By Jupiter! Which planet do the crooks think we live on?
Probes a world of scams and scandals
SOON after you contacted me, you received the promised paperwork – and extraordinary stuff it is too. There are letters, terms and conditions, and an invoice, all on the notepaper of the respectable investment giant Jupiter Asset Management. The letters appear to have been signed by Jasveer Singh and Lance DeLuca, two of Jupiter’s directors.
But the address shown is 199 Bishopsgate in the City of London, while Jupiter is a few miles away in Victoria Street, not far from Westminster Abbey. The letters and all the other documents are forgeries and the signatures are fakes.
Just as fictitious is the money you were promised. Square Mile Securities was a dodgy firm of stockbrokers. In 2008, it was fined £250,000 for cheating investors and it went into liquidation. Victims were reimbursed by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme. The idea there is a pot of cash sloshing around waiting to be claimed is ridiculous.
Funnier still, the fraudsters who contacted you are not bright. One of their letters promises to compensate you for dud shares you bought through a different but equally dodgy broker, Pacific Continental Securities. It was also fined and went bust. Yet by an amazing coincidence, according to the fake Jupiter, you stand to get £9,442 from it – exactly the same sum you can supposedly claim because you were ripped off by Square Mile.
I wondered whether the signatures on the letters were copies of the real thing, so I asked the genuine Jupiter to check. It told me: ‘No, they are not their real signatures, but yes, they are real directors.’
Jupiter added: ‘Anyone who parts with money is likely to become the victim of an investment fraud.’
It urges anyone who is targeted to report details to the Financial Conduct Authority and Action Fraud.
If you had fallen for the fake firm’s fraud, you would almost certainly have been asked to pay its £1,416 fee by bank transfer and not by cheque to 199 Bishopsgate.
I went there on Tuesday last week and the receptionist at the front desk of the office block knew nothing about Jupiter and assured me that no firm of that name had ever been based there.
There was one more thing I could try though. The letters you received show a phone number, 020 3289 3767, so I dialled it. A male voice said: ‘You’re through to Jupiter Asset Management, who’s calling?’
I gave my name and the speaker hung up. I dialled the same number again and this time I was told: ‘You’ve come through to DC Motors, mate.’ Again, the speaker hung up.
All of this was more than a little familiar. In March this year I warned against a similar scam. When I dialled its number I was told I had rung a firm of plumbers.
To answer your question, there is nothing you can do. The authorities already know about the fake Jupiter and its phone line and the number has cropped up before.
Earlier this year it was used by crooks posing as Miton Commodities, a genuine authorised firm in the City.
Even if the authorities which are supposed to protect consumers find it beyond them to track down the fraudsters, you would think they might at least get their phones cut off instead of letting the crooks continue under a new name.
It is no wonder that fraud is the biggest growth crime in Britain today.