Exposed: Postal fraud mafia
Over champagne and lobster at an idyllic ski resort, vile conmen boast to our reporter how they can rip off the elderly with help from the Royal Mail
THE scene could hardly be more inviting. As the sun sets on the edge of a lake in the Canadian Rockies, champagne and canapes are served to a glamorous international crowd.
Men in suits with glinting designer watches chatter happily with women wearing cocktail dresses and stilettos – as waiters refill their champagne flutes.
Anyone glimpsing the scene would assume the stylish group were at an ordinary – albeit lavish – business conference, with many obviously fond friends and colleagues.
And on the surface, the atmosphere seems convivial, as they make contacts, discuss plans, and celebrate success.
But – when out of earshot of his colleagues – one handsome, smartly-dressed German reveals the truth. ‘Here it is a little bit like the mafia reunion worldwide,’ he says, quietly.
‘All the people you see around here – that’s the whole industry. It’s a very, very, very closed-shop business. And the business itself is… not very nice always.’
The truth is this is far from a normal business conference.
The ‘ industry’ many of these men and women are involved in is ripping off millions of pensioners through postal scams. Their letters try to trick the vulnerable and elderly into sending money through the post. Hundreds of thousands of these letters are flown into Britain from Europe every month.
They get into the mail system with the connivance of private postage companies that turn a blind eye.
And they are placed in the hands of their victims by trusted Royal Mail postmen and women, proudly wearing the Queen’s insignia on their jackets. It is a practice the Royal Mail seems unable, or unwilling, to stop. The scammers even enjoy huge discounts on postage as a thanks for sending so much. Those behind these letters share hundreds of millions of pounds a year made from the misery of British victims, who often have been left vulnerable through bereavement, isolation or dementia.
And those drinking Moet and eating canapes at this bizarre conference in the Whistler ski resort include some of the industry’s biggest players.
Some prey on the sick, promising cures that, one scammer laughingly admits, ‘don’t really work, and [the people sending them] know they don’t really work. It’s make-believe – a kind of fraud’.
Others find even more sinister ways to exploit the elderly. Some letters claim to be from clairvoyants, telling victims that those closest to them are trying to harm them. Unless they send money for protection, the letters claim, they will be in grave danger.
And above all, they must not tell families and friends about the let- ters. These ‘clairvoyant’ mailings are the type of letter the well-dressed German – called Christian Limpach – tells the Daily Mail’s undercover reporter he is involved in.
And the aim of them is clear: ‘To rip off the people.’ Particularly ‘females over 60’, who are seen as the most vulnerable.
The letters, he says, are ‘crazy’ and ‘very weird’. But, he adds unapologetically, ‘they work’. And ‘the more you lie, the better it sells’.
As he and his colleagues tuck into lamb in red-wine sauce and truffle macaroni at the upmarket Bearfoot Bistro, our reporter asks Mr Limpach if he feels he is ripping people off. ‘Yes,’ he admits. ‘People pay for something that’s not worth money. Maybe it’s not a nice expression, ripping off people, but… we [are] reaping the profits.’
Asked if what he is doing is legal, he gives a wry smile. ‘Ah. That’s a very, very good question,’ he replies. ‘It’s a grey area.’ Some of the scammers tell the Mail’s reporter they specialise in sweepstake and prize-draw letters. These claim you have won a car or cash prize, and just need to pay a ‘release fee’ to get it.
The more money you send, the more the fees escalate.
A lawyer who examined these letters for the Mail said many could amount to criminal fraud.
Most people rarely fall for such scams – so those behind them target the elderly and vulnerable.
They know the elderly are most likely to believe they are dutybound to reply to these official-looking – and apparently personally addressed – letters. And the letters are made to look like they are sent from the UK, almost always bearing a Royal Mail logo. Scammers make lists of the most likely victims – known as ‘suckers lists’.
They then trade these with other criminals, in exchange for more names – meaning victims are often bombarded with scam mail.
‘These people are a gift,’ one Canadian sweepstake scammer, Andrew John Thomas, said mockingly.
‘They get sucked in. These people just should not be buying these things. And yet they are, and I can’t do anything about that.’
Mr Thomas was speaking over yet another lavish champagne reception and dinner in Whistler, this time at top restaurant Araxi.
Swirling his pinot noir, Mr Thomas said his talent for writing made him a dab hand at the scam letters.
‘I am passionate about my prostitution, my ability to whore my beautiful talent to sell this s*** to people who don’t need it,’ he grinned. ‘I’m a proud whore!’
Having previously specialised in clairvoyant letters, Mr Thomas said he was concentrating on sweepstake and prize-draw scams – because he could make more money. Between mouthfuls of steak, he mocked his victims with wide-eyed impressions of their belief that phoney health products could heal them. ‘The people that we’re dealing with, they’re just like… I don’t even understand them,’ he said.
‘They are people who I wouldn’t be friends with, you know? They are so susceptible to suggestion. And so, the art of it is to just tap them with suggestion. And then as that suggestion is working, then you just dime it from there.’
Mr Thomas told how he no longer minded lying to people – saying he had learned to ‘let the lie go, you know? Because there is no truth’. This gang meets for a ‘conference’
‘The more you lie, the better it sells’
‘Here it’ s like the mafia reunion worldwide ... the business itself is not very nice’
‘I’ m passionate about my ability to whore my talent and sell t hiss *** to people who don’t need it’
‘When people are a little bit lonely... they love toread such mailings’
‘Very old people... are going to read mailings because they’ve got the time... it’s a kind of fraud’
every two years, in glamorous locations all over the world. They call it ‘Networking DM’ – DM standing for ‘Direct Mail’. But ‘Networking DM’ is like no other conference.
There are no auditoriums or eminent guest speakers – in fact, no explicit references to what their business actually is. The conference consists of private meetings over champagne breakfasts or coffee in a hotel’s wood-panelled lobby bar.
The rest of the time, there is a constant stream of lavish entertainment. Even at breakfast, guests were served amuse-bouches – with strawberries, goat’s cheese and a white balsamic glaze – while yet more champagne was on offer. This extraordinary largesse was sponsored by a number of firms at the conference, including payment processing giant PacNet. This shadowy company – which the US government has branded a ‘criminal organisation’ that ‘knowingly’ launders money for fraudsters – is understood to process much of the money generated by the scam mailings.
In the words of one scammer: ‘Everybody here uses PacNet. Everybody that wants to conceal the true source of business.’
When our reporter opened her purse to buy a drink, one PacNet representative closed it, saying: ‘Put your money away!’ Waving a manicured hand over the bar, she added: ‘This is all free.’
Not that the attendees were short of cash. Most make millions – and, according to one scammer at the conference, some ‘consider it a competition sport to avoid as much tax as possible’. ‘You’ll also find some of their companies are owned offshore,’ he claimed. He said he believed some may even have been ‘in the Panama documents’ – the recent ‘Panama Papers’ leak of documents linked to offshore tax avoidance. One of those involved in the scams, Erik Dekker, is known to own at least four high-performance cars, including a Porsche.
Mr Dekker prints millions of scam letters every year at his huge warehouse in the Netherlands and manages postboxes used for scams.
His sidekick Silvia Van Os told how ‘when people are a little bit lonely’ – especially old people – they ‘read such mailings’.
Another attendee – tangerine-tanned Barry Fulford – said business was so good he had just bought a 38ft boat for his home in the Bahamas. ‘It’s that Miami Vice kind of style,’ he said. ‘Lots of room downstairs, kitchen and stuff like that. Air-conditioned. And lots of room for sunbathing.’
Mr Fulford – who has had run-ins with the law over his tax affairs, the outcome of which is not known – was not forthcoming about the nature of his mailing activities, though he admitted regulators ‘can get a little aggressive’ about his line of work. On the whole, though, he said: ‘It works just fine. People are going to send the money, and that’s what we want, right? Keeps me in the Bahamas!’ When asked to comment, Mr Limpach said he had been talking ‘about the direct-mail market in general’ rather than what he personally did and the quotes presented to him by the Mail were ‘not at all what I wanted to communicate’. Mr Dekker said he could not comment for legal reasons, while Mr Thomas refused to comment. Mr Fulford could not be reached for comment.
PacNet denied knowing anyone there was involved in scams or ever knowingly processing money obtained through illegal activity. The firm says it takes compliance very seriously and has a rigorous compliance programme. It claims cheque processing for direct mail is only a small part of its business and the US government’s designation of it as a criminal organisation is unjustified.