Loans company London Property Investments (UK) Limited has been accused of preying on homeowners in mortgage arrears and facing eviction.
It allegedly snared customers into signing deals for new loans, with small print saying they had to pay fees of up to 35% of the property value if they tried to sell their homes.
When victims couldn’t keep up with loan repayments, another outfit run by the same bunch, NPI Holdings Limited of Birmingham, bought the homes under sell-and-rent-back deals.
Now the Financial Services Authority has obtained an injunction banning the operation and is seeking compensation for the victims involved. “The FCA believes that the defendants’ activities have affected dozens of individuals, some of whom are highly vulnerable and who may have lost hundreds of thousands of pounds,” it says.
The legal action is being taken against the companies and director Daniel Stevens, 26, and his father Anthony Kafetzis, also known as: Anthony Stephens, Tony Stevens, Tony Stephens, George Stasis, Anthonio Georgiou and Andreas Georgiou.
This made me laugh, in a bitterly ironic sort of way.
An online review of an investment outfit called Amfeix said that one positive sign was that it advertised on Google.
“This is actually huge for me as I have used Google Ads before and Google doesn’t mess around with non-legit companies,” it read.
The reality is that Google Ads is awash with scammers, so much so that I would actively discourage anyone seeking savings advice from using the search engine.
Amfeix is showing worrying signs of being another disastrous example.
It claims to be a bank where you can deposit Bitcoin and earn interest of 4% a month, which works out at an unlikely annual rate of 60%.
According to Amfeix, it is set to “outperform all other traditional banks and be a safe haven for wealth”.
Far from being safe, investors are now finding that they cannot take out
QUIT Jack Hudson their savings. One customer who deposited 0.75 Bitcoin, worth about £5,500, told me: “Amfeix is advertised heavily online and I was looking for an investment opportunity.
“Now I am deeply worried because no withdrawals are possible.”
Jack Hudson, 22, was named on its website as the director of what, so far as I can tell, is its only incorporated business, Amfeix Enterprise Tradings Ltd, registered in the UK.
That was until he resigned in May, leaving the company with no directors, and it is now listed as due to be struck off the Companies House register.
Amfeix would not tell me who now runs the operation, and its Twitter account has only vaguely addressed the question of blocked customer withdrawals, saying: “Several key changes are being made behind the scenes for a long-lasting solution.”
It’s all looking rather bleak for “The world’s largest and most trusted Bitcoin bank”.