Savers hit by £230m car parking scam
Following collapse of LCF and Woodford meltdown . . .
A SERIAL entrepreneur has been accused of duping thousands of elderly savers as part of an ‘illegal’ £230m airport car parking scheme.
In the latest scandal to rock the investment industry, the Financial Conduct Authority has launched legal action against firms including Park First and their bosses.
The web of companies are part of the Lancashire-based business empire run by 42-year-old Toby Whittaker, who is being investigated by the Government’s Insolvency Service over another alleged £206m investment scam involving storage units. Park First denied it did anything illegal.
But former pensions minister Baroness Altmann called for ‘tighter regulation’ of the investment industry and said those operating scams appeared to be ‘laughing at regulators’.
The row follows the collapse of savings firm London Capital and Finance – founded by Simon Hume-Kendall – and the implosion of Neil Woodford’s investment empire, leaving savers nursing heavy losses. The FCA is seeking compensation through from Park First for around 4,500 investors, many elderly, who were persuaded to put their money in an ‘illegal’ airport car parking scheme.
Savers parted with £230m in total – or an average of more than £51,000 each. Many used their selfinvested personal pensions to put money in the scheme, which involved buying car park spaces at Gatwick and Glasgow airports and then leasing them back to the company. Some of the victims are suing Whittaker in a push for £6m in compensation. The FCA said the airport parking scheme was ‘promoted to the public using false or misleading statements’.
Investors were promised a guaranteed return of up to 12pc a year. The watchdog said the savers were also told they had received a bargain and that the parking spaces were worth 25pc more than they had paid for them. After the returns they were promised dried up, investors have been left with airport car parking spaces they claim are impossible to sell.
The FCA stopped Whittaker and his fellow directors from marketing the scheme in 2016.
But instead of shutting them down it allowed them to give investors the chance to get their money back or put it in another unregulated airport car parking scheme. The firms could not honour their promises and four of those involved collapsed into administration in July. Several others – such as Park First – are still operating and are now facing legal action.
James Daley of consumer group Fairer Finance said: ‘If the FCA is not there to protect consumers then what is it there for?’
Firms have to be regulated by the FCA to run so-called ‘collective investment schemes’ where customers’ savings are pooled and then invested. But Park First was not authorised to run such a scheme. The FCA is seeking an injunction against the defendants – Whittaker and fellow director John Slater – to stop them operating similar schemes in future. Park First still advertises car parking investment schemes at Gatwick, Luton and Glasgow airports. There is no suggestion that these schemes are illegal.
Whittaker, who lives in a £1.9m home in Burnley, is also being investigated by officials over another alleged scam.
A High Court case was brought in April by the Government’s Insolvency Service over an unregulated £206m ‘storage pod’ scheme established by another of his companies, Store First. Around 6,600 investors – again many of them pensioners – were persuaded to invest in storage units and promised high returns from renting them out, which never materialised. The court heard savers were lured into investing their money by ‘misleading information and testimonials’. The Government pushed for Store First and related firms to be wound up to protect investors. It also called for Whittaker to be barred as a company director.
A spokesman for Park First said: ‘Park First does not accept that the parking schemes that it operates were illegal collective investment schemes.’