Episode 9 Rip Off Britain

We asked you to tell us what's left you feeling totally ripped off,

and you've contacted us in your thousands.

You've told us about the companies you think get it wrong

and the customer service that simply isn't up to scratch.

There's a lot of blurb written down but, in practice,

the words are absolutely meaningless.

People just can't afford these prices. It's ridiculous.

You've asked us to track down the scammers who stole your money,

and investigate the extra charges that you say are unfair.

They're in a win-win situation and you're in a lose-lose situation.

If you don't do something about it, I think it's your own fault.

And when you've lost out but nobody else is to blame,

you've come to us to stop others falling into the same trap.

So, whether it's a blatant rip off or a genuine mistake,

we're here to find out why you're out of pocket

and what you can do about it.

Your stories, your money.

This is Rip-Off Britain.

Hello, and welcome to Rip-Off Britain

where, today, we'll be doing our best to make sure your money

stays out of the grubby paws of the unscrupulous operators

who have their own sights set on it. In other words - scammers.

Indeed. Some of the scammers we're hearing about this time round

really do take the biscuit when it comes to far-fetched promises

and too-good-to-be-true offers.

They seemed entirely plausible as they offered a life-changing

opportunity or windfall,

or even a great deal on a romantic retreat.

But I think you can guess

what people who took them at their word

have received in return for their money.

In two words, Gloria.

Precisely nothing.

But, of course, it was only because what they were told

seemed so convincing

that they handed over, in some cases, thousands of pounds.

These were very sophisticated scams.

So if you're the kind of person

who reckons you could never possibly be caught out,

I'd advise you to think again,

because amongst today's mix,

there'll be one that I'm quite sure would have hooked you in.

So we'll have plenty of tips to keep your money in YOUR pocket

and not in the scammers'.

Coming up, on the trail

of whoever's behind the inheritance scam

that promises that you're in line for an unexpected windfall.

You want him to transfer 20,000 dollars to you

so that you can release ten million dollars to him?

MAN ON PHONE:

'And retracing the steps of the Valentine sweethearts,

'whose romantic getaway ended in heartbreak,

'thanks to a particularly nasty con.'

I burst out crying.

It was something that I'd been thinking for the past few hours.

Things weren't adding up. But to hear it from somebody else,

it was devastating.

A big windfall completely out of the blue

is something that most of us can really only dream of.

So if you were suddenly to be told

that a very wealthy, long-lost relative,

possibly one that you didn't even know and hadn't even heard of,

had died and left you their entire fortune,

well, it would come as a bit of a shock, I should think.

And indeed, the story might just be plausible enough

to convince you that it is for real.

Unfortunately, as we're about to find out,

the chances are that it's actually a scam.

And instead of coming into money, you could end up losing

an awful lot of it.

Luxuries like this are something that most of us can only dream of,

but for some people, that dream really could come true.

There are around 10,000 unclaimed inheritances in the UK

worth hundreds of millions of pounds,

just waiting for the rightful beneficiaries to claim them.

But that knowledge is fuelling a global scam

that saw almost 4,000 victims

lose over £10 million in 2013.

It all starts with a simple text message or e-mail,

like the one that Vinnie Garrard received last summer.

The sender said that his name was Franklin Cozad,

and he claimed that he'd been asked to contact Vinnie

by a Mrs Eunice Job.

He told Vinnie that Eunice Job was ill and had instructed him

to arrange a transfer to Vinnie of 11 million!

What was your reaction when you got this text?

I was shocked.

I text him back saying, "Is it a joke?"

And he says, "No, it is true."

-But it sounded plausible?

-Yes.

Franklin said that Vinnie would need to pay legal fees

before the inheritance could be paid into his bank account.

Immediately, alarm bells rang,

and Vinnie suspected that it was a scam.

But, on the other hand, the name Eunice Job did sound familiar

from his childhood.

He wasn't to know that, in fact,

it was a name that has been used in similar scams before.

He wanted £500 off me at first,

-pay for the solicitors.

-Hmm.

What was your reaction to that?

I can't do it,

and I'm not doing it.

But the mysterious Franklin didn't give up.

Every day he would call Vinnie again,

supposedly telling him how the case was developing.

Even so, Vinnie was still reluctant to hand over any money.

I wanted to talk to somebody else, not just Franklin.

I wanted to talk to his boss.

I wanted somebody else to give me evidence of who Franklin is,

just to see if it was true or not.

Vinnie was introduced to three other people

supposedly on Eunice Job's legal team,

including Franklin's boss, a Mr Walter Van Andel.

He told Vinnie where to transfer the money,

but still couldn't convince him that this wasn't all a scam.

So, to get to the bottom of what was going on,

Vinnie came to us.

It's been a few weeks since Vinnie last spoke to Franklin

or his boss, Walter Van Andel.

So I'm going to try and call them myself

to find out just what it is they've got to say for themselves.

Let's see how much they remember about his case.

Mr Van Andel, I'm calling on behalf of Mr Vinnie Garrard,

you've been in contact with him

about an inheritance from Mrs Eunice Job.

PHONE:

That's correct. So are you the solicitor representing Mrs Job?

'So far, it's as expected.

'Vinnie had been asked for anything from £50 to £500 in the past

'but, now I'm calling on Vinnie's behalf,

'Mr Van Andel suddenly wants a LOT more.'

20,000?

20,000.

So let me get this right,

because I'm, at this moment,

representing Mr Garrard.

You want him to transfer 20,000 to you,

so that you can release 10 million to him?

Over a terrible phone connection,

I gave Mr Van Andel an e-mail address

to send us instructions for transferring the money.

'Vinnie was told that the contact details he was given

'for Walter Van Andel were in Belgium

'but, somehow, I don't believe that this man is anywhere near.'

Where are you at the moment?

Hmm. In which country?

SILENCE

Mr Van Andel, which country are you in, please?

Hello, Mr Van Andel?

PHONE BEEPS

-At that point, he clearly smells a rat.

-OK.

Not going to tell me where he is.

We tried to call back but couldn't get through,

and no wonder, because it's absolutely certain

that these people were not who they claimed to be.

Indeed, we found out that the mobile number we rang

is in fact registered in Benin, West Africa.

And while the postal address and home number Vinnie had been given

was indeed for a Walter Van Andel in Antwerp,

the scammers had simply stolen the details

of the REAL Walter Van Andel, a Belgian academic and author

whose address is in full view on his own website.

The scammers who almost persuaded Vinnie to part with his cash

were able to do so because they'd built up a relationship with him

over a couple of months,

and they made their story even more plausible

by giving him the names and the telephone numbers of four people

who were supposedly on his "case".

Though Vinnie stuck to his guns and didn't hand over any cash,

others have paid out to the scammers.

The official body Action Fraud advises that the easiest way

to avoid being caught out is to ignore any approach like this

that requires that you pay a fee,

however convincing they may make it sound.

So anything that results from a cold call, be it a telephone,

a letter, a text, something on e-mail,

which is ultimately offering you

something that sounds too good to be true,

or asking you for money, walk away from it.

Absolutely, walk away from it.

What you've got to bear in mind, a lot of these cold calls

are computer generated.

They're not singling you out.

They're dialling every single number in the phone book,

and then, when it's picked up, and it's a human voice on the end,

they'll pass it to an operator who does the sales pitch.

If it was genuine, you may get called back.

If it's a scammer, they won't know who they've spoken to,

and they won't get back to you.

And that's advice reiterated by Vinnie,

because even though he didn't hand over the money

that the scammers wanted,

just engaging with them has ended up leaving him out of pocket.

Any idea how much it's cost you?

Roughly...

I'd say about £200...

-SHE GASPS

-..in phone calls and texts.

-So you haven't got away scot-free, have you?

-No.

Well, as you can imagine, the people who are behind scams like these

go to great lengths to ensure that it's really difficult

to find out who or where they are.

So I'm afraid we've had absolutely no joy at all

contacting those men who wanted money from Vinnie again.

But we did look into the bank account

into which they'd asked him to transfer the money.

It was a Santander account, here in the UK.

And when we told Santander about what had happened,

they said that that same account

has been used for other fraudulent transactions.

So we've told them what we know about this scam

to prevent it being used in that way again.

Perhaps the most effective scams we hear about

are the ones that are extremely well organised, unquestionably convincing

but also just that little bit brazen.

So audacious, in fact, that you wouldn't for a moment think

that what you're paying for might not even exist.

But that's exactly the case with a scam

that affected a number of couples looking for a romantic place to stay

on Valentine's Day.

Nestled in the Highlands,

Loch Ness is one of Scotland's most popular tourist attractions.

But at 23 miles long, it's also big enough

to escape the hordes of tourists and Nessie-spotters

for a quiet, romantic weekend away.

And that's just what Laura and Sean Parks

from Thirsk in North Yorkshire planned last Valentine's Day.

This would be our first Valentine's together

since we've been together.

Sean's always out of the country at this time of year,

so this one was going to be special.

Laura didn't have to look far to find somewhere

for the perfect Valentine's getaway.

An ad for what sounded the ideal place

popped up on her Facebook page.

When I clicked on the Facebook link,

it directed me to their website,

which showed that he had 26 log cabins on the banks of Loch Ness.

All had a private hot tub.

And the Valentine's weekend break

included meals, champagne and chocolates.

The deal could hardly be better, £375 for three nights in the cabin,

including a meal on the Friday night,

a three-course, candle-lit dinner on the Saturday,

and lunch on the Sunday.

What's more, the page had been "liked" on Facebook

more than 9,000 times,

so it looked to Laura

as though lots of people gave the cabins their stamp of approval.

With everything looking good,

Laura contacted the owner of the cabin, Kevin Beamont,

to organise her romantic getaway.

Whilst on the phone, he really reassured me that, you know,

it was going to be a lovely weekend.

He'd asked for my arrival time so he could have my hot tub switched on,

my champagne on ice.

He was really trying to make it special.

Excited by everything on offer,

Laura didn't think twice

when Kevin Beamont said she couldn't pay on her credit card.

He said that he only accepted bank transfer,

he didn't deal with credit cards and he didn't deal with cheques

or anything,

so it had to be done through a bank transfer.

So Laura transferred the money

and, a few weeks later, revealed her surprise to Sean.

When Laura informed me we were going to Loch Ness for a log cabin,

I was really excited.

The following morning, Valentine's Day itself,

Laura and Sean were up early to start the six-hour drive to Loch Ness,

with the address Kevin Beamont had given them

programmed into their sat nav.

The roads were pretty all right until we got into Scotland,

and there was snow everywhere.

Well, it's a few months later, and I've come up to Loch Ness myself

to see if I can find this lodge that Laura and Sean booked.

No snow and ice, so in theory, it ought to be quite straightforward.

Um, that's if I can work out how to use the sat nav.

Let's go.

The sat nav was telling us to come off up to a hill,

and we were getting concerned.

I started to question whether I'd misheard,

so we decided to drive up it,

but that was a massive mistake.

I started panicking.

It was a single road,

and when we got to the top, there was just nothing there.

And I'm being directed up exactly the same route.

It's remote, it's bumpy, but is it going to be romantic?

Well, here's where the sat nav says is the place.

It's certainly the end of the road.

What an adventure.

Well, I wish this was the place cos it's absolutely beautiful.

But, sadly, time to get out the atlas.

And a few months earlier, Sean and Laura were similarly confused.

We carried following the road up again

until we saw a petrol station.

We stopped in the petrol station to see if they'd seen or heard of

anywhere of this log cabin,

and they didn't know anything about it either.

Well, that was very, very interesting. I did buy a map.

But the much most interesting part of it was that the woman in there

told me that, back in the spring, two separate lots of couples came

to ask for the directions to these cottages.

She had never heard of them but what she did know was

that the village that they're meant to be in is way back there.

I decide to stop at a hotel I pass along the way.

It turns out it's the same hotel Laura and Sean stopped at

to ask directions on that very frustrating Valentine's Day.

-I'm lost.

-You're lost?

-That probably won't come as a surprise.

Right. A lot of people get lost here.

I'm sure they do.

Well, the reason I'm here is that we're following up

-the story of a couple...

-Mm-hm.

..actually two couples, who separately booked these cottages,

-came up here, got into the same tangle as me...

-Yep, yep.

..and found themselves in trouble.

I know exactly... I know exactly what we're talking about.

I remember this couple particularly well.

They arrived fairly late at night.

They'd been driving around for many, many hours,

again with the same address and the same postcode.

The gentleman in the hotel just said,

"Oh, I think you may have been scammed here."

He said, "It might not even exist."

I burst out crying.

It was something that I'd been thinking for the past few hours.

Things weren't adding up, but to hear it from somebody else,

it was devastating, wasn't it?

Everybody's saying the same thing - they don't exist.

The lady in the garage didn't know about them,

Willie here didn't know about them.

They don't exist, and it's a scandal.

Those couples were had,

and they've paid money over, and that's not right.

Laura immediately called Kevin Beamont,

the man who apparently owned the cabins

but, of course, the number she had for his mobile no longer connected.

She took to Facebook to try to contact him

but noticed comments on the page from other couples

who'd had exactly the same experience as them.

Over the same Valentine weekend,

this hotel was visited by four other couples,

all looking for the same phantom log cabins.

And they'd all been talked into paying by bank transfer,

so none would ever see their money back.

They all saw the cabins advertised on Facebook on a dedicated page

that featured a large number of photos of the cabins

and their surroundings.

We've discovered that the pictures used on the Facebook advert

were actually taken from five different websites,

some of which were actually locations hundreds of miles from Loch Ness.

Armed with those photos, it wouldn't have taken much for Beamont

to invent a very plausible site,

as BBC technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones explains.

If you've got a bit of nous setting up a website

and a Facebook page,

scraping photos from around the web,

uh, with a little bit of design skill,

you can come up with something that looks very convincing.

A convincing-looking site is one thing,

but Laura thought the Facebook page was trustworthy

because it was liked by over 9,000 people...

which, she assumed, meant they were all recommending the cabins.

But as Rory's discovered with a test,

it's not quite as simple as that.

I, for instance, set up a whole business called Virtual Bagel.

It didn't do anything,

it promised to send you bagels

over the internet in virtual form,

and it was there as an experiment

to see how easy it was to get people to like your Facebook page.

I got more than 5,000 likes pretty quickly.

But the quality of those likes was very poor.

They were people randomly clicking around the world.

There are things called click farms,

where people would actually get paid a tiny amount to click, click, click

on all sorts of things, to like them in a scam

which is to do with earning advertising money for people.

So you've got to be careful.

It can cost surprisingly little to buy a few thousand Facebook likes

to make your page look as though it's been endorsed.

So it's wise to do extra checks, too.

And here's one that would really help.

Even if you're hundreds or even thousands of miles away,

remember there's an easy way to do a check on any location

without even leaving your home.

Just about everywhere these days is on Google Street View,

so take a ride, check their postcode,

go to where they claim to be,

and make sure they're really there.

If Laura, Sean and the other couples had done that,

they might not have fallen for the scam in the first place.

We've tried to contact Kevin Beamont

to ask him about his non-existent cabins

but, unfortunately,

just like Laura and Sean, we couldn't track him down.

The couple are now certain to do their homework

before booking a break online again.

After what's happened, I think, booking online in future,

we'll be much more cautious.

We'll definitely be paying by a credit card

and doing a lot more checks into it.

As for me, well, I gave up,

but only after I'd at least solved one Loch Ness mystery.

Well, I've found Nessie, but where are the lodges?

Still to come on Rip-Off Britain,

the battle to beat scam mail hots up

with a new initiative to stop us being tricked out of our cash.

It makes me very, very angry,

particularly because the people who actually run these kinds of scams

are parasites on society.

Our Rip-Off Britain Pop Up Shop is back in business.

And this year we were in the West Midlands,

giving you the opportunity to get face-to-face advice

from our team of experts.

Ring them one more time, and say

you're not going to get off the phone

until you speak to somebody in the chief executive's office

or in their complaints resolution team.

James Ledbetter came in to see financial expert James Daley

for advice after buying trainers online that looked like a bargain.

A week or two later, the trainers arrived

they was a completely different colour

to the ones where I'd ordered online,

um, and copied trainers - no tags on them, no receipts, no box.

So I messaged them, saying obviously the trainer what's come

is not what I've ordered.

I'll need a refund on these.

Never replied.

I've sent about another three messages.

Just been blanked.

Looking into it now on other sites,

I think reading people's reviews, it's just a fake, dud scam.

Your story's not an uncommon one.

Obviously, the internet can be a bit of a Wild West

when it comes to shopping.

Either way, there's a few things that you can do here

to get your money back.

What method of payment did you use, crucially?

It was a debit card, sorry, I should say.

-Ah, it was your debit card?

-Yeah, debit, yeah.

-OK.

There is a scheme that you can claim on

-when you've used your debit card.

-OK.

-It's called the Chargeback scheme.

-Yeah.

So you ring up your bank,

they'll send you a form, you fill it all out,

and they will probably give you your money back

-in relatively short order...

-Yeah.

..and then, they will go back to the retailer

and try and get the money back from them.

-OK.

-Now, the problem is,

is that if they don't manage to get the money back from the retailer,

they'll take it back from you again. But you have to remember,

there are still some rogue traders out there

and these days their websites can look incredibly professional,

-you know, they'll take your money nice and easy...

-Yeah.

-..and it might be finding out the hard way...

-Yeah, yeah.

..that, actually, these guys are not legitimate.

It wasn't just inside our shop that we heard your complaints.

Outside, at our gripe corner,

you really let off steam about the things that irritate you.

The biggest rip off for me is how much we pay for car insurance.

We get penalised for our age.

We think it's a rip off.

I think it's a rip off that in the school holidays,

all the summer holidays go up in price.

It's absolutely ridiculous.

Out in the heart of the shopping centre,

financial ombudsman Caroline Lusted-Wells

ran a workshop on how to avoid internet scammers.

The worst thing you can do is reply back to that e-mail

or try and unsubscribe,

cos as soon as you do that, they know that you're real,

and they will just keep bombarding you with more and more e-mails.

D for delete is what I say.

You just delete it and ignore it, just get rid of it.

And Angela had a few tips on

how to recognise those pesky phishing e-mails.

Anybody sending you an e-mail

asking you to confirm your pin number,

that is a phishing e-mail,

because no company will ever ask you

for those details.

And the easy way to tell

whether or not it's coming from a genuine account or not

-is just to click on the name here, isn't it?

-Hmm, it is.

And if you see that it isn't from BT, or whoever, but instead,

it says Jemima, something or other,

you know that this is someone

who has somehow got hold of your e-mail address,

and they're trying to get money out of you.

They just throw out lots of e-mails and hope that one sticks,

that's how they work.

Caroline's put together a factsheet of tips and advice.

You can find it on our website...

..along with advice from the other workshops we held

over our pop-up weekend.

Many times in the past on this programme,

we've talked about scams or spurious opportunities.

And however disastrous the eventual consequences might be,

they usually all started with just a simple letter that came in the post.

Now, identifying and helping the people who are most affected

has been described as a national priority

by a brand-new service

that's been set up to tackle these scams.

Because, once you're on their mailing lists,

I'm afraid that the letters just keep on coming in sackfuls.

Pat Craven receives more post every day

than many people do in a week.

Hi, Pat. How are you today?

But most of what drops through the letterbox, she doesn't want.

Pat, I can't believe how much junk mail you've got here.

How long did it take for you to accumulate this lot?

That was, erm, three months.

-Three months?

-Yeah.

It all began when Pat was going through a rough patch,

and it got worse when she was housebound after an operation.

She started mail order shopping for presents for her family.

But the genuine letters about her purchases

were quickly followed by more letters -

not just about what she'd bought,

but telling her that she'd won big cash prizes.

But in order to claim those prizes,

she'd have to spend more money with them.

So how much do you think you might have spent, Pat?

-Too much.

-Thousands?

-But you never got the cheque for £13,000?

-No!

Within months, Pat's daily postbag had become too much.

And she realised that however much she'd bought,

the big prizes were never going to materialise.

Do you think you were suckered in, then?

That, at the beginning, you were buying things

and they were being delivered, and now,

-you're just getting the mail and the empty promises?

-Yes.

Oh, I have, definitely. I'll admit that.

I was sucked in now,

and I feel so stupid about it.

Pat's problems with scam mail are unfortunately all too common.

In fact, the number of us who have been taken advantage of

in this way has become so large

that Trading Standards has now set up a specialist team

to tackle the issue on a national scale.

Sophia is one of the team leaders who's responsible

for trying to stop the scammers from operating.

I've brought you Pat's mail from the last month...

-Wow.

-..but I see you've already got a pile there already.

It's a very, very big problem nationally.

We've got about 130,000 victims' names at present across the country.

People are getting mail like this on a daily basis.

Ten, 20, 30 letters a day.

At its most extreme, a single response to some scam mail

can lead to a daily deluge of up to 100 letters or more.

The reason that numbers can snowball in this way

is that, once you've replied to just one letter,

the scammers will then share your information amongst themselves.

You've got a particular name for these sort of lists, haven't you?

It's a horrible term that I'm not overly keen on,

and I prefer to use the word "victim list"

but, in the scammer's world, it's called a "suckers list".

Many of letters sent to victims on the so-called "suckers list"

originate from overseas.

To stop them being intercepted by the authorities,

they're sent in sealed containers to people referred to as enablers,

who then put them into the UK post.

Though Sophia and her team try their best to disrupt this chain,

it is very difficult,

as once the mail gets into the system,

it HAS to be delivered - by law.

But once letters like this drop through your letterbox,

their promises of cash and prizes can be extremely persuasive.

So here we have, for instance, a prize-draw entry form.

"Please complete all the details so you enter..."

"Enclose five pounds administration to activ...activate my prize draw."

Is that five pounds

and the possibility of winning a big prize,

is that the hook?

That's right, I agree. I think that is the hook.

They think, it's only a fiver, it's only five pounds.

So if you times all the five pounds, or the £25s,

or the different amounts of money they're sending off,

you know, it rolls into hundreds of pounds a week.

As well as the promise of prizes,

Sophia is constantly seeing scammers use other underhand tactics,

all designed to get a response from the addresses that they target.

The language that's used in a scammer's letter

is very devious, very persuasive.

It almost sometimes verges on blackmail.

They tell people to keep these things a secret.

"You'll miss you're chance if you don't do this today,"

puts those people who are replying

in a situation where they feel under pressure.

This pressure can sometimes have catastrophic financial effects.

Chris Beckett from Wisborough Green, in Sussex,

only found out the extent to which his father, Tom, had been caught out

by the scammers when his dad started asking if he could borrow money.

You know something is wrong when there is a problem paying bills.

I believe he probably spent in excess of £100,000.

When Chris discovered how badly his father had been caught out,

he called the police,

who had launched a local initiative to combat scam mail,

and to educate the public about it.

As part of that, and once he realised that he had been scammed,

Tom gave this interview to Sussex Police in 2011.

-WOMAN:

-And how often were you sending money?

Oh.

Every week, I'd say.

I felt that I was on a good thing, and I wasn't.

Um, but it's very difficult to...

..throw it down the drain immediately.

You think there is a good opportunity there

of getting a rather hefty cheque.

Tom died shortly after giving that interview,

at a time when Chris was still in shock

about the extent of his dad's spending.

It makes me very, very angry,

particularly because the people who...who actually run

these kinds of scams are parasites on society,

and they don't...

They have no interest in the damage that they do

to the person or to the family.

For them, it's just a money-making process,

and they're completely cynical about it.

The National Trading Standards Scams Team has now joined forces

with agencies ranging from the police to the Royal Mail

to combat this.

And part of their response is to understand

why people are drawn in by scam mail in the first place.

I think if you're maybe lonely or vulnerable

and somebody's sending you a letter every couple of days,

you can get quite drawn into that because it feels like a friend.

So would you say this is an addiction?

We prefer not to call it an addiction.

This is bullying.

And scams are crimes, and that's a vital message we must get across.

In fact, it's a crime which is big business.

Sophia and her team estimate that up to £10 billion

is sent to scammers each year

as a result of letters like the ones

that Pat and so many others respond to.

So if we can't stop it, then we need to do the second best thing,

which is to get into people's homes and say, "This is a scam."

Pat now knows all too well that letters like these are a scam.

But she was desperate to share her story

so that others don't fall victim in the same way that she did.

Yes, OK, I was a stupid person.

But once in a while you think,

"I might strike lucky."

-And that's what keeps tying you in?

-That's it.

So what would your message be to people who are still thinking,

"Ooh, I might get lucky?"

You won't get lucky. No.

And I just want to get the message over to people.

PLEASE, don't get caught like me.

Now, as you know, scams of all shapes and sizes

have been around for centuries.

But whether they're old or new, some of the most lucrative

are the ones that start off with a promise.

You know that one,

that if you put a little bit of cash in,

you'll get so much more out at the end.

And of course, that's a promise that can sound all too convincing.

But you have to beware.

These are the schemes that can cost you the most dearly

and leave you with absolutely nothing to show,

having handed over thousands of pounds.

This is a fast-money, big-business, high-stakes environment,

where fortunes can be made and lost in seconds.

And this...

is a rather less frenetic south-coast town,

much-loved by holiday-makers and pensioners.

Now, they're two very different worlds that don't often collide.

And former plumber Tony Boothby from Bournemouth

certainly wishes that he had never considered

chasing his fortune on the international stock market.

But his interest picked up

when he was cold called by someone offering him

a chance to trade on the stock market,

with the opportunity to make a huge return.

I picked up the phone,

and this bloke was on the other end of the phone.

A very...you know, a nice lad.

He was very plausible, and then I thought, well,

I'd give it a go, and go from there, really.

The salesman said that he was from a Barcelona-based financial business,

called the Eden Brown Group,

not to be confused with companies with a similar name.

He offered Tony the chance to invest in a biotech firm

who, apparently, were looking for a cure for cancer.

I just thought it was a good idea at the time to help them,

and help me at the same time.

Tony invested £5,000,

and a few days later,

he received a share certificate from the company.

The share certificate was just printed out,

but it's got all their monograms and everything

all over the shares certificate.

It wasn't just a plonky bit of paper,

and it all looked pretty genuine to me.

Delighted that his money was invested in something worthwhile,

Tony put the certificate away and thought little more about it...

until two months later,

when the salesman from Eden Brown Group called yet again,

this time offering Tony the chance to invest

in a Canadian mining company.

I think he wanted a bit more to start with,

but I said, "No, I'm limiting myself to the 5,000,"

and they said, "Well, OK.

"We'll see if we can sort something out," of which he did do.

Just like last time, Tony sent off his money,

this time around £4,100.

And again, a share certificate soon arrived in the post.

Like any investor, Tony wanted to track his portfolio.

But the website that Eden Brown Group pointed him to

wasn't in English, so Tony couldn't quite follow it.

And I couldn't really understand too much what it was all about

because it was all just figures and goodness knows what,

so I never really knew exactly what was going on with the share prices.

However, when a few months later the company called Tony again,

offering him the opportunity to invest £10,000

in an Australian financial company, he said, "No," this time.

I said, "No, I've done enough.

"I've had enough of what...the ones I've got,

"and there's no way that I'm doing any more investing at this stage."

After that, the cold calls stopped

but the brochures detailing his other investments kept coming.

So Tony was satisfied that his investments were working out.

Then, in early 2013,

the glossy brochures stopped coming as well.

Tony tried contacting Eden Brown Group for answers,

but the agent seemed elusive.

Any time that I tried to phone him up to find out any information,

I just kept getting put off with

they was at a meeting,

he wasn't in that day,

and I just couldn't get through.

Fearful something might be wrong,

Tony started to look into the company online.

There was a few remarks from other individuals

warning other people to go very careful

with who they were dealing with,

which, I thought, "Ah, this doesn't look too good,"

and I was a little bit more concerned about it.

And that's when I tried to contact my agent again,

and I couldn't get him on the phone.

I kept getting put off, and then, all of a sudden,

the number had just gone dead.

With the company's phones suddenly disconnected,

Tony came to a horrible realisation.

I was really worried, I was pretty sick, and I...

Not so much sick, but

for somebody to con me out of my money,

is a big thing. I was really upset.

Over the next year, Tony kept on trying to get in touch

with the company, whilst also reporting them to Action Fraud.

So, almost £10,000 out of pocket

and unsure whether he really owns any shares at all,

we're bringing Tony to the City Of London

for some expert advice.

Justin Urquhart Stewart has more than 25 years' experience

within the investment trading industry,

so he knows a genuine share certificate when he sees it.

Tony, we've got two of your share certificates here

and this looks beautifully fancy, doesn't it?

-It does, yeah.

-Nice pictures on it, and it's got the form on the back,

so it could be a real one.

They've even got some sort of watermarks on here,

but I'm afraid that doesn't mean anything at all these days.

-They look good to me.

-They look fantastic.

They may look like the real thing,

but Justin's pretty sure that they're not.

And he's even more confident of that when he hears more of Tony's story.

-And they'd phoned you up directly, had they?

-Yes.

-Yeah, and told you a nice story about an opportunity?

-Oh, yeah.

The story you've told me, it sounds like a classic boiler room scam.

Boiler room scams are a very simple con,

in which a group of individuals set up a sort of mini call centre,

from where they cold call people,

attempting to sell things such as holiday homes,

luxury goods, and stocks and shares,

which, in reality, either don't exist at all

or are only worth a fraction of the price that the buyer pays for them.

First of all, people shouldn't be cold calling you

about investments in the first place, anyway.

Now, no doubt, you'll get people trying to proffer financial advice,

but anybody trying to sell shares over the phone,

that's a big no-no.

Anyone trying to do that at the moment

will be breaching all sorts of regulation.

It is against the Financial Conduct Authority's rules

for a business to make the sort of cold call that Tony received.

But, when a company has tempted you once,

they'll keep coming back for more.

So it's good news that Tony called a halt to any further buys

after his second investment.

What you quite rightly did was say, "No."

But all they need to do is to come up

with some names of companies - whether they exist or not -

have your name, and then a really slick sales patter,

and persuade you to be able to part with your money,

and they've got away with it.

And then, a few months later, the telephones go,

the fax machines go, and there's no response any more.

All of which, of course, is exactly what happened to Tony.

As for the companies he supposedly bought shares in,

the biotech firm was delisted from the Frankfurt Stock Exchange

and we can't find any information that suggests it was ever

the pioneering, cancer-busting company that Tony was told about.

Both it and the Canadian mining company are no longer trading.

So it's pretty clear that the money Tony invested has gone.

And it's cold comfort for him that it could have been much worse.

I've come across people -

sadly, we're talking about hundreds of thousands of pounds,

and people who really were taken in by that,

and then felt obliged to put in more.

Despite his best efforts to contact them,

Tony last heard from Eden Brown Group in October, 2013.

And we had no joy whatsoever in getting in touch them either.

The Spanish-based company hasn't answered any of our questions

or e-mails.

We also contacted the two companies

Tony bought nearly £10,000 worth of shares in,

but we've had no response to the various e-mails we sent.

The best advice if you're cold called by someone offering

an incredible-sounding investment is to end the call.

And hold on to your cash

until you've taken independent, regulated advice.

We have this regulation to protect us from these scams

and to protect us from these...these evil-doers,

and sadly, there are more of them around,

and therefore, we need the regulation even more.

As for Tony, I'm afraid

he's now resigned to the fact that his money has gone.

It is a big kick in the teeth

because that was for my future

and it's for my grandchildren.

I just feel that, somewhere along the line,

I'm trying to help other people not to get conned to the extent I am.

Well, like Tony, we thought we'd seen the end of his investments,

but as we were finishing this programme,

there was a further twist to the tale.

We finally had a reply to one of the e-mails we'd sent

to the companies Tony thought he owned shares in.

Though the biotech firm didn't respond,

the people behind the Canadian mining company did,

assuring us that Tony does, in fact,

own 5,000 shares in their company,

but that's not quite the good news it sounds

because the company isn't currently active

which means that while Tony's shares,

along with those owned by anyone else,

do at least exist,

unfortunately, they are almost certainly worthless.

Here at Rip-Off Britain, we're always ready to investigate

more of your stories on any subject.

Are you confused over your bills or

just trying to wade through never-ending small print?

It's very frustrating because it makes what should be a

quite simple job a lot more complicated, and I think some people

just give up and so they don't get the best deal.

Maybe you're unsure what to do when you discover you've lost out

and that so-called "great deal" has ended up costing you money.

People are buying into this. I did,

you know, and are they going to be as awkward

with them as they were with me?

You might have a cautionary tale of your own and want to share

the mistakes you made with us.

It upsets me an awful lot because, you know, I'm retired and I begrudge

having to pay that kind of money out.

You can write to us at...

..or you can send us an e-mail to...

Remember that the Rip-Off team is ready and waiting

to investigate your stories.

Well, as we've seen,

there is a seemingly endless range of scams out there.

So while we certainly all love receiving your letters and e-mails,

what we don't relish is the thought of hundreds of scam correspondence

coming through your letterboxes and computers.

But, as we've been hearing, the perpetrators really can go

to enormous lengths to make what they're saying sound legitimate.

So it really is very easy to see how you can be taken in.

So before you hand over any cash

to someone promising an amazing investment opportunity,

or a top prize in a draw you never even entered,

take a deep breath

and think about why they've contacted you in the first place.

Hmm.

So here's the message - do not be seduced.

Go away and do your checks and research,

or you could bring it to us to have a look at on your behalf.

If it is a scam, we, of course, can warn other people about it as well.

So, on that note and that advice,

that's where we have to leave it for today.

Until the next time, thanks for watching,

-and from all of us here in the team, bye-bye.

-Bye-bye.

-Bye.