COPS SWOOP ON BOILER ROOMS
Two on fraud charges, luxury cars seized in city raids
TWO alleged Gold Coast fraudsters have been charged and others questioned after police yesterday raided four locations across the city over boiler room scams.
Police seized a $200,000 Bentley and a $190,000 Audi R8 when they raided the Broadbeach Waters home of two men, believed to be a father and son, and arrested them at 9.30am yesterday.
A 53-year-old man was charged with five fraud offences and a 22-year-old was charged with three.
Both are due to appear in Southport Magistrates Court today accused of being behind Charterhurst Agencies Pty Ltd – an alleged boiler room call centre that offered fraudulent sports betting software.
Police also raided the Cavill Ave office address of TRP Solutions, a company alleged to have offered software that would predict changes in the stock market.
In both instances, police claim that when consumers had attempted to complain about the products being faulty or not delivering what had been promised, the sellers became non-contactable.
Queensland fraud and cyber crime group Detective Inspector Terry Lawrence said yesterday’s operations involved raids of home addresses and workplaces but said the boiler room model was based around forcing a quick sale.
“They’ll cold-call people out of the blue and then offer them an opportunity to do something,” he alleged.
“It seems reasonable at the time. It’s not too much of a big ask. If people bite, they up the ante with the pressure selling and they bring other people in – a salesperson who brings a very good script.
“They’ve done all their work and everything else on how to use the right words to engage people and encourage them to make a payment.”
Insp Lawrence said investigations into TRP Solutions were at a preliminary stage.
Police had already executed a search warrant on a property related to Charterhurst in April.
“With TRP what we’ve done is put a lot of effort and concentration into it in the shorter period to give us the ability to go through the door with our search warrants months ahead of where we would normally be,” he said.
“Previous jobs, as you’ve seen, go on for 12 months, two years.”
Police have identified around 35 people they believe to be victims of the TRP scam.
Fraud and organised crime group acting Detective Inspector Stephen Blanchfield said police were looking for any links between yesterday’s targets and other boiler room operations.
Although he described the boiler room phenomenon as “borderless” Insp Blanchfield said there seemed to be a concentration of them on the Gold Coast.