Episode 1 My Worst Deal

We all like to think we get a fair deal for our money,

whether buying, selling or taking out a loan.

And when times are hard it matters even more.

But many of the deals on offer could cause you problems.

Some could even wreck your life.

Coming up,

what to do when your worst deal leaves you in fear for your life?

We meet the man who ended up owing millions to violent loan sharks.

They make it painfully clear that they're going to hurt you,

they're going to hurt your children, they'll hurt your family,

if you don't continue to pay.

The financial lifeline offered to thousands

that turned out to be a con.

They promised a lot and in return they never gave nothing back.

And we investigate the shocking cost of borrowing against your car.

He did say that he could offer me just over £7,000 on the car

but the worry was the repayment over 18 months was £20,000.

Loan sharks -

you might think they only affect the poorest in society,

preying on those with low incomes or with no-one else to turn to,

but you'd be wrong.

Jason Shifrin is a businessman from Essex.

He's married to Nicole, has two children, and in the early 2000s

ran a successful jewellery and watch company.

I was turning over over £1 million which was dominantly on watches -

high-end watches, high-end jewellery - and we had a fantastic life.

But his life was nearly ended

by the consequences of getting into debt to a loan shark.

At the end of 2001, Jason decided he wanted to expand his business,

and approached a friend about making an investment.

It turned out to be the worst deal he ever made.

He gave me £150,000 to invest into stock,

which I had to pay him 6% a month interest on that money.

In the real world, 6% a month is probably suicidal

but at the time I was probably making 6% a week.

But then everything changed.

One day at the end of 2002,

the friend who had lent Jason the money came to see him.

He confessed he was in trouble

and had to leave the country immediately.

The following day when he left, two people came into my office and said,

"That money that you've been paying 6% a month on, it belongs to us,

"and we are now charging you 10% a month

"and if you don't continue to make the payments,

"we're going to hurt your children."

To his horror, Jason discovered that without realising,

he had ended up in the hands of loan sharks.

'I was absolutely petrified.'

They don't care how or where you get their money from.

So they make it very painfully clear that they're going to hurt you,

they're going to hurt your children, they'll hurt your family,

if you don't continue to pay.

But Jason couldn't pay.

In the wake of 9/11, when the world economy slumped,

his business had been badly hit

and he simply didn't have the money the loan sharks were demanding.

So he did what seemed at the time to be the only thing he could do -

he borrowed more, keeping track of all the different amounts in a small notebook.

I'd then go to another guy, a John - if we call him a John -

and I'd say to John, "I need some money to put into my business."

So when the month's up and I've got to pay John,

I have to then go to John number two and borrow £170,000,

because I've got to pay John number one his £150 plus his interest.

So then I go to John number three and I have to borrow £220,000.

As the borrowing soared out of control,

Jason turned to family and friends for money, telling them

it was for a business loan because he was ashamed to reveal the truth.

He was convinced a deal would come along,

his company would recover, and he'd be able to pay them back.

Now when I sit back and look at it,

I realise there's no way that I could have paid back that debt.

It was impossible.

I needed to win the lottery, and then it became to the stage

where even if I won the lottery, that still wouldn't actually be enough.

By the end of 2003, Jason owed an estimated £8 million,

and was stretched to breaking point.

And then, the house of cards that he'd built came crashing down

when his out-of-control borrowing was finally exposed.

I received a phone call, from a business associate of Jason's

who phoned me and said,

"I want to let you know that Jason's in a lot of trouble -

"he owes a lot of money to the wrong sort of people."

I was like, "What are you talking about?"

I'd had no idea about this at all.

The Shifrins had a Christmas holiday booked, and with the secret now out in the open,

decided to use it as a chance to take stock.

But Nicole still didn't realise just how bad the situation had become.

When we went away at Christmas 2003, that's when I realised

that everything was over and I was just panicking,

I was in a cold sweat, I just didn't know what to do with myself.

And I'm standing on this balcony, looking down at the swimming pool -

all I was thinking about was the humiliation,

and I just felt that the best option now was just to jump.

Jason managed to overcome his suicidal thoughts,

but he was still in a desperate situation.

He owed a lot of money to some very nasty people,

who were waiting for him back in the UK.

It was horrendous - people had phoned up the travel agent to find out when I was coming back.

I had to change my flight because there was going to be people waiting for me at Heathrow Airport.

By this time my family know, all my friends know,

it's out there that I'm in a lot of trouble.

Later, we learn why buying time by causing a potentially lethal pile-up

was a better option for Jason than a meeting with the loan sharks.

I decided the best thing I can do is have a crash on the M25.

Being in debt can cause heartache at the best of times.

But what's even worse is

when the company you've borrowed from makes your life a misery.

No-one knows this better than Jeannette and Frank Sharratt from Blackpool,

who agreed to a deal they thought would give them financial security.

Instead, it turned out to be the worst deal they ever made,

leaving them owing £100,000.

Jeanette is a full-time carer to Frank

after a stroke left him confined to the house.

-I look after you, don't I?

-Oh.

-Oh, I do.

'I'm very, very angry.'

I'll never stop being angry till the day I die, because I keep thinking

not only what they've done to me but what they've done to my poor husband.

The problems started when Jeannette and Frank decided to make what can often be a very bad deal -

taking out a loan secured against their home.

Following an accident at work,

Frank had to leave his job as a tram driver on Blackpool's seafront.

Not having Frank's income hit them hard financially,

so they decided to take out a loan for £2,000

with a company called London North Securities.

I swear I didn't borrow this money to do anything posh with

or have a holiday or a trip, or buy myself a new coat.

It was basically just for the children, so they could always

have a good school uniform and they could have school dinners.

On top of the £2,000 loan,

London North Securities charged a £450 set-up fee and 40% interest.

It was a hefty price to pay

and the Sharratts soon started missing payments.

And when they did,

London North Securities added on heavy default charges.

It didn't take long for them to bump things up

because they kept adding things on.

They kept adding more and more and more and more and more on,

inventing things.

Unable to meet all the payment demands, the Sharratts started

receiving threatening phone calls and letters from the company.

I got 18 phone calls in one day, once,

and they used to just laugh down the phone.

I thought, "It's no good me crying and screaming."

I used to go, "Ha-ha-ha, carry on doing it,

"I'm here all day, how long have you got?" You know, trying to be brave.

Desperate to get the company off their backs,

Jeanette and Frank decided to sell their possessions.

I'd sold everything I could possibly sell. I mean, I started off with

this gorgeous, big diamond ring -

that went, just to pay them extra money.

Me beautiful wedding band went, it was 22 carat gold, it was the best.

I had velvet curtains, beautiful velvet curtains, I had beautiful furniture.

Everything had to go - if it wasn't nailed down, it went.

The money they raised kept the company at bay - briefly.

But the monstrous interest rates as part of the deal

meant they were soon failing to make their payments again.

In response, London North Securities decided to take the couple

to court to repossess their home, as the loan had been secured on it.

They told me to my face in court, "We want that house.

"There's a charge on it and we're going to get that house,

"and we want £100,000 off this woman and we want £1,400 a month interest."

And all that has stemmed from a £2,000 loan

which they've had ten times over.

By now, the Sharratts had already paid over £10,000 in repayments

on the original £2,000 loan, and had nothing left.

But with legal fees, interest and default charges,

the company wanted £100,000 - or the family home.

Everything depended on the judge's decision.

To their great relief, he wasted no time

in throwing the case out of court and writing off the rest of the debt.

All of a sudden he said, "Mrs Sharratt." So I said, "Yes."

"You can go home now," he said.

"Don't worry any more, go home now, you're safe."

He said, "They can't touch your house."

Honestly, I felt like dancing on air after I'd won.

But the triumph was short-lived.

As the couple left the building, to begin their debt-free life,

Frank had a stroke on the courthouse steps

which has left him bed-bound and unable to speak.

Just fell down like that, you see.

Just must have waited to see me winning and that was it.

So you see, they've done it to him.

The Sharratts were not the only people to have had their lives

ruined by London North Securities.

After receiving dozens of complaints,

the Office Of Fair Trading took them to court

and in 2010 they were found guilty of illegal debt collection.

'By securing a conviction,'

this led to the situation in which

the company was required to pay compensation

to the people who had been, frankly, ripped off by that company.

London North Securities were ordered to pay £400,000

to over 50 customers.

70 charges that they held on people's houses were also removed.

The judge who heard the case was highly critical of the company

and the individuals concerned with it.

He spoke of the distress that was caused to the consumers

and he described the company's behaviour as utterly heartless.

But London North Securities isn't the only company out there

preying on desperate borrowers like Jeanette and Frank.

Last year, the OFT shut down nearly 40 companies for unfair practices

and the number has been steadily growing year on year.

If you have a poor credit rating and can't borrow from the bank,

then getting a loan can be tough.

One solution that's becoming more popular is the logbook loan.

But it's a deal that many say is the worst they ever made,

leaving some customers fending off bailiffs

or even having to pay out for other people's debts.

It was heartbreaking.

how can this company do that to somebody who is so vulnerable?

A logbook loan is a loan secured against your car.

There are few credit checks because the amount you can borrow

depends mainly on the vehicle's value.

It's quick and simple,

and you can drive away with the cash in just a couple of hours.

But there are risks.

The main problems concerned with logbook loans

are first of all, the sheer affordability factor.

We're talking about huge rates of interest,

sometimes 500, 1,000% APR is not untypical.

Borrow £1,000 and you could end up repaying well over £3,000

over the life of the loan.

And there's an even bigger catch. When you take out the loan,

you have to sign a credit agreement known as a bill of sale,

and hand over the vehicle registration certificate,

the logbook, so the company now own your car.

The minute you sign your name on that agreement,

you're effectively handing the keys to that lender.

The minute you default, the car becomes theirs.

That's what happened to Sarah Dudley, after she took out a loan

with a company called Nine Regions, also known as Logbook Loans.

Sarah has a degenerative spinal disease

and relies heavily on her car to get to the shops and the hospital.

When the car needed an MOT and service to keep it on the road,

Sarah found she didn't have enough money to pay for it.

Obviously, I'm disabled, I can't work

and I had no other option but to get a logbook loan.

Sarah borrowed £1,000.

She was due to pay back £167 a month over 18 months - a total of £3,000.

At first, everything was fine

but when her health took a turn for the worse

and she was admitted to hospital, she missed a couple of repayments.

When I was moved back onto a normal ward,

I did phone Nine Regions and I explained to them my situation -

I'm in hospital at the moment, I'm very, very poorly,

and as soon as I get out of hospital,

I will be able to sort out and make a payment.

The company told Sarah not to worry, they could work out a payment plan.

But a few days later, when she'd just been discharged from hospital,

she received some unexpected visitors.

'I wasn't very well that weekend. I was in a lot of pain.'

I'd actually got off to sleep for about two hours,

and then my carer shouted out,

"Somebody's trying to steal your car."

I went out and there was two gentlemen stood there,

dressed in black, they were trying to clamp my car, in a disabled bay.

It's 5am in the morning, it's still dark. It's Sunday.

It was absolutely terrifying.

The men told Sarah they were from Logbook Loans

and they were there to repossess her car.

They drove my car out and away. I was just lost for words.

I felt like...my world had ended,

because without my vehicle, what am I to do?

The problem Sarah was facing was that the company was

legally entitled to take her car without warning,

and there was nothing she could do about it.

That's because logbook loans

are not covered by the same laws as other forms of credit.

Logbook loans are regulated by

something called the Bills Of Sales Act, that goes back as far as 1878.

So 140 years ago, ship captains who wanted to borrow money,

and they would use their vessels as security for that money.

But these people who were taking out these loans

would go to a series of different lenders,

so this act was brought into account

to protect the lenders from any fraud that was taking place.

But because the legislation was designed to benefit lenders

and not consumers, it doesn't contain any of the protections

provided by modern consumer law.

Lenders can always take their vehicle back at any point

if the consumer is in breach of their obligations -

ie, they don't pay - and that's one of the real worries for us.

In consumer credit legislation, hire purchase legislation,

there are safeguards built in to protect the consumer.

That's the sort of protection we'd like to see in bills of sales legislation -

it's not there now and it needs to be.

Sarah ended up having to fight the case in court

but she did eventually get her car back.

And last year, Logbook Loans and its parent company, Nine Regions,

had its Consumer Credit Licence revoked by the OFT

for deliberately deceiving customers.

The company has appealed and is still allowed to trade

while a final decision is reached.

I would say that after the experience that I've had,

don't ever get a logbook loan, don't ever, ever get one.

Because you will be left heartbroken.

You will be left with nightmares.

Coming up, the threats of violence to loan shark victim Jason Shifrin

become terrifyingly real.

They had a pickaxe

and they smashed about four of the windows in on my wife's car.

Owing money can be extremely stressful, and most people

will do whatever it takes to clear their debts as quickly as possible.

But there are criminals out to take advantage of that determination,

offering you a deal to erase your debts entirely,

charging you an upfront fee for the service, and then doing nothing.

It's a scam known as advance fee fraud

and for many, it's the worst deal they ever made.

The Government introduced a new scheme that enables you to eliminate

100% of your debt within 12 months.

To see if you qualify, press 2 on your phone now.

'It completely gutted me, to be quite honest.'

I was just...in a complete state of shock.

They promised a lot and in return they never gave nothing back.

Barrie Cresswell was a successful businessman from Surrey.

He had two construction companies, lived a comfortable lifestyle,

and even owned his own boat.

But in 2008, his main company fell into difficulties.

In the good days, obviously, there's plenty of work about and people have extensions built.

Of course, as the recession bites our work falls by the wayside.

With the bills mounting and the situation looking precarious,

Barrie took the risky decision to start paying for company expenses

on his personal credit cards.

Things got so bad at the end of 2008,

we couldn't find the cash to pay some of the wages

and I had to go around the banks with various credit cards,

drawing money out of the cash points to get enough to clear the wages.

Barrie ended up taking on about £15,000-worth of company debt.

But it wasn't enough, and in 2009 his main company went bust.

It was at that point

that I couldn't continue paying and everything went pear shaped.

Barrie and his wife found themselves drowning in debt,

which had by now risen to over £90,000,

and they had no way to pay it off.

But then, out of the blue,

Barrie was thrown what seemed to be a lifeline.

I received a call from a company offering to challenge

any credit card debts or personal loan agreements that I'd got,

and saying that they were working on a government initiative.

The company said that thanks to a legal loophole,

Barrie's credit card agreements were invalid

and all his debts could be written off.

I wasn't convinced that it was true, exactly,

but stranger things happen and as I say, I was desperate.

Barrie decided to go ahead and paid the company £1,700

to put the process of erasing his debts into action.

I was hopeful that it was going to work

because it was really the only light I had at the end of the tunnel.

The same company also said they could help Kal Chandla,

from Stoke-on-Trent.

He runs a family grocery store and like Barrie,

had got into financial difficulties over several years.

Three years ago a new shop opened, so that affected us big style,

'because a lot of our customers used to come from

'where the new shop's situated.

'And so we were down quite a few hundred pounds a day,'

and obviously the recession came along, that made things a lot harder.

With Kal only just managing to make the minimum payments on his debts,

they soon mounted up to £30,000.

On numerous occasions,

I started missing out on paying the minimum payment.

'With no payments you get penalised for late payment charges and default charges,'

so basically your debt's increasing rather than decreasing.

Desperate to get his family back on track, Kal searched online

and came across a company that seemed to be the answer to his prayers.

Like Barrie, Kal was told that a legal loophole meant his credit card debts

could be written off, thanks to a flaw in the terms and conditions.

I thought at the time, I've got a good chance of getting out of debt.

I thought, "If there's more money I have to give out,

which wasn't a problem, hopefully long term, I'd be out of the debt."

Kal agreed to pay the company £1,100, filled in the paperwork,

and sat back to wait for the results.

Barrie and Kal both heard back from the company and were told

they would be sent a series of letters to forward on to their creditors.

When they received replies from those creditors,

they were instructed to send them back to the company.

I sent out the letters that they sent to me,

sent the responses back to them, waited, heard nothing, so I chased them.

They sent out the other letters, I sent the responses back to them,

heard nothing, and this went on for in excess of six months.

After between three and six months I started getting a bit concerned,

knowing that nothing's been done, the debt's still there.

With the case dragging on for months and months with no results,

Barrie started to get suspicious.

At one point I got so frustrated, I sent them a really stroppy e-mail

saying, "You told me you would sort this out.

"Either you are a genuine company and you're going to help me

"or you're a bunch of shysters."

And the next thing I knew was

I was contacted by the Trading Standards people.

We became aware of the scam

around 2009, when we started to receive a number of complaints,

and that was when we decided to investigate.

We found a variety of people getting sucked in by this scam.

Because they've been in debt, possibly for a long time,

they don't see any way out of this debt

and when a company offers something that seems too good to be true,

unfortunately some of these people do still go along with that.

I felt I was being conned. It was a devastating blow,

and I, myself...everything just went boom, downhill.

It's a fairly standard advance fee fraud,

where you're asked to pay some money up front to receive a service

and then that service never happens.

In fact, the scam is so common

that it wasn't long before Kal Chandla was called again.

I actually had another company ring me called Buy Bye Credit,

they actually came to my house, and I thought,

"If they're actually coming to see me face-to-face maybe they are genuine."

After talking things through, Kal was convinced

and agreed to pay Buy Bye Credit £900 to eliminate his debt.

But as with the first company,

once he'd paid his money, all contact ceased.

I was a lot more concerned now than I was before.

I was getting depressed, thinking I've been done again, second time around.

Buy Bye Credit's website no longer exists

and they haven't filed any company accounts for over two-and-a-half years.

Kal is unlikely to be getting his money back.

There are no actual legal loopholes for people to completely wipe off their debts.

People have to go down the proper route,

by filing for bankruptcy, there are things like debt relief orders,

but these have to be applied for through a court.

However, they can get free advice before doing anything

from Citizens Advice Bureaus or the National Debtline.

Barry has done just that.

He's now signed up with National Debtline, who are helping him

to make repayment agreements with his creditors.

At present rate of repayments, it's going to take me 77 years

to pay off credit cards and personal loans.

The company that Barrie and Kal dealt with originally

can't be named while Suffolk Trading Standards are investigating them.

We know that at least 4,000 people have been taken in by this scam,

it may be more, and these people were paying

anything from £100 up to £1,000 to have their debts wiped out.

So it's easy to see the scale of this operation

and just how much money these people were potentially making.

I obviously should have learnt from my first experience,

with me being the person I am, quite gullible and naive.

This time it really knocked me out.

I've never known an experience like that,

whereby I've been hit not just once but twice.

If somebody rang me up and said they'd had a call

from a company like that, I'd say, "Ignore it."

If it could be done, it would be on the national news.

It must be a con, it must be a con.

Logbook loans are big business in the UK.

In 2010 the market was estimated to be worth almost £40 million.

But as their popularity increases,

so does the number of people getting into trouble, like Sarah Dudley,

whose car was repossessed after she fell into arrears.

It was heartbreaking.

How can this company do that to somebody who is so vulnerable?

Registered debt counsellor Mike Thomas, a former policeman,

now runs a website giving free advice to people with money worries.

He fights for the consumer rights of people who've taken up deals

they now regret.

He's hearing more and more horror stories about logbook loans

and wants to find out exactly what's going on.

I'm actually quite concerned about these loans.

Are consumers being made aware of what happens

when you go into arrears, for example?

Are they aware of the default charges?

They can add nearly £100 a month in phone calls and letter charges.

Are they aware the vehicle can be repossessed without a court order?

And as the company own your car for the duration of the loan,

should you fall behind with payments you could lose your vehicle.

Mike wants to find out why logbook loans are causing so many problems.

Are customers being given the right information?

How easy is it to get approved?

And just how expensive is it to borrow against your car?

What I'm going to do now is contact three logbook loan companies

and try to replicate the experience that consumer goes through.

Don't know much about it,

put logbook loan in the internet and see what comes up.

The idea is I'll take my car along and go and see three of them

and see if they do a good job or not.

Morning, I'm just interested in taking a loan out against my car.

I just wondered what the procedure is, what I need to do with you guys.

Mike gives some details over the phone

and makes appointments with three national logbook lenders.

They each arrange to meet him in the local town centre

where an agent will check over the car and look at his documents.

Once approved, if Mike actually wanted to take out a loan,

he'd be able to drive away with the money.

Thanks, bye.

The first company he's going to see is Logbook Loans,

who Sarah Dudley dealt with.

On the phone they told Mike that to borrow £20,00 over 18 months

his total repayments would be over £5,500.

But at the meeting they tell him that if he wants,

he can borrow even more.

I've been to see the guy.

He did say that he could offer me just over £7,000 on the car

but the worry was the repayments over 18 months was 20,000.

I had to push him to get quite a bit of information out of him,

particularly about the repossession.

He didn't tell me that they could actually come and take my car

without a court order.

So he wasn't clear on that, I actually had to push him.

The second company Mike's going to see is V5 Loans.

The thing that comes to mind is

how simple it is to get a loan against your car.

But there's no credit check on you. It's just too easy.

At the meeting, V5 Loans tell Mike that to borrow

£2,000 for 18 months, his total repayments would be over £5,800.

That's the second meeting done. I do have some concerns.

One is that the paperwork that I was given,

there's ten pages and it's pretty small print.

I felt intimidated and under pressure that if I was to do the deal there and then,

I've got to go through all these pages and sign.

Not many people will read it word for word

when there's someone over the table looking at you.

But it's too easy. It's easy to get money

and I think the logbook loan companies aren't checking

whether consumers can actually afford to pay the loans.

No wonder people get into trouble weeks later and they can't afford it,

because they couldn't afford it in the first place.

The third company Mike's going to visit is Mobile Money.

They've told him that if he borrows £2,000 for 18 months,

his total repayments will be £5,990.

When I first got in there - it's not private,

there was another client just round the corner, completely open,

and he took on a 24-month programme at £258 a month.

I heard everything. When I finally got in to sit in front of this chap,

he didn't tell me about the additional charges, that when you are in arrears, the £12 a letter.

He doesn't want a great deal of evidence about my income.

I could have easily walked out of there within 15-20 minutes with cash,

because I heard him counting out the cash for the guy before.

Again, it just proves it's so easy to get a logbook loan.

Clearly, we can see that the odds are stacked in their favour.

If you default, they've got the car.

If you don't default, they've got the interest.

It's a good product for them, it's bad news for consumers

and that's why we urge consumers to find another way.

Dealing with logbook loans as a solution to getting out of debt

is not a sustainable strategy.

We asked all three companies to comment.

Only Mobile Money responded. They said...

From what Mike's seen, there's no doubt that

logbook loans are both extremely expensive and easy to get.

Of the three logbook loans companies we visited,

all wanted to charge Mike over 400% APR.

But it's not just the high cost that's a problem.

Some people are finding they're getting into trouble with logbook loans

without even taking one out.

I couldn't believe this was happening.

In the back of my mind I kept thinking, "This is wrong,

"and I'll get my bike back, everything will be all right."

The logbook loan business is booming.

Between 2006 and 2009, the numbers of people taking one out

increased by nearly 40%, to 38,000.

That's 38,000 vehicles on the road with a loan secured against them.

A logbook loan means they're owned by the loan company, not the driver.

So, if you bought your vehicle second hand,

you could be in for a nasty shock,

as happened to Oliver Martin from north London.

For him, buying a second-hand motorbike from a private seller

for £6,000 turned out to be his worst deal.

It's an amazing bike, it's fantastic,

it's one of the top bikes, I would say.

But early one morning, Olly got a wake-up call from the bailiffs.

I was asleep.

Around 6:30 in the morning the doorbell was ringing continuously.

I woke up, I thought it must be some emergency or something.

Went to the door half asleep, and there were two guys out there

saying they were bailiffs and they had come to repossess my bike.

I asked them what they were talking about

because I bought my bike for cash, so there was no finance on the bike.

But a previous owner had taken out a logbook loan for £4,000

and then not paid it back.

He sold the bike on,

and it changed hands several times before Olly then bought it.

He had no idea that there was a loan taken out against it,

but the bailiffs wheeled the bike away.

I couldn't believe this was happening

but in the back of my mind I kept thinking, "This is wrong,

"and I'll get my bike back, everything will be all right."

The original owner had carried out a clever con,

taking out a logbook loan, then selling the bike on quickly,

knowing the loan company would go after the vehicle and not the borrower.

Now Olly was left without the bike he'd paid £6,000 for.

He was shocked, because he'd done a finance check before buying it

and the results had been clear.

I called the police and I said exactly what happened -

bailiffs came to take the bike, and I wasn't going to let them take it.

The police advised me that if I didn't let them take the bike,

they'd come and arrest me for breach of the peace.

The company was allowed to repossess the bike

because under the terms of the original loan agreement

with the previous owner, it belonged to them.

And although the industry has a new code of conduct

which suggests lenders register agreements on a central database,

it's not a legal requirement.

It means that when you do the usual checks before buying a vehicle,

any logbook loan may not show up.

One of the things that the code of practice does is urges lenders

to make a record, so we'll start to see different loans recorded against different vehicles.

But that's not been in place before, so there is a lot of vehicles with bills of sales attached to them

where we have no way of finding out whether these bills of sales are in place or not.

It's a problem many used vehicle buyers are falling foul of.

We get calls from people saying, "There's a bailiff on my doorstep,

"he thinks this car's his but I've had no dealings with this company at all."

When we explore and they explain the fact there's a bill of sale linked to that vehicle,

then it becomes very clear they haven't got much of a leg to stand on.

The practical steps are to negotiate with the finance company

to almost buy back the vehicle which they already own.

So Olly started a painful battle to get his bike back from the loan company.

To get my bike back was an absolute nightmare.

The loans company demanded £4,000 for my own bike back,

which I had already paid £6,500 for.

Obviously I refused, because this is my bike,

why would I buy my own bike back?

It took five months of legal wrangling, and in the end

my solicitor suggested I make an offer of, I think £500.

The lender accepted Olly's offer and gave back the bike,

saving him from an expensive court hearing.

But while the Bills Of Sale Act remains in place,

other buyers may not be so lucky.

For us, logbook loans, bills of sale are a 19th century product

that should stay in the 19th century.

We've been calling for government to abolish this particular product -

it's outdated, it's unfair, it's out of touch with modern day society

and it's time it was banned.

Jason Shifrin owed millions of pounds to loan sharks.

For a couple of years, he'd been borrowing from one

to pay off another, until it finally got to the point

where he had to admit he couldn't pay them back.

But this wasn't like telling the bank you can't repay your overdraft.

They're not the type of people that give you a second chance.

If you're paying them money every month without a problem, they're great.

If you say, "I've got a problem," they're not interested.

They're interested in getting their money back.

If they don't get their money back, they hurt you.

I really didn't know what would have happened.

Someone could have shot him or us,

someone could have taken my children.

Anything in your wildest nightmares could have happened.

So the Shifrins sold their house and went into hiding.

Nobody knew where we lived,

even my closest friends didn't know where we lived,

and any time we had to walk out the front door,

it was a case of put a big coat on, hood up, keep your head down

and just don't make eye contact with anyone.

But Jason was determined to pay the money back

so his family could live a normal life.

To help him, his parents sold their house

and cashed in their life savings.

But it wasn't nearly enough money, and now they were involved, too.

One day my dad was driving home from his factory

and as he pulled onto his drive, three hooded men approached him

and they said, "You need to come with us."

The men grabbed Jason's dad and started taping up his arms and legs.

He ended up getting badly hurt,

because he was being thrown around on the floor and all sorts of things

whilst they were trying to tape him up.

Jason's mum called 999 and managed to scare the attackers off.

That was by far the worst thing that's ever happened in my life

and the most despicable.

Not only have I ruined their life, not only have I taken their wealth,

then you have to live with the guilt

of knowing that your father has been hurt because of your actions.

The Shifrins were subjected to a campaign of fear and intimidation by the loan sharks.

To protect himself and his family, Jason had a state-of-the-art

multi-camera CCTV system installed at his house.

Now he was actually able to catch the loan sharks on camera.

Some people that I owed money to, they walked onto the drive

and they had a pickaxe,

and they smashed about four of the windows in on my wife's car.

Jason was still making what payments he could,

but he owed so much to so many people that it was never enough.

He was getting more and more desperate.

I had to go to a meeting with some people that I owed money to

and I knew if I turned up at the meeting I would get hurt, at best.

'So I'm trying to think of a way of delaying the meeting,'

and I decided the best thing I can do is have a crash on the M25.

So I drove into the back of a lorry.

I waited for the traffic to slow down and I pretended I misjudged the brake

and I slammed straight into the back of a juggernaut.

Jason's car span out of control and ended up on its side in a ditch.

Someone called an ambulance.

I had about four or five phones in the car at the time

and they were all just ringing constantly.

I said, "Will you answer it and tell them that I've been in an accident."

Obviously she didn't have a clue who she was talking to

and she told them that, and it got me the time I needed.

To Jason, at the time,

deliberately crashing his car seemed like the only thing he could do.

Sometimes to survive to the end of the week means

you have to smash into the back of a lorry on the M25.

That seems the most irrational thing you could ever possibly say,

but I'm walking into the lions' den.

I'm walking into a meeting where there are killers sitting there.

Many times, Jason considered telling the police about what was going on.

But although he had been in contact with them several times

throughout his ordeal, he was too terrified

to reveal the full story, in case the loan sharks found out.

Making a formal statement simply wasn't an option.

The police said they could help me if I'd provide them with information,

and they'd effectively put me into protective custody.

But why would I want to live the rest of my life as David Jones,

living in some remote part of the country?

That's not living. I might as well have been dead.

Without help from the authorities,

it was up to Jason to deal with the problems by himself.

So far it's taken him nearly a decade,

and he still has debts hanging over him.

I still currently owe the best part of £500,000.

Some of that money is owed to gangsters/money lenders,

and some is owed to family and friends,

and I'm working hard to try and pay them back.

Even though the size of Jason's debt is unimaginable to most people,

the trauma he went through is a common experience

for anyone who borrows from loan sharks.

People have got in touch with me and said, "We feel really relieved

"because we only owe £2,000 and you owe all this money."

But the difference between them and me is noughts.

So if you're in debt of £100 or £1 million, you feel the same pressure.

Debt is debt and it's horrible. Horrible.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd