Recovering Funds From Poor Investment Advice - Options?

[EViS]

In 2011, a relative was advised by their Independent Financial Advisor to invest, from their cash ISA, quite a sizeable amount into a notorious off-shore property development. As expected, thousands of investors ended up losing money, with the SFO getting involved. My relative was too distraught to pursue any potential claims and this only recently came up in conversation with them. I'd like to see whether I could help.

From my research, the FSCS currently still compensates investors from this 'scam', but only those invested via companies which have since liquidated. The IFA is still trading as an appointed representative of the original FCA regulated company.

The Financial Ombudsman will only involve themselves within 6 years of the issue (poor advice from the IFA / signing of 'investment' contract) arising, or 3 years from when the problem ('scam' of an investment) was first discovered. Both these dates have now been missed by some margin.

There is a very clear email history documenting (very) poor advice, and IMO, high pressure selling tactics from the IFA to get my relative invested into this particular scheme. Are there any other channels which may be worth pursuing for which there exists no time limit from when the investment first took place? Or is such a case well beyond any statute of limitations?

[croissant]

Some of the trade publications have experience of these types of issues and can sometimes offer guidance on how best to pursue a claim.

Try contacting the editors of MoneyMarketing, or NewModelAdviser... they're usually responsive to messages of this nature.

[EViS]

croissant said:

Some of the trade publications have experience of these types of issues and can sometimes offer guidance on how best to pursue a claim.

Try contacting the editors of MoneyMarketing, or NewModelAdviser... they're usually responsive to messages of this nature.

Thanks for the reply and suggesting an interesting source for assistance. Would you find some of these editors via LinkedIn (for example) and message them privately? OR send an email to those publications' generic email address?

[will_]

EViS said:

In 2011, a relative was advised by their Independent Financial Advisor to invest, from their cash ISA, quite a sizeable amount into a notorious off-shore property development. As expected, thousands of investors ended up losing money, with the SFO getting involved. My relative was too distraught to pursue any potential claims and this only recently came up in conversation with them. I'd like to see whether I could help.

From my research, the FSCS currently still compensates investors from this 'scam', but only those invested via companies which have since liquidated. The IFA is still trading as an appointed representative of the original FCA regulated company.

The Financial Ombudsman will only involve themselves within 6 years of the issue (poor advice from the IFA / signing of 'investment' contract) arising, or 3 years from when the problem ('scam' of an investment) was first discovered. Both these dates have now been missed by some margin.

There is a very clear email history documenting (very) poor advice, and IMO, high pressure selling tactics from the IFA to get my relative invested into this particular scheme. Are there any other channels which may be worth pursuing for which there exists no time limit from when the investment first took place? Or is such a case well beyond any statute of limitations?

You may be able to pursue a claim which would otherwise be out of time if there was fraud or deliberate concealment by the IFA, but that is a high hurdle to cross and sounds like it might also be statute barred already.

[millen]

For the notorious Dolphin/Germany Property Group ponzi scheme there's a couple of large Facebook groups discussing routes to compensation. (Though I don't see their chances as strong.) And a couple of compensation lawyers eg TheClaimsBureau and SmoothCommercialLaw are looking at individual claims.

Maybe there's similar activity on your relative's example?

[croissant]

EViS said:

croissant said:

Some of the trade publications have experience of these types of issues and can sometimes offer guidance on how best to pursue a claim.

Try contacting the editors of MoneyMarketing, or NewModelAdviser... they're usually responsive to messages of this nature.

Thanks for the reply and suggesting an interesting source for assistance. Would you find some of these editors via LinkedIn (for example) and message them privately? OR send an email to those publications' generic email address?

MoneyMarketing contacts can be found here:

[e-mail]

https://www.moneymarketing.co.uk/contact-us/

NewModelAdviser here:

[e-mail]

https://citywire.co.uk/new-model-adviser/news/cont...

[EViS]

Thank you for those replies chaps. I have followed through with them and will report back on whether I receive any response.