Photocopier Lease You've Been Scammed



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Millions of us are targeted in scams every year,

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and whether it comes in the form of an e-mail,

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a cold call or a knock at the door, they are all designed to do

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one thing and one thing only - to get you to part with your cash.

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Coming up - the scam that left a family facing financial ruin.

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We owed 1.4 million.

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And the con artist who made false claims about her healing hands.

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We were extremely concerned because,

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if she was treating patients for a specific injury,

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then she was more likely to do more harm than good.

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Well, I'm here to tell you what the con man doesn't want you to know -

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

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Working from home with your own cottage industry can be fantastic.

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There's no lengthy commute, and you keep your overheads low.

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But there can be other significant advantages

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to running a business from home.

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Clifford and Elaine Bartlett have two grown-up children

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who are both severely disabled and require full-time care.

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Well done. Tip them in the bowl.

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To give their children the attention and support they need,

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Clifford and Elaine run their business,

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producing sheet music, from home.

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But with such a challenging home life, the couple have always

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had to rely on people they trust to help make their business a success.

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What they didn't realise was that for 20 years

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they were harbouring a con man.

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What's really important at the heart of any scam is that there is

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a trusting relationship in place between the scammer and the victim.

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Most people are very suspicious of people offering

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something for nothing, but if it comes from a friend,

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if it comes from somebody you've built rapport with,

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then you've got the basis of a very good scam.

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And the scam that targeted Clifford and Elaine

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is as shocking as they come.

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It's taken the couple for every penny they had.

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-Do come in.

-Thank you very much.

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The seeds of it were sown 20 years ago

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when the couple were building up their sheet music business

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hoping it would provide them with a stable income.

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We don't really care, as you can see, about modern house things.

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We don't spend a lot on clothes.

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Motivation certainly wasn't money.

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As long as we had adequate, we weren't really worried.

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As long as we knew we would be able to save some for the kids.

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The nature of Clifford and Elaine's business

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meant a photocopier is essential,

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but rather than buy one outright, they decided to lease instead.

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We knew nothing about the photocopying industry.

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We started with a very small firm in Cambridge, which, over the years,

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was taken over, and that's when we came into contact with salesmen.

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The salesman in question was Gary Carr,

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and he and the couple quickly hit it off.

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-How did he come across?

-Oh, he was very friendly.

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He would talk about his kids and say, "Of course,

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"I've got no problems compared with your situation."

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And when it came to organising their photocopiers,

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Carr made Clifford and Elaine feel that they were in safe hands.

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-How did it work?

-He did all the leasing.

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He said, "You need so-and-so..." We had to have big machines

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because we had a high turnover.

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"This will be a reliable machine.

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"This is the price I can get it for," and he'd arrange a lease,

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which would be a five-years lease.

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With the photocopiers taken care of by Carr, the couple were free

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to concentrate on the things that were most important to them.

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A key element of a business which makes them susceptible to a scam

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is just the sheer pace

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at which they're operating in their daily lives.

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For a lot of people who work at home,

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it's very difficult to see the boundaries, isn't it?

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When the kids are at home, one or other of us is with them

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or in the vicinity of them. They usually need one of us around.

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If the children were in the house,

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then what they were doing was one concern.

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If we had a rush job on, that was another concern.

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Generally, we just wanted to get a machine that worked.

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And Carr was able to give the couple exactly what they needed

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at a price they were happy with.

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He quickly became an integral part of their working life.

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He'd been to the house.

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He knew what we needed, and he kept us up-to-date,

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because we didn't know anything about the technology.

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Over the next few years Carr handled all of

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Clifford and Elaine's photocopier needs

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and as time went on, he became more than just a salesman.

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They'll find out about the hobbies of the individual.

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They may pop round to their house and get to know their children,

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which then makes the victim more susceptible to new offers

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that the particular salesman is coming up with.

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In the olden days, you had commercial travellers who would go round

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and they might stay a whole morning chatting,

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having a cup of coffee or whatever.

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And it was that sort of selling that he was sort of part of the family

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and he came every few months.

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Carr even brought presents for the couple's children

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and over the next decade he became a trusted friend.

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So, in 2005, when he moved to a new company, they stuck with him

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and he soon told them it was time for new copiers.

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"Those machines are getting old now.

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"The new firm's got lots of reasons to try

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"and get some new machinery in and show you what they can do.

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"I can provide not three but six machines at the same price.

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"That's because the machines are now much cheaper."

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He also told them he would cancel the existing leases

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and start new ones for them.

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He would then come with a wodge of lease agreements to sign.

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But unbeknown to Clifford and Elaine,

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Carr, who would earn thousands in commission

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for each new lease they signed, had a plan.

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Often, the scammer will suggest

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that we need to sign multiple agreements

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or we need to sign a blank agreement,

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because in case one finance company declines the finance,

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we can then go straight to another.

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And, sure enough, Carr began presenting the couple with

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a bewildering array of leases, exploiting their trust in him.

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We signed, and then he'd fill them in later

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with the name of the machine that was going to come.

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You were signing blank invoices?

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Yes, signing a blank leasing document,

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which he then filled in at his leisure.

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-Would you have done that for anybody else?

-No.

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Certainly not anyone we hadn't known for that length of time.

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We wouldn't have bought a car in that way.

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We went along with it because we trusted him.

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Carr had Clifford and Elaine right where he wanted them

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and was now using their challenging home life to his advantage.

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As you are signing these lease agreements,

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how are things in the household?

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Very often only one of us was present.

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We were both assuming that the other had agreed the next thing

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without asking each other what was happening.

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The new photocopiers arrived,

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but it wasn't long before Carr was back in touch.

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He started saying, "Well, some of those machines aren't performing properly.

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"Let me take them out and put in a new one for you."

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And new machines meant new leases, often not just one.

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He was saying, "Well, I need three lots of signatures.

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"I'll go to this, this and this leasing company, see which one

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"will give me the best deal, and I'll tear up the rest for you."

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The couple still had the same number of machines,

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but they'd lost track of how many leases they'd signed

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and when they went through their accounts, they got a nasty shock.

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We calculated it was at least 68,000 that was going out on leases.

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This was almost twice what they'd been paying before.

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Unsure what was going on, the couple asked Carr

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if perhaps the old leases were still active.

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We started asking him why the previous leases weren't cancelled,

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and he kept assuring us that they had been cancelled

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and he would go straight back to the office and sort it out.

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The con man will use a variety of different tactics,

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all designed just to put you off the scent.

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He will say, "It's probably a mistake, I'll come back to you.

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"I'll find out what's gone wrong. We'll sort it out, don't worry."

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The silver-tongued Carr then came back to the couple

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and managed to persuade them that, in fact,

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they WERE paying the right amount.

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He'd give a very quick explanation

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and write it all down and somehow come to the right figure.

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And we'd say, "Oh, yeah, all right."

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The simple fact was that Clifford and Elaine couldn't afford

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to spend 68,000 a year on photocopiers!

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We were finding ourselves in debt.

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We'd borrowed from the family to try and keep up with these payments.

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We'd used all our savings.

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But Carr had the solution to their problem.

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He suggested they cancel all their existing agreements

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and replace them with one large loan.

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We would do anything

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to get back to a reasonable level of expenditure on photocopiers.

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He said, "If you take out this new big lease, we can cancel and pay off

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"everything else and you'll have one single monthly payment to pay out."

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-This is like a consolidation.

-It's like a consolidating loan, basically.

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This new loan would have to be secured

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against a second property that the couple owned.

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Thinking that this would reduce their monthly payments,

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they went ahead. At that point, things spiralled out of control.

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The new loan cost far more than promised

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and, incredibly, the old leases still hadn't been cancelled.

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He's responsible for this.

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You could take it to his door and say, "What's happened?

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"Why are we paying so much more?"

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We kept saying, "Well, can you bring all the paperwork you've got

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"so that we can see where this has apparently gone wrong?"

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He kept promising that he would, and every time he came,

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"Oh, I've left that, I haven't had time to get that."

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There must be a fight going on in your mind at this stage,

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because this guy has been your friend.

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-Yeah.

-Really, that's what that's what he is. He's a friend for 15 years,

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and your suspicions at this stage must have been huge.

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We were worried to death about it at that stage.

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Once again, it was Carr who appeared to come to the rescue.

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He was trying to get over it by giving us moderate amounts

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of money in relationship to that total, from the firm.

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One way in which the scammer will just buy himself a little bit

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more time or appease the victim is by making small refunds

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so it looks like he's got that credibility.

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It looks like he's made a call to a business, the leasing company,

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and they've refunded money back, and so that alleviates that suspicion.

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By refunding the couple some of their money

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Carr cleverly convinced them he was on their side.

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So, you were thinking, "Well, if money's coming back in the right direction,

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-"there can't be anything wrong."

-Yes.

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The sums coming back weren't nearly enough

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to ease the couple's financial woes.

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The monthly payments on their loans

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were running into the tens of thousands

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and they were in real trouble.

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In desperation, they turned to the one person they thought could help -

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Gary Carr.

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He arranged a second consolidation loan for them,

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and this time it was secured against their family home.

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We still believed him.

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We thought, "Well, if he's cancelling everything else out,

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"at least we've got a property to live in," so we signed up.

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This was the final solution.

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That's happened a number of times, though, through the process.

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-Yes, and we just kept accepting it.

-We had no idea where else to go.

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After we'd all signed, we thought, "This isn't right."

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It wasn't until then.

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I think it's very difficult to keep this sort of a scam

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going on for too long, because, ultimately,

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you are putting an individual under a lot of financial stress.

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It's not going to be too long before you sit back and think,

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"Well, OK, I've had enough of the excuses.

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"What's really happening here?

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"It's really time to call in some help to investigate."

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Clifford and Elaine turned to a family friend

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who helped them make sense of what had been going on.

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So once you saw the paperwork, what was the clear picture?

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The clear picture was our property was in hock and we had paid out

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enormous sums and were doomed to do so for the next five years.

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-Can you put a figure on what you've lost?

-We owed 1.4 million.

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-That's just incredible.

-Yeah.

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Gary Carr had taken out 40 separate lease agreements

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in the couple's names

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and many were for photocopiers they never even saw.

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He pocketed £400,000 in commission.

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And because Clifford and Elaine operated as a partnership,

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not a limited company,

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they were personally liable for the seven-figure debt.

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They had no choice but to declare themselves bankrupt

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and accept that they had lost everything they'd ever worked for.

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We probably will have to work until we drop.

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We have to sort out whether we can continue to live here.

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I think we probably both try not to think about it and just get on.

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There is some small comfort for Clifford and Elaine.

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After a police investigation, Carr held up his hands

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and pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud.

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Apart from one accomplice, it seems he operated the scam alone

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and neither the photocopier manufacturers

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nor the leasing firms were in any way involved.

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Clifford and Elaine attended court

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and saw Carr sentenced to four years and eight months in jail.

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In terms of your feelings about him,

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could you make sense of those at all?

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No... I know his behaviour was totally despicable.

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I, um... I even felt myself feeling sorry for him.

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That just speaks volumes about the strength of that relationship

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and how much it had influenced you during that time,

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and even when someone has let you down as badly -

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and he's not let you down, he's deceived you wholesale

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and put you in the situation that you are now,

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there's still a little bit of a bond there.

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Yes, I think there probably is.

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Staggering.

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I've never heard of another scam

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that's taken 20 years to come to fruition.

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Two decades during which they formed such a strong bond with

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the salesman that when they got suspicious,

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Elaine and Clifford turned to him to find the answers.

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Part of being a con man is pretending to be somebody else.

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That can be very simple. You just change your name.

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But there are those fraudsters that take it to another level,

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and the stories they tell about themselves

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are compelling works of fiction.

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And when it comes to tall tales,

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Winchester woman Tina Roberts takes some beating.

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She posed as a physiotherapist and nutritionist

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in scams that earned her over £1 million.

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Most people we spoke to entered into her trust.

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She was fairly personable and approachable

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and it made the scam that much easier for her.

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After receiving a string of complaints about Roberts,

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police uncovered a catalogue of crime,

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ranging from mortgage fraud to stealing people's card details.

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There was one particular individual

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where she managed to obtain from him in the region of £294,000.

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That individual was businessman James.

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It's not his real name, but he's been so affected by what's happened,

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he's asked us to conceal his identity.

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James first met Tina Roberts a decade ago when he developed

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a back problem and was advised to see a physiotherapist.

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Tina was a professional I always felt was very good. She got results.

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She did seem to have a good knowledge.

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So good, in fact, that Roberts told James

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she'd been employed as a physio to the England rugby team.

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Tina's claims that she was working with the international rugby team

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certainly gave you an air of confidence that you were

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working with somebody who was treating top athletes, and you felt

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that if she was treating them, that actually then she must be good for me.

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James went to Roberts on a regular basis

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and, over time, they got to know each other.

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She was bubbly, she was always engaging.

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She wanted to talk to people. She wanted to find out about you.

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She would tell you about her life and what was going on and what she

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was doing in the business, so you became embroiled in a friendship.

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And Roberts' business appeared to be going from strength to strength.

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She told James she'd won a contract to provide nutritional supplements

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to the British cycling team.

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And, flushed with success, she began renovating her offices.

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But then, out of the blue,

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she suddenly turned to James in need of help.

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She called me in tears, saying that the builders were refusing

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to work unless she paid them,

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and she couldn't do that because she had put all her money into stock

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for the nutritional side of things,

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and was there anything I could do to help?

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So yes, I transferred her some money that night

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to help her solve that cash flow issue.

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It was to be the first of many loans.

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Over a five-month period James lent Roberts the best part of £20,000,

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thinking he was using his business knowledge to help a friend.

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When you know a little bit about these things, it's very plausible

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that a growing business would struggle from cash flow issues.

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But then the requests for money grew significantly larger.

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At this stage, she was asking for amounts

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between £10,000 and £20,000 at a time, so fairly substantial.

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Before lending that kind of money, James needed to see some paperwork.

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She produced orders from the clients.

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She produced delivery notices from the suppliers.

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She produced lists of clients and amounts and values,

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so that you'd sit and look at it and say,

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anyone knowing this would say this looks like a very proper business.

0:19:080:19:12

Convinced by what he saw, James handed over more of his own cash.

0:19:140:19:18

Unbeknown to him, it was around this time

0:19:180:19:21

that Hampshire Police began receiving complaints about Roberts.

0:19:210:19:26

Several of her clients had come forward

0:19:260:19:27

saying she was taking unauthorised payments from their credit and debit cards.

0:19:270:19:32

Steve Murden led the investigation.

0:19:320:19:34

Tina was saying on occasions, "My card machine is not working

0:19:360:19:40

"so I can't take the money.

0:19:400:19:41

"Just leave me your details and I'll take it out later on."

0:19:410:19:45

There are no prizes for guessing what happened next.

0:19:450:19:49

Once she'd recorded the details, she was able to put it through

0:19:490:19:52

her machine and debit amounts to which she wasn't entitled.

0:19:520:19:55

Bank records confirmed the fraud,

0:19:550:19:58

and police now began looking at Tina Roberts very closely indeed,

0:19:580:20:02

starting with her claims

0:20:020:20:04

that she was physio to the England rugby team.

0:20:040:20:07

As far as the England rugby team were concerned, we contacted England RFU.

0:20:070:20:12

They'd never heard of her,

0:20:120:20:13

so we knew at an early stage that her claims were false.

0:20:130:20:18

She'd also lied about her involvement with the British cycling team,

0:20:180:20:22

but the biggest lie of all was about to come.

0:20:220:20:25

Astonishingly, police discovered that Tina Roberts

0:20:250:20:27

wasn't even a qualified physiotherapist.

0:20:270:20:30

We were extremely concerned,

0:20:310:20:33

because if she was treating patients for a specific injury,

0:20:330:20:37

then she was more likely to do more harm than good, and obviously,

0:20:370:20:42

that would have had perhaps an impact on that individual's health.

0:20:420:20:46

Roberts was arrested and all of her documents were seized.

0:20:460:20:50

Once we had access to her bank accounts,

0:20:500:20:53

we saw that she was heavily involved with financial institutions

0:20:530:20:58

as far as mortgages or loans were concerned.

0:20:580:21:01

Roberts had made a series of fraudulent loan applications,

0:21:010:21:04

again claiming she was working with the England rugby squad.

0:21:040:21:08

Once we started finding Tina had deceived financial institutions,

0:21:080:21:13

it went from a fairly small investigation

0:21:130:21:16

to a much larger scale investigation.

0:21:160:21:19

But despite the growing evidence against her,

0:21:190:21:22

Roberts protested her innocence.

0:21:220:21:25

Throughout interviews, she maintained that she'd never ever told anyone

0:21:250:21:29

that she was a qualified physiotherapist.

0:21:290:21:31

One of the documents that was put to her in interview was, in fact,

0:21:310:21:36

her marriage certificate, which, when she was asked to comment on it,

0:21:360:21:40

she declined, but it clearly showed her occupation

0:21:400:21:45

on her marriage certificate as a physiotherapist.

0:21:450:21:48

In January 2010, Roberts was charged with fraud and released on bail.

0:21:500:21:55

But at this stage, police weren't aware of innocent businessman James

0:21:550:21:59

who'd loaned Roberts almost £150,000

0:21:590:22:03

and wanted to know when he was going to be repaid.

0:22:030:22:06

When I really questioned Tina and said,

0:22:060:22:08

"When am I going to get some of this money back?"

0:22:080:22:11

she told me that she'd had issues with her bank where monies had

0:22:110:22:14

been paid in by British Cycling and by British Rugby,

0:22:140:22:17

and that a bank employee had scammed her.

0:22:170:22:20

Roberts also confessed to James about her arrest.

0:22:200:22:23

She had been wrongly accused, in her opinion, by the police,

0:22:230:22:27

because of a personal vendetta by someone in the police,

0:22:270:22:31

and that she had been questioned, but never charged for any offences.

0:22:310:22:37

And incredibly, she set about using it to her advantage.

0:22:370:22:40

She showed me bank statements with that money coming in

0:22:400:22:43

and the total sum of money in her bank and said

0:22:430:22:47

she couldn't get access to it because the police had frozen that.

0:22:470:22:50

But that was all due to stop very soon.

0:22:500:22:52

James believed Tina was a friend and wanted to help.

0:22:520:22:55

Over the next five months, he lent Roberts a further £150,000,

0:22:550:23:01

and only became suspicious

0:23:010:23:03

when he discussed the situation with friends.

0:23:030:23:06

I found through friends that they'd also lent her money

0:23:060:23:09

at the same period of time.

0:23:090:23:10

The story she was using to them was that she didn't want to ask me

0:23:100:23:14

for any more money because I'd done so much for her.

0:23:140:23:17

It was at that point in time that I realised, actually,

0:23:170:23:20

this wasn't all quite right.

0:23:200:23:22

Now seriously concerned, James began gathering his own evidence.

0:23:220:23:27

I started to record our conversations.

0:23:270:23:30

I looked at some of the details around some of the bank statements

0:23:300:23:32

and other things so that when I went to the police

0:23:320:23:35

that they had a solid case against her.

0:23:350:23:38

When James finally went to the police, he discovered that

0:23:380:23:41

he was one of scores

0:23:410:23:43

who'd been drawn into Tina Roberts' web of lies.

0:23:430:23:46

But the evidence he'd gathered was crucial for the police.

0:23:460:23:49

One of the documents that he was provided with by Tina was, in fact,

0:23:500:23:54

a false Lloyds TSB bank statement which showed that she had

0:23:540:24:01

a credit of just over £1.4 million.

0:24:010:24:05

James's evidence also proved

0:24:050:24:07

that Roberts had continued her fraud whilst on police bail.

0:24:070:24:11

Shown total disregard for the judicial process, and as a result

0:24:110:24:16

of that, she was arrested and we had grounds for remanding her in custody,

0:24:160:24:22

because we suspected and believed that she would continue to reoffend.

0:24:220:24:26

Roberts was put on remand and, in February 2011,

0:24:260:24:31

she pleaded guilty to 12 counts of fraud -

0:24:310:24:34

one count of obtaining property by deception,

0:24:340:24:36

and one count of obtaining financial advantage by deception.

0:24:360:24:40

She was sentenced to seven years in jail,

0:24:400:24:43

which was later reduced to six on appeal.

0:24:430:24:45

When she was finally sentenced,

0:24:460:24:49

part of her mitigation was that she had some form of lying disorder.

0:24:490:24:55

I remember the judge remarked to the defence counsel,

0:24:560:25:00

"How do we know she's not lying?"

0:25:000:25:03

With Roberts behind bars, people she'd targeted like James

0:25:030:25:07

were left to try and come to terms with what had happened.

0:25:070:25:10

When you finally realise that the person you've known for ten years

0:25:100:25:14

is a complete fantasist and that everything she said to you

0:25:140:25:18

was made up, you do question your sanity almost.

0:25:180:25:21

You sort of look at it and think, "Was this just me?"

0:25:210:25:24

For more information about the scams featured in the series, go to -

0:25:260:25:30

Now, before we go there's just time to tell you about

0:25:420:25:44

some of the latest scams out there right now.

0:25:440:25:47

I've come to meet an expert from the Financial Services Authority

0:25:500:25:53

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

0:25:530:25:56

And today we're looking at a new kind of boiler-room scam.

0:25:580:26:01

Boiler rooms are normally about buying fake or worthless shares,

0:26:070:26:11

but here, they phone you up and offer to buy shares off you.

0:26:110:26:15

They're offering you a lot of money, because they're acting

0:26:150:26:18

for a client who wants to make a secret takeover bid

0:26:180:26:21

and they're willing to pay a little bit more than the market price.

0:26:210:26:24

They're offering you money. How do you end up paying them?

0:26:240:26:28

They say that to secure that deal,

0:26:280:26:30

you just need to pay some up-front taxes

0:26:300:26:33

and some up-front fees, so you hand over a few thousand pounds

0:26:330:26:36

to secure the deal, and then you'll never hear from them again.

0:26:360:26:40

If any firm cold-calls you and offers to buy or sell shares,

0:26:400:26:44

you should be very wary indeed.

0:26:440:26:47

There are plenty of legitimate and reputable brokers out there,

0:26:470:26:50

so make sure you do plenty of research

0:26:500:26:52

before handing over any cash.

0:26:520:26:54

Fraudsters will forever be coming up with new ways to get you

0:26:550:26:59

to part with your cash, but armed with a little bit of knowledge,

0:26:590:27:02

you could be one step ahead of them.

0:27:020:27:05

Stay safe. I'll see you next time.

0:27:050:27:07

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