game to be scammed. Details like he was operating out of a residential block in Turkey probably didn't make it to the glossy brochure eagerly foisted on the dimwitted. These things work by word of mouth and once a few people start getting these kinds of returns they evangelically sell it to friends and family. Its not greed either, everyone is greedy, some people are just not as cynical as your average NP&E armchair expert!Digga said:
sugerbear said:
But it was difficult to spot. Riiiggghhhhttt...
Oh well if people willingly gave money to someone they knew was a fraudster than it's all alright. Thanks for clearing that up for us.Either way, people gave him their money quite freely and some didn't even check who he was in the hope that he would outperform the market. He didn't so it will now be up to whoever regulates him to decide.
My point still stands, how anyone didn't see this a massive risk is beyond me because it had all the hallmarks of scam.
sugerbear said:
One client, who invested £570,000 in the now-collapsed scheme, said the name Joe Lewis Trading led him to believe that the business had links with the multi-billionaire Joe Lewis
How can someone have such a large sum of money to invest yet fail to do even the most basic of research into where they are putting it? At least he didn't think it was linked to the deceased boxer I suppose ..fblm said:
The fact is for some it is, evidently. Just because people are thick, financially illiterate, naive or in some other way compromised does not mean they are fair game to be scammed. Details like he was operating out of a residential block in Turkey probably didn't make it to the glossy brochure eagerly foisted on the dimwitted. These things work by word of mouth and once a few people start getting these kinds of returns they evangelically sell it to friends and family. Its not greed either, everyone is greedy, some people are just not as cynical as your average NP&E armchair expert!
Some people need protecting from themselves. Unfortunately, they tend to be the same people who cry foul at the "nanny state" for interfering with their lives. fblm said:
Ha I thought the same thing when I first read it but the details didn't stack up. The 'real' Joe Lewis has paintings worth more than this clowns scam! Who puts their money with these people? Amazing
It appears this fake Joe Lewis was quite content to let people who tried to due some due diligence and check into his background think he was the Joe Lewis of the Tavistock group, makes you wonder if he chose the JLtrading name to take advantage of this. If so, unfair to the real Joe Lewis:
http://www.tavistock.com/how-to-build-a-great-amer...
It never fails to amaze that investors can ignore the obvious {36% pa?}.
Once there are a few wealthy people on board, others follow & fail to do even the most basic due diligence - on the basis that "so & so has invested & he/she is loaded, so it must be good, they'd have checked it out so I don't need to."
Once there are a few wealthy people on board, others follow & fail to do even the most basic due diligence - on the basis that "so & so has invested & he/she is loaded, so it must be good, they'd have checked it out so I don't need to."
fblm said:
The only people who lost money were ordinary people who got scammed by a con man. What has this got to do with 'top city traders'?
the whole trading scene is gambling dressed up as investment . yes,people make vast sums of money, but in many areas it relies on others to lose those vast sums to those that profit. i have no problem with it,but people seem to fail to grasp the concept that as well as making money,they can lose it all, time and time again.
BoRED S2upid said:
36% a year? Where do I sign? What do these people think he is doing to get those returns every year!
Those kind of returns are out of the reach of normal people like PH members.However, once you start having £millions to invest, they start to become more achievable - I know this for a fact as I worked for a company that delivered them legitimately (pre personal tax) for some clients over the past few years.
Of course, there is a large amount of risk involved, but if you have that kind of money to invest and are willing to take on substantial risk, those kind of returns aren't massively outside of the realms of possibility.
After all, people don't become billionaires by sticking their money in a current account.
I knew of this guy he used to trade as Lon-ist, his website front page stated he had no connection with the "Tavistock Joe Lewis"
I'd never heard them promise a return of any figure, it was clients doing that, recommending to there friends etc, I'm still
Undecided on whether he set this up as a Ponzi scam from the outset or simply run out of luck as a trader, end of the day a lot of people have lost a lot of money.
On his own admission he stopped trading 5 years ago, so he has had a while to plan his retirement.
I'd never heard them promise a return of any figure, it was clients doing that, recommending to there friends etc, I'm still
Undecided on whether he set this up as a Ponzi scam from the outset or simply run out of luck as a trader, end of the day a lot of people have lost a lot of money.
On his own admission he stopped trading 5 years ago, so he has had a while to plan his retirement.
Currency trader Joe Lewis, whose business collapsed losing investors millions, is detained five months after police missed a first chance to arrest him over alleged 'ponzi' scheme
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/11570...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/11570...
Gassing Station | News, Politics & Economics | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff