£199 for this booklet? Off their heads . . .
B.B. writes: I read your report a few months ago about Roy Hasford being banned as a director after running a company that tricked businesses into paying for advice booklets for schools. My own firm has recently received an invoice from DATA Northern Limited, asking for £199 to pay for 30 booklets about drugs to be sent to schools. I remember a cold call from a woman thanking me for my work for charities and it stuck in my mind that she mentioned a figure of ‘one ninety-nine’, but not £199. Is this a scam? YOU run a local business that is just the type targeted by firms such as DATA Northern. You are busy enough not to take much notice of cold calls and you were up to your ears completing a VAT return when the call came.
The next thing you knew was that an invoice landed on your doormat in County Durham, demanding £199, although there was a generous £10 discount if you forked out within seven days.
The firm even sent you a laminated certificate saying you had ‘supported the local community in the promotion of drugs and alcohol awareness’. You might think from all this that if you handed over the £199, it would be going to some sort of charity. Not a bit of it.
DATA Northern is a profit-making commercial business, based in Stockport, Greater Manchester. Surprise, surprise, it is not a million miles away from the same Roy Hasford who has been banned from acting as a company director for the next 11 years.
Hasford, from Ashton-under-Lyne in Greater Manchester, ran The Owl House Northern Limited. This was a scam publishing firm that was shut down for using what the Insolvency Service described as ‘misleading and aggressive sales practices’ to trick businesses into paying for brochures for schools.
Businesses complained they had never agreed to pay for the brochures, but faced persistent demands for money. Investigators questioned whether the brochures were even delivered.
The Government investigators also found close links to an earlier company, TIB North Limited, which called itself the ‘Teenage Information Bureau’.
I condemned it as a rip-off in 2013 and it was closed down by the High Court a year later. It raked in more than £400,000 from businesses that were told their donations paid for booklets about sexually transmitted infections.
The boss of TIB North Limited was Gemma Reilly – the wife of Roy Hasford. She admitted using false and misleading claims to pressure people into handing over cash and she is banned from running any company until at least 2026. The link to DATA Northern? Reilly’s fellow director at TIB North was Ashley Thorley, 36, also from Stockport – and she now heads DATA Northern.
I repeatedly invited Thorley to comment on what you told me about facing demands to pay a bill you never approved. I asked her for a copy of any signed order form, or even a recording of you agreeing over the phone to fork out £199. She offered no comment, no answers and no explanation.
Do not part with a penny.