Olympic Landbanking Scam You've Been Scammed

Millions of us are targeted in scams every year, and whether it comes

in the form of an e-mail, a cold call or a knock at the door,

they're all designed to do one thing and one thing only -

to get you to part with your cash.

Coming up, the Olympic-themed investment

where the only winners were the conmen.

To realise that someone can do that to you and can destroy your life...

Plus, we look at a heartless schemer who exploited

a position of trust.

There was no limit to what she was willing to do or say

in terms of being able to pull off this fraud.

Well, I'm here to tell you what the conman doesn't want you to know.

How to stay one step ahead of the game and not get scammed.

Now, if you're lucky enough to come into a bit of unexpected cash,

you've basically got two choices.

You can either go out and spend, spend, spend,

or if you're being prudent, you could invest it.

Conventional wisdom has it

that there are few investments as good as land.

Not all land investments are what they seem.

And that's certainly true in an investment known as land banking.

Although it can exist as a legitimate business,

in recent years,

organisations like the Financial Services Authority

have witnessed a huge rise in land banking scams.

Land banking essentially involves a firm buying a large plot of land

and splitting it into dozens, probably, of smaller plots,

and then selling those plots with the promise that one day,

it will get planning permission.

So, in other words, you buy land while it's cheap and then,

when planning permission is granted and it rockets in value,

you reap the rewards. If only it was as simple as that.

Land banking scams have taken millions off people

in the last few years,

and I'm about to meet one of them.

Alison Higginson is a care worker and single mother of two,

and like most people,

she's had to work hard to stay on top of her family finances.

But last year, Alison thought any money worries were behind her

when she won a five-figure sum playing bingo.

-Hello, I'm Matt.

-Oh, hi, Matt. Come in.

-Thank you.

-So you got a cheque through the post, is that how it works?

-Yeah.

What was that like?

It was the most amazing feeling, it really was.

I'd never won any kind of money,

so when I won that, the feeling it gave me was absolutely amazing.

But Alison kept her feet on the ground.

After all, here was an opportunity to have a bit of financial security.

I needed to make this money work for me, so I thought about investing it.

Now, as luck would have it, Alison had only recently

been contacted by a land banking firm called Regional Land,

the trading name of Countrywide Land Holdings Ltd.

With no money to invest, Alison had said, thanks, but no thanks,

and thought no more about it.

But with a sizeable bingo prize sat in her account,

things were suddenly different, so when Regional Land called her back,

this time she listened to what they had to say.

They were offering the chance for a development site

that was close to the Olympics.

They were saying this land is prime, it's perfect land to develop.

The man on the line had grabbed Alison's attention,

but what she didn't know was that he was a conman

who was simply using the Olympics as a way of hooking her in.

The reason why they'll use a hook like the Olympics,

or any other type of hook,

is because it translates the theory of how you might make money

into something that sounds real life,

and it sounds realistic that they may well be

a regeneration of housing in that area.

It just makes it sound real, and once it sounds real,

you're more likely to get the victim.

The Olympics was the best part about it, because it was like,

we know thousands of people are going to want to stream into London.

Everything he said was completely feasible.

The language these people use is very positive and very optimistic.

They will give you a nigh-on certain feeling

that you are definitely going to see this land get planning permission

and then make massive amounts of money.

There was nothing about it that led me to believe

that there was anything wrong with the idea.

Alison felt this was the perfect opportunity

to use her win from bingo wisely.

I thought it would give me a better income

in a maximum of five years' time.

I would've had a nice, tidy sum of money.

One of the things you're told is the possible returns are massive.

They are promising you that when it gets planning permission,

an area of land you bought for £10,000

will be worth £200,000 with planning permission.

Tell me about the kind of returns they were offering on your money.

What were you going to get back for investing?

To start off with, I'd get about three times my investment,

once they'd got planning permission,

and then if I wanted, I could then sell at that point.

But it wasn't just promises of high returns that lured Alison in.

She was also building up what she thought was a close relationship

with the voice on the phone.

You have somebody who befriends you, offers to give you advice,

seems very benevolent and wants to look after you,

look after your financial situation.

I'm getting to know him.

We were talking about absolutely everything, what he's been up to,

what I've been up to, so it's all things that alleviate my fear.

He feels real on the end of the phone, and not just a voice.

Although Alison was interested in what they had to offer,

she wanted to think about it.

Regional Land, though, bombarded her with glossy brochures,

official-looking documents, and, of course, they kept on phoning,

hoping they could pressurise her into a decision.

That's why you're getting the phone calls, over and over again,

to force you to make that decision, even though,

if you stopped a minute to think, you'd realise what was going on.

But you're not allowed that time.

I can see that, yeah, I can understand that.

Then using a classic scam-artist trick to up the urgency,

they told her she was too late and had missed the boat.

There was no plots left on the Olympic land.

They were offering me a deal in Kent.

Alison was told the plots in Kent

were big enough for a three-bedroomed house,

and this time, she wasn't going to miss out.

She agreed to buy a plot for £12,000.

But the company wasn't done with her yet.

They began to ramp up the pressure even more.

I was getting phone calls morning, afternoon, evening, constant.

It got to the point where, at one point,

I was refusing to actually answer my phone,

and that would be to anyone, just in case it was them.

The company sensed Alison had more to invest

and they were going to try every tactic possible

to get more of her cash.

The second route they'll use is to try and encourage them

to make more money, more quickly,

still with the promise that they'll get massive returns.

You decide to invest more? How did that happen?

The second investment was based on the fact

that they had a piece of land that was so close to being developed,

we're talking in terms of months, not years,

so I could get my return back within six to nine months.

Not only did they offer me

this bit of land that was ready to be developed,

but they also offered me it at a reduced price

than what they were asking from other investors.

This so-called exclusive offer and the constant bombardment of calls

eventually paid off for the conmen.

Alison was persuaded to hand over another £15,000

for the second piece of land.

As soon as I made the second payment, I knew.

Suddenly, it did dawn on me that something wasn't right.

How did you know?

I constantly tried to contact them, I couldn't get through to them,

or if I got through to them,

I couldn't speak to the person that was actually dealing with me.

He would be not around, he wasn't in the office or things like that.

I'd ask for phone calls, nobody would return my calls.

Eventually, Alison did hear back from the company,

but all she got was a sob story.

Someone contacts me back and basically tells me that

they're very sorry,

but this guy has just lost his wife to a brain haemorrhage

and he has to bring up his four-year-old daughter,

can I please not contact them.

In Alison's case there, they were using the usual diversion tactics.

Once they're rumbled, if you like, they can string people along

with stories like the broker's wife has died or whatever,

then it's less likely that these schemes

will get reported to the authorities,

and it keeps the scheme alive for them to sell to other victims.

Now seriously concerned, Alison decided to contact a solicitor

to find out exactly what she'd bought.

He told her the land she'd purchased did exist,

but it was a far cry from what she'd imagined.

What he did turn round and say to me

was that the size of land I actually had bought

was probably big enough for a shed.

There was no way you could build a three-bedroomed house on it.

It was also highly unlikely

the land would ever be granted planning permission,

meaning the plots Alison had paid a total of £27,000 for

were actually worth just a few hundred quid.

And Regional Land had disappeared without a trace.

Worse still, conmen continue to hound Alison with similar schemes,

selling everything from carbon credit to wine.

She believes her name is now on a suckers list

where her details are stored by scammers.

It also feels like it's the same people as well,

because with the land banking,

the people that contacted me had a distinct accent.

When I was contacted with regards to the carbon credits

and another one that was recently, it sounded like the same guy.

We do see the same people running lots of different types of scams.

They're based on the same thing, which is buy something, an asset,

which will rapidly go up in value, and it's often an illusion,

and it usually ends up with the victim losing all their money.

What effect did this have on you?

Initially, I was angry that I'd been so gullible, was how I felt.

After, I became really upset,

and when I realised that I'd been taken in, I felt really bad

because there's so many things I could have done with that money.

There is a little bit of good news for Alison

and others caught up in land banking scams.

In March 2012, the High Court ruled

that the man behind Regional Land and Countrywide Land Holdings Ltd,

James Kenneth Maynard, had been selling land unlawfully.

He was ordered to pay a whopping £32 million to the FSA.

Sadly, he's now on the run,

and people like Alison must come to terms with the fact

that their money is gone.

Since all of this, I haven't worked,

I haven't really stepped foot outside my house.

Why?

Because I realised that so much bad happens out in the world,

I just figured I was safer if I stayed in my own home.

-That's tragic, really.

-It's sad.

You're someone that's given a lot in your job,

and to your family as well.

You know, you can't earn your living,

you can't have a social life and friends, as a result of this.

No, I haven't, for the past few years. I haven't had any life.

None whatsoever.

But they've taken a lot more away from you than just money, then.

That isn't the biggest part of these kind of scams.

The biggest part is what it does to you as a person,

to realise that someone can do that to you, and can destroy your life.

It has destroyed my life, effectively.

I'm really conscious of how much courage it takes

to come and tell this story, and how you must feel embarrassed, ashamed,

of all of these things,

but you mustn't do, because it's not just you.

There are hundreds of people who've been in the same situation,

and very few of them have the guts to talk about it.

If you're contacted with a view to investing in land,

here's what you need to watch out for.

The first thing that happens is that you get a cold call out of the blue.

It's rarely a good idea to do business with cold callers,

but if what they're offering sounds interesting,

go away and do your own research

to ensure everything is above board and legitimate.

Second hallmark is that they befriend you,

they start talking to you about your investment, your financial health,

they'll seem like they actually care about you.

Don't be taken in by this. They're not interested in you.

They're just after your money.

The third hallmark is that they start to then

move into talking about land-based investments,

and how you could make a lot of money out of them.

Get a solicitor involved and check with the local council

about the likelihood of planning permission,

because there's a good chance

the only ones set to make any money out of this are the conmen.

Putting your affairs in order gets more important as you get older.

You want to make sure that what you've got

goes to the people you love after you've gone,

but that process can also present a golden opportunity for scam artists.

And in 2009, Derbyshire Police uncovered details of a scam

that had ruthlessly targeted elderly residents of a care home.

It's one of the worst cases of dishonesty I've ever come across.

The case revolved around a care home manager,

who, it seemed, had exploited her position

to try and get at the residents' cash.

There was no limit, really, to what she was willing to do or say,

in terms of being able to pull off this fraud.

The police were called in by Terry Mansfield

after his elderly cousin Geoff passed away.

Terry's suspicions were aroused

when it emerged that Jeff had left a large part of his estate

to someone he didn't actually like.

I was amazed that he would have left 40% of his estate

to somebody whom he clearly disliked.

That someone turn out to be Beverly Jeffs,

the manager of the care home where he'd lived

for the last three years of his life.

Geoff didn't like her. He used to speak of her as the tyrant.

Beverly Jeffs had only come into Geoff's life in the last few years.

During his lifetime, Geoff was an extremely bright man

and had enjoyed an illustrious career.

He spent the whole of his career in Rolls-Royce,

and retired at a normal age

when he was known as principal performance engineer.

Having worked so hard all his life,

Jeff left a sizeable estate worth almost £750,000.

When Terry was presented with a copy of the will from Beverly Jeffs,

things didn't add up.

It was a handwritten will

and I was concerned about whether it was valid or not

because there were some peculiarities about it.

I was surprised about the grammatical errors in the will,

and misplaced apostrophes, misspellings and so on.

Now, for a precision engineer, that just didn't seem right.

Terry smelt a rat,

and with Beverly Jeffs set to inherit nearly £3,000,

he decided to contact a solicitor.

The solicitor went to the police

when we had suspicions about six or seven weeks after my cousin's death.

The case landed on the desk of Detective Constable Hardip Shergill

of the Derbyshire force.

The first knowledge really came from relatives

of the deceased victim.

Firstly, the family weren't happy

that the will was authentic or genuine.

Secondly, there were some transactions

on the victim's bank account,

and these were quite significant transactions,

and they were completely out of character.

Now, Geoff Mansfield was not renowned for his extravagant ways,

so a cheque written for £22,000 from his own cheque-book

raised alarm bells.

What unfolded next was more shocking than Terry ever could have imagined.

The solicitor rang to tell me

about the withdrawals from his account by these cheques,

and she told me that one of them, for £22,000, had been to Mercedes-Benz.

Why would an elderly man living in a care home

write a cheque for so much money?

I said, "Oh, that's very interesting in view of the fact

"that Mrs Jeffs drives around in a Mercedes."

She said, "That's not the only thing,

"you should see what's written on the back."

It has a car number plate recorded,

and it is the personalised number plate of Beverly Jeffs.

Geoff had mentioned the car to his cousin.

He couldn't understand how she got the money

to drive around in a posh car like that.

The Mercedes Benz was in fact a car that she'd purchased,

and she used a cheque from his account to pay that off.

Signed it, as though Geoff had signed it.

Beverly Jeffs had been swanning around in a luxury car

paid for by Geoff Mansfield.

The sheer gall!

And an act of astonishing brazenness was to follow.

She did come to his funeral in that car.

Although her guilt seemed glaringly obvious,

police needed hard evidence to back up their suspicions.

Handwriting analysis on the signatures on the cheques

was carried out to clarify if they were genuine.

We got samples of Geoff Mansfield's signature

going back from the 1970s to late 1990s,

compared those signatures

with those that were on these fraudulent cheques,

and the expert was able to say

that Geoff had not written those signatures on those cheques.

Having already found evidence of Beverley Jeffs' scamming,

the police moved their investigation to the next level.

We put a team together, ensured that she was arrested

and then carried out searches in the car,

her home address, and also the office at the care home.

What they discovered during the raid

were documents and evidence suggesting a lifestyle

well and truly beyond her means.

She had holidays in Hawaii, trips to China, Dubai,

and all across the Mediterranean.

She had a fairly new detached house,

there was obviously the Mercedes-Benz,

there was artwork inside the house, there was jewellery.

In the back garden, I remember there was a hot tub.

Police also discovered fake qualifications,

including one in social care, quotations for plastic surgery,

and brochures for the purchase of other residential care homes.

It was clear that she had her sights set on moving up in terms of status

and also in terms of her career, if you like.

Beverly Jeffs was brought in for questioning.

The interviews were carried out on tape,

so they were tape-recorded,

and there was a solicitor present as well during the interviews.

It was carried out in a room not dissimilar to this, really.

Far from being co-operative or admitting what she'd done,

the care home manager stood defiant and answered, "No comment",

to the vast majority of DC Shergill's questions.

And that surprised me,

because I thought somebody in her position might turn round

and sort of hold her hands up and explain, the game's up here,

the police have put this evidence in front of me, I can't really deny it.

But she did just that.

Despite all the evidence, there were yet more shocking claims to come.

It was now that Beverly Jeffs played her final trump card.

At no stage did we think for a second she'd turn round

and say she was the biological daughter of Geoff Mansfield.

That came from completely left-field,

and it did throw me, actually.

She claimed that she was my cousin's illegitimate daughter.

I never thought there was a remote possibility of it.

I was just incredulous.

But astonishingly, Beverly Jeffs claimed to have evidence

to back up these outlandish claims,

evidence which included a family photograph.

She suggested that the male in the photograph

that was holding the small baby, which was her, was Geoff Mansfield.

Terry was horrified,

mainly because the male in the actual photograph was his father,

and not Geoff Mansfield, so he knew straightaway

that there had to be some kind of discrepancy there.

I learned that that photograph was what is called photoshopped.

She had taken the head of my father off it,

and put it on to the photograph of her own father,

holding her as a baby.

In other words, she'd replaced the two heads.

Beverly Jeffs was going all-out

to prove she was the rightful beneficiary

of her stake in the £723,000 will.

The lengths she was willing to go to were astounding,

including fraudulent DNA tests.

DNA analysis which Beverly Jeffs claimed

had been done on samples taken from my cousin's shaver

and nasal hair trimmer.

The DNA test didn't have any names on it

to link Geoff Mansfield as the father,

and its origins were questionable.

She also produced medical records, supposedly from her own childhood.

The records that were held at a local hospital were forged

as though to show that her next of kin or father was Geoff Mansfield.

It turned out Beverly Jeffs was a serial scammer

who'd been stealing from other vulnerable people in her care,

including an elderly female resident at the same residential home.

It became clear that in the two-year period that she was a resident,

in excess of £40,000 had been taken from her account,

and this was predominantly from ATMs.

The withdrawals went on pretty much on a day-to-day basis.

The victim wasn't well enough to leave the home

as frequently as that.

With so much evidence against her,

it was time for Beverly Jeffs to stand in front of a jury,

but she was defiant until the very end.

I thought once the stealing from the bank account had been revealed,

I thought she would have found it to her own benefit to plead guilty,

but she was denying that she was a liar, that every claim was true.

Unfortunately, scams like this

which carefully target the savings of elderly, vulnerable people

are not uncommon.

They can come in many forms, from rogue will-writing firms

to cold call builders, but the objective is always the same -

to ruthlessly fleece people of their cash.

After a two-week trial,

Beverly Jeffs was found guilty of ten counts of fraud and theft,

and sentenced to five years in prison.

She was also ordered to pay back almost £80,000.

It was a unanimous verdict.

It took just over an hour for the jury to come to that verdict,

so I was thoroughly satisfied with that.

I was happy that she'd been found guilty,

and relieved that it's all over.

I'm very grateful to the police officer.

I think ultimately, somebody that shows this kind of greed

and this level of dishonesty,

you can't fail to be motivated investigating them

and bringing the truth to light.

Before we go,

there's just time to tell you about some of the latest scams out there.

I've come to meet an expert from the Serious Organised Crime Agency

to get the low-down on what you should be looking out for.

Today, we're looking at a classic con known as the black money scam.

The black money scam, it's been around for decades

but there will be people who've never heard of it. How does it work?

The criminal will say, we've got some money,

but it's had to be smuggled from here and it's in a disguised form,

but come along, pay us a little bit of money for the chemicals

and the secret of how to reduce it back to money, and it's all yours.

They'll open up a big box, and inside is piles of what looks like money.

The trouble is, it's all covered in a black powder or gel,

or something like that, and they'll take one off the top

and say, let's look at this one,

they'll use a special chemical which only they can sell you.

And then, in the sink,

they'll clean it off and it'll come off quite easily,

and then you've got a genuine note in dollar currency.

And you naturally think the rest of it is all dollars,

it's just all the hard work is now cleaning it up.

Course, the rest of it is just plain paper.

Whatever the colour of the money, don't be fooled.

It's an elaborate scam designed to separate you from your cash.

Fraudsters will for ever be coming up with new ways

to get you to part with your cash,

but armed with a little bit of knowledge,

you can be one step ahead of them.

Stay safe. I'll see you next time.

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