London Capital and Finance
Discussion
Good early call by Truffles
We need some sort of 21st century Mr Man character for this person ( although it would be better used for the investors who have sadly lost their savings)
Truffles said:
Unregulated, no compensation scheme, no details of the underlying securities and too-good to be true interest rates. Run away.
I did chuckle when reading today's bbc article: the majority shareholder of the company that advertised this product is called Mr Careless.We need some sort of 21st century Mr Man character for this person ( although it would be better used for the investors who have sadly lost their savings)
Except for criminally mathematical challenged how would anyone think this was a safe investment.
A basic understanding of market forces surely warns that kf someone is way off the market average then it's either dodgy or naive and about to fail?
It's the same as all the contractors bleating about hmrc clawing back money from their dodgy loan arrangements, but greed seems to overcome common sense
A basic understanding of market forces surely warns that kf someone is way off the market average then it's either dodgy or naive and about to fail?
It's the same as all the contractors bleating about hmrc clawing back money from their dodgy loan arrangements, but greed seems to overcome common sense
Although the more 'financially aware' should have seen through this is a probable scam it's also very easy to see how an ordinary investor has been suckered in. The glossy, expensive, advertising, a range of claims and a level of financial supervision must be enough to attract some who have received a one-off lump sum. The key worry should have been the usual 'if it's too good to be true.....' - but would many new investors know enough to be able to compare ?
Yes, gullible and naive, but understandable.
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Yes, gullible and naive, but understandable.
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LCF paid 25% commission (£60m) to Surge Group PLC for the marketing of this rubbish.
Surge directors Paul Careless and John Jones also happen to be directors of no less than 10 recently established special purpose vehicle property companies.
Neither Surge or any of the 10 SPV property companies have ever filed accounts at Companies House.
It does make you wonder whether any of these newly established property companies benefited from the loans made using the clients money...
Oh, and LCF were not authorised to provide ISAs and the 'bonds' were not eligible to be held in an ISA in any event.
Surge directors Paul Careless and John Jones also happen to be directors of no less than 10 recently established special purpose vehicle property companies.
Neither Surge or any of the 10 SPV property companies have ever filed accounts at Companies House.
It does make you wonder whether any of these newly established property companies benefited from the loans made using the clients money...
Oh, and LCF were not authorised to provide ISAs and the 'bonds' were not eligible to be held in an ISA in any event.
Robertj21a said:
Although the more 'financially aware' should have seen through this is a probable scam it's also very easy to see how an ordinary investor has been suckered in. The glossy, expensive, advertising, a range of claims and a level of financial supervision must be enough to attract some who have received a one-off lump sum. The key worry should have been the usual 'if it's too good to be true.....' - but would many new investors know enough to be able to compare ?
Yes, gullible and naive, but understandable.
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I can appreciate your viewpoint but just how many of these bent schemes do we need before people actually stop throwing their life savings away?Yes, gullible and naive, but understandable.
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The extremely harsh reality is that nothing is going to stop these people. There is a significant section of society that regardless of how many times this happens, how many times they see it happening, how many times they hear it on the news they will still go ahead and put their life savings into something that is weakly regulated or unregulated or just blatantly obviously bent.
They cannot be stopped. I’ve seen them by the thousands over the years and you can stand in front of them very clearly explaining why it is a scam and they will sit there and agree with your every word and then within five minutes of leaving the room they will throw their life savings in the bin so that they can have that five minute fix of believing they are in control, they are going to earn enough to not have to go Ubering.
It took me twenty years before the reality actually dawned on me. These people don’t want to be saved. They don’t want to be stopped and no amount of regulation, education or protection can stand in their way. It’s an illness and the disease is called greed. It’s a predominantly male illness and this country is riddled all over with men who have worked their entire life, inherit some money that will cover their family’s retirement in due course or gain access to their pension and they just throw it all away leaving their wife and family screwed.
I suspect that a big driver is envy and delusion. They spend their life thinking that those higher up the ladder are raking in much more than they are, that they are getting 10,20% annual returns in investments and so when they see some s
thouse scam investment they have a false concept of risk/return and that a posh place name must be more kosher but they still know that these schemes are bent. They’ve seen them all their life time and time again as friends and neighbours have lost money on time shares, ostrich or bamboo farms, putting their gold in the post, fx trading schemes, even bitcoin the list of scams is endless and they have witnessed them all their life and know all about them and know victims. To empathise with these people, to feel sorry, to excuse them, to reward them or protect them is to enable them. It’s horrible and it’s harsh but they cannot be stopped and not are they remotely innocent and we ought to start viewing them more as criminal enablers than as victims and maybe then few people on the peripheries might get sucked in. Long after the FCA wrote to SIPP CEO advising them of their responsibilities into conducting due diligence on so called ‘Standard’ Bonds that everyone knew were spurious, some persisted in facilitating them to various IFA without rigour or issuing a warning. Interesting to see that Neil L, a decent IFA, first took this to the Regulator in 2015.
Ginge R said:
Long after the FCA wrote to SIPP CEO advising them of their responsibilities into conducting due diligence on so called ‘Standard’ Bonds that everyone knew were spurious, some persisted in facilitating them to various IFA without rigour or issuing a warning. Interesting to see that Neil L, a decent IFA, first took this to the Regulator in 2015.
Yes, it is a sorry state of affairs when the FCA needs to get the providers to police the activity of IFAs in order to protect people from their advice.It is also very worrying for the future existence of IFAs if providers are ever deemed liable for the advice given by them. If this happened then no provider would ever touch an IFA again due to the liability.
Though given the media would have a field day with this "FCA itself admits IFAs can't be trusted" and the like, I doubt people would want to use them anyway.
Amazingly some IFAs are actually publicly calling for this to happen and being highly vocal about this, which doesn't say much for their forward planning abilities.
Not, of course, that this thread has anything to do with IFAs or SIPP providers, so I'll leave it there.
JulianPH said:
Yes, it is a sorry state of affairs when the FCA needs to get the providers to police the activity of IFAs in order to protect people from their advice.
It is also very worrying for the future existence of IFAs if providers are ever deemed liable for the advice given by them. If this happened then no provider would ever touch an IFA again due to the liability.
Though given the media would have a field day with this "FCA itself admits IFAs can't be trusted" and the like, I doubt people would want to use them anyway.
Amazingly some IFAs are actually publicly calling for this to happen and being highly vocal about this, which doesn't say much for their forward planning abilities.
Not, of course, that this thread has anything to do with IFAs or SIPP providers, so I'll leave it there.
As ever, some really great points mate. It is also very worrying for the future existence of IFAs if providers are ever deemed liable for the advice given by them. If this happened then no provider would ever touch an IFA again due to the liability.
Though given the media would have a field day with this "FCA itself admits IFAs can't be trusted" and the like, I doubt people would want to use them anyway.
Amazingly some IFAs are actually publicly calling for this to happen and being highly vocal about this, which doesn't say much for their forward planning abilities.
Not, of course, that this thread has anything to do with IFAs or SIPP providers, so I'll leave it there.
DonkeyApple said:
I can appreciate your viewpoint but just how many of these bent schemes do we need before people actually stop throwing their life savings away?
The extremely harsh reality is that nothing is going to stop these people. There is a significant section of society that regardless of how many times this happens, how many times they see it happening, how many times they hear it on the news they will still go ahead and put their life savings into something that is weakly regulated or unregulated or just blatantly obviously bent.
They cannot be stopped. I’ve seen them by the thousands over the years and you can stand in front of them very clearly explaining why it is a scam and they will sit there and agree with your every word and then within five minutes of leaving the room they will throw their life savings in the bin so that they can have that five minute fix of believing they are in control, they are going to earn enough to not have to go Ubering.
It took me twenty years before the reality actually dawned on me. These people don’t want to be saved. They don’t want to be stopped and no amount of regulation, education or protection can stand in their way. It’s an illness and the disease is called greed. It’s a predominantly male illness and this country is riddled all over with men who have worked their entire life, inherit some money that will cover their family’s retirement in due course or gain access to their pension and they just throw it all away leaving their wife and family screwed.
I suspect that a big driver is envy and delusion. They spend their life thinking that those higher up the ladder are raking in much more than they are, that they are getting 10,20% annual returns in investments and so when they see some sthouse scam investment they have a false concept of risk/return and that a posh place name must be more kosher but they still know that these schemes are bent. They’ve seen them all their life time and time again as friends and neighbours have lost money on time shares, ostrich or bamboo farms, putting their gold in the post, fx trading schemes, even bitcoin the list of scams is endless and they have witnessed them all their life and know all about them and know victims. To empathise with these people, to feel sorry, to excuse them, to reward them or protect them is to enable them. It’s horrible and it’s harsh but they cannot be stopped and not are they remotely innocent and we ought to start viewing them more as criminal enablers than as victims and maybe then few people on the peripheries might get sucked in.
I know that you are not shooting the messenger (as I largely agree with you anyway) but it does look like a few bits of the regulatory arrangements could benefit from a review.The extremely harsh reality is that nothing is going to stop these people. There is a significant section of society that regardless of how many times this happens, how many times they see it happening, how many times they hear it on the news they will still go ahead and put their life savings into something that is weakly regulated or unregulated or just blatantly obviously bent.
They cannot be stopped. I’ve seen them by the thousands over the years and you can stand in front of them very clearly explaining why it is a scam and they will sit there and agree with your every word and then within five minutes of leaving the room they will throw their life savings in the bin so that they can have that five minute fix of believing they are in control, they are going to earn enough to not have to go Ubering.
It took me twenty years before the reality actually dawned on me. These people don’t want to be saved. They don’t want to be stopped and no amount of regulation, education or protection can stand in their way. It’s an illness and the disease is called greed. It’s a predominantly male illness and this country is riddled all over with men who have worked their entire life, inherit some money that will cover their family’s retirement in due course or gain access to their pension and they just throw it all away leaving their wife and family screwed.
I suspect that a big driver is envy and delusion. They spend their life thinking that those higher up the ladder are raking in much more than they are, that they are getting 10,20% annual returns in investments and so when they see some s
thouse scam investment they have a false concept of risk/return and that a posh place name must be more kosher but they still know that these schemes are bent. They’ve seen them all their life time and time again as friends and neighbours have lost money on time shares, ostrich or bamboo farms, putting their gold in the post, fx trading schemes, even bitcoin the list of scams is endless and they have witnessed them all their life and know all about them and know victims. To empathise with these people, to feel sorry, to excuse them, to reward them or protect them is to enable them. It’s horrible and it’s harsh but they cannot be stopped and not are they remotely innocent and we ought to start viewing them more as criminal enablers than as victims and maybe then few people on the peripheries might get sucked in. .
Robertj21a said:
I know that you are not shooting the messenger (as I largely agree with you anyway) but it does look like a few bits of the regulatory arrangements could benefit from a review.
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Absolutely. As a broker you can report something untoward going on in your own industry and absolutely nothing happens until a higher power such as the EU, the US or Parliament speak up. Even in this case it looks like an industry professional put pen to paper three years ago. .
It is the lack of proactivity by the FCA that is so disappointing. They use their product intervention powers to stop retail investors being advised to buy contingent capital bonds issued by large, highly rated banks but do the square root of f*ck all when faced with this sort of pretty obvious scam. Maybe Nicky Morgan and the Treasury committee can ask them some difficult questions.
DonkeyApple said:
Absolutely. As a broker you can report something untoward going on in your own industry and absolutely nothing happens until a higher power such as the EU, the US or Parliament speak up. Even in this case it looks like an industry professional put pen to paper three years ago.
Couldn't agree more mate. Only once have the FCA acted with speed on a company we reported to them. Most things appear to just be ignored.We now at least have a very senior contact within the FCA who certainly does act on our observations of bad/fraudulent activities. Prior to that things seemed to fall on deaf ears.
With LCF, the FCA was alerted to this scam in 2015, knew the 'bonds' were not allowed within an ISA, yet they did nothing.
If I had lost money on this I know who I would be going for.
JulianPH said:
DonkeyApple said:
Absolutely. As a broker you can report something untoward going on in your own industry and absolutely nothing happens until a higher power such as the EU, the US or Parliament speak up. Even in this case it looks like an industry professional put pen to paper three years ago.
Couldn't agree more mate. Only once have the FCA acted with speed on a company we reported to them. Most things appear to just be ignored.We now at least have a very senior contact within the FCA who certainly does act on our observations of bad/fraudulent activities. Prior to that things seemed to fall on deaf ears.
With LCF, the FCA was alerted to this scam in 2015, knew the 'bonds' were not allowed within an ISA, yet they did nothing.
If I had lost money on this I know who I would be going for.
.
The Director of Surge Group
https://www.standard.co.uk/business/business-focus...
He likes his nice cars so might be on here
https://www.essexmagazine.co.uk/2019/03/everything...
https://www.standard.co.uk/business/business-focus...
He likes his nice cars so might be on here
https://www.essexmagazine.co.uk/2019/03/everything...
My father in law was looking at this outfit around 6 months ago - thinking of investing around 10k, albeit he was still relatively speculative. Had a look at them on my phone and, whilst I'm no expert on investment schemes, told him to avoid on the basis it was unregulated - that was as far as I bothered looking.
How are things like this even legal?
How are things like this even legal?
DonkeyApple said:
Absolutely. As a broker you can report something untoward going on in your own industry and absolutely nothing happens until a higher power such as the EU, the US or Parliament speak up. Even in this case it looks like an industry professional put pen to paper three years ago.
don’t think it’s as straightforward as that. I met with Andrew Bailey (FCA Chief Exec) and Megan Butler (FCA Director of Supervision) last week to discuss a matter that I’ve become unwittingly involved with (trying to remedy for savers). It’s easy for us to take a potshot at the Regulator, but I now believe it’s not as easy as I certainly once thought it was. The FCA certainly needs to be more asymmetric but it’s not a fault of it, that it’s not. It went head to head with the banks for years - organisations that were going nowhere, but now we have rogue adviser, rogue SIPP company, rogue broker activity springing up like brushfire, then quickly dying out again.
The system simply isn’t working as well as it could. Resources are limited and stretched, and the threats are new, emerging, varied and numerous. I think, too, that there needs to be a distinct organisation; one that is far more agile and intermediate, one that can act on a suspicion without having to clear the high bar of proof that the FCA does.
coyft said:
JulianPH said:
LCF paid 25% commission (£60m) to Surge Group PLC for the marketing of this rubbish.
So, from the very outset this was a complete con. In order to give an investor an 8% return, when you've paid 25% to acquire the investor, you'd need to make commercial loans at 43% interest p.a.What is the point of the FCA if they are going to authorise a firm with a business model that is doomed to failure at the very outset?
But any comission on marketing, which is a high % of the investment value screams scammy scam scam to me.
Is it common place/legit?
There are certainly ways of circumnavigating it. Fund manager pays fee to agent overseas, agent overseas pays kickback to a party connected with the U.K. broker or adviser, and so on and so on. Financial distribution (aka sales) has become incredibly tight, in a regulatory sense, but that’s also a weakness. The principle of Common Design applies.
All parties, it may be alleged, know ‘the game’. They all know what’s going on beyond reasonable doubt, but are also able to point to a regulation or two that, superficially, absolves them of responsibility. In many ways, it’s a case of Hear No Evil, See No Evil, Say No Evil - and full steam ahead, whilst everyone writes more business - kerrching, time for a new Bentley (and who cares about the little people anyway?).
All parties, it may be alleged, know ‘the game’. They all know what’s going on beyond reasonable doubt, but are also able to point to a regulation or two that, superficially, absolves them of responsibility. In many ways, it’s a case of Hear No Evil, See No Evil, Say No Evil - and full steam ahead, whilst everyone writes more business - kerrching, time for a new Bentley (and who cares about the little people anyway?).
I would also add that there is a frustration around it being the same people driving much of this. A network of repeat offenders who milk penny shares, crypto, peer to peer, minibonds, gold, rare metals, gemstones, bamboo farms, anything that has weak regulation and can be spun to attract the army of enablers who know it’s too good to be true but whose greed overwhelms them.
It takes two to tango and we should stop seeing the people who enable the shysters as victims but as enablers as much as we should continue to try and force the FCA to actually do their job of reacting to these schemes when they are highlighted by the industry instead of their policy of letting them run free and just stepping in once it’s all over.
The day minibonds first came into existence the FCA knew that they would be abused by the unscrupulous. They knew numerous minibonds and P2P structures would be used to defraud consumers and they knew the names of most of the people who would be getting involved. They made a conscious decision to not police these products but to just get involved in the clean up once they went wrong.
It takes two to tango and we should stop seeing the people who enable the shysters as victims but as enablers as much as we should continue to try and force the FCA to actually do their job of reacting to these schemes when they are highlighted by the industry instead of their policy of letting them run free and just stepping in once it’s all over.
The day minibonds first came into existence the FCA knew that they would be abused by the unscrupulous. They knew numerous minibonds and P2P structures would be used to defraud consumers and they knew the names of most of the people who would be getting involved. They made a conscious decision to not police these products but to just get involved in the clean up once they went wrong.
Edited by DonkeyApple on Sunday 10th March 10:27
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