Pet Crematorium 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 are all designed to do one thing -

to get you to part with your cash.

Coming up, the con artist who targeted grieving pet owners.

I don't know how she can live with herself anyway, no.

And the eco-friendly fuel scam that conned investors out of £8 million.

All of this was simply lies.

I'm here to tell you what the con man doesn't want you to know.

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

We are a nation of pet lovers.

For many of us our animals are like family members

so it's devastating when we lose them.

Unbelievably there's a scam that takes advantage of this.

A scam that callously preyed on the emotions of grieving pet owners

and took advantage of their vulnerable state.

This kind of fraud is particularly evil

because it catches people at a very dark time in their lives.

Whether we lose a loved one, or in this case a pet,

people often make decisions based on emotions.

Almost every scam involves money.

But some really aren't about the money.

As the woman I'm about to meet has found out.

Jane Diggle from Nottinghamshire was the loving owner

of German shepherd, collie cross, Molly, for 12 years.

When Molly passed away it seemed only fitting

that her companion received a dignified send off.

-Hello, you must be Jane.

-I am.

-Nice to meet you, I'm Matt.

Shall I come in? Thank you.

Tell me a bit about Molly.

She was lovely. We had her from a pup.

We all loved her to pieces.

She was the sort of dog, if we'd have had burglars,

she would have made them a cup of tea.

Sadly, in her later years, Molly developed diabetes

and after doing everything they possibly could,

the vet gave Jane the heartbreaking news

that nothing more could be done.

The agonising decision was made to have Molly put to sleep.

The vet gave her the needle,

and was stroking her and talking to her and everything.

And then she says, "She's gone."

Oh well, that was it. Crying again.

It was weeks and weeks, couldn't talk about her. I kept crying.

Get up in the morning, no Molly. Go to bed at night, no Molly.

It was horrible.

It must be a tremendous mix of emotions

when you have to make that decision.

You don't really want to,

but you get a selfish attitude where you still want to hang on.

And I thought, "Well, it's not fair.

"However much I want you back, Molly, we can't, can we?"

And of course we had to do it, didn't we?

Wanting a proper send off for Molly, Jane started

ringing around local companies that offered funeral services for pets.

I wanted her cremated so that I'd still got part of Molly.

I rang one place and it was over £200.

I said, "Can I have a word with my husband and let you know?"

Unable to afford the fee, Jane came across Peak Pet Cremations

offering the same service, but at a cut price rate of £70.

Oh, I said, "That's cheap.

"I've just rang one up and it's over £200."

I said, "How come you can do it cheaper than they can?"

They said, "They take advantage of your grief,

"that's why they charge as much as that."

So she said the other pet crematoriums were taking advantage

of people and that's why their prices were high?

-Because they felt they could charge anything.

-And people would pay it.

-Because they were emotionally...

-Upset.

-Did that sound plausible to you?

-Yeah. It did.

The role of trust in the relationship

between victim and scammer is key.

So I think there's a magic triangle of credibility,

trust or rapport and vulnerability.

Bring those three things together

and we have the perfect ingredient for a scam.

When you were speaking to her, how did she come across?

Lovely, really caring, thoughtful.

And that's how I thought she was, yeah.

You know, she'd look after Molly, and,

"Don't you worry about a thing, we'll do it all for you.

"We'll pick Molly up from the vet's and we'll take care of her,

"and we will look after her and we'll bring her back to you."

The lady on the phone was Emma Bent,

owner of Peak Pet Cremations.

Reassured by her kind and sensitive manner, Jane decided

she was the right person to handle Molly's cremation

and give her beloved pet the respectful ending she deserved.

The fact they will make a big play about a dignified ending

for the animal reassures the consumer

because you emotionally link the transaction to something

that's an important part of your life.

I think she deserved it because she was such a lovely dog.

Bent collected Molly from the vet and a few days later rang Jane

to tell her it was all done

and that she'd be bringing Molly's ashes home in person.

She'd fetch Molly. She said, "Lovely dog.

"And her eyes were open." I said thank you.

I was really grateful and crying and everything.

When they brought Molly I said, "It is Molly, in't it?"

And they said, "Yes, it is.

"It's Molly." And I hugged her, thanked her ever so much, in tears.

I gave her the £70, what she was charging.

Plus a £5 tip, plus a thank you card.

And I got a certificate to say that Molly had been individually cremated.

I got a box and inside was a plastic bag with Molly's ashes in.

Jane and her husband John then buried Molly's ashes in the garden,

finding comfort in the fact that a part of their adored pet was still nearby.

It wasn't until two years later that Jane got her first indication

that things weren't quite as they seemed.

Whilst reading her local newspaper, she spotted an article

that set alarm bells ringing.

I was reading the paper and came across this little

article about Pet Crem.

What was the article saying?

There was a gentleman walking his dog in a field

and he found a dog that was decomposing.

The dog was microchipped so they traced it back to the owner

who thought her dog had been cremated.

So I rang the Derby paper, asked about it

and they gave me a number to ring.

They told me more information. And that's where it kicked off.

It particularly works as a scam because you don't necessarily

get to find out that the business wasn't all it's cracked up to be instantly.

It sometimes, as in this case, takes a year or maybe more

before you realise the true extent of what has happened.

For two years Jane had believed that it was Molly's ashes

that were buried in the garden.

Now that was being thrown into doubt.

When was the first time you suspected

these might not be Molly's remains?

When I read it and I thought, "Oh my God."

But I didn't want to think, "where's our poor Molly been left?"

Cos that would have drove me mad.

The thought that Emma Bent who had seemed so caring

and so sensitive was actually a con artist was too hard to bear.

But as Jane thought back to how much cheaper

Bent's cremation service had been, the awful truth began to sink in.

I thought, "It's got to be her."

Jane had to know what really happened

so rang another pet crematorium for advice.

They told her to bring in Molly's ashes so Jane did just that.

When they examined them, her very worst fears were confirmed.

-So he showed you real animal remains?

-Yeah. A dog.

-A dog that had been cremated?

-Yeah.

-And then compared with what you had thinking it was Molly?

-Yeah.

-And they were completely different?

-My goodness, yeah.

You couldn't mistake it.

It was like little grey-white pebbles and Molly's was big,

well, like bonfire rubbish.

Not one of the thousands of dogs, cats,

guinea pigs and other pets that had been entrusted to Emma Bent

had been given the individual cremation she'd promised their grieving owners.

Instead the animals had been disposed of like rubbish, burned in a field

or just left to rot and the owners given a jar full of bonfire ash.

Scammers like this will get lazy,

and they won't dispose of the evidence properly.

In this case, the poor animals,

which were discarded in a very undignified manner,

and of course, when laziness creeps in, so does contempt,

and it's only a matter of time before the evidence is found

and these people are brought to some kind of justice.

You are angry with her, but you must have been thinking,

-what on earth happened to Molly?

-Mmm.

And I thought, she's left her in a field somewhere, hasn't she?

She's done that, and I thought Molly deserved better than that.

Cos as I say, Molly suffered enough with diabetes.

She didn't need that as well.

I can't understand how anybody can be that heartless.

But it's this that she wanted, isn't it?

Money, that's all she was bothered about.

She wasn't bothered about anything else.

This fraud was so effective for a number of reasons.

First of all, it had a physical presence,

on the High Street,

it had links with a third party, which gave it credibility,

its pricing model was lower than its competitors,

but not so low that you become suspicious.

You put all of these factors together,

and you've got the making of something that has the potential

to extract a lot of money from a lot of consumers.

And extract a lot of money from consumers

is exactly what Emma Bent did.

Peak Pet Cremations was paid to cremate over 3000 pets and took

nearly £90,000 from distraught pet owners.

In 2012, Emma Bent was sentenced to eight months in prison for her crime

after pleading guilty to seven counts of fraud and 16 charges

in relation to operating an unapproved incinerator

and illegal disposal of animals.

It was awful, to think that anybody could do that anyway.

I mean, if you found a dog, you wouldn't leave it to rot,

you'd phone somewhere, wouldn't you and have it took away.

Nobody puts a dog outside to rot, I don't care who you are.

And I don't know how she can live with herself anyway. No.

The very fact that this business is set up as a fraudulent way

of getting money off people, from the very beginning when they see

their first customer, to the very end when they're found out,

it's a question of that's what they set out to do. This is a facade

of a business, it sets out to deceive people.

There'll be very little emotional sympathy with the victim whatsoever.

Do you think you could have done more

to stop it happening at some stage?

No, because I didn't realise, did I?

I thought she was genuine. If I'd had doubts in me mind,

where would I have gone to check?

I think it's shocking, the way that Molly and all the other animals

were treated in this scam. It's got nothing to do with money at all.

It's about a basic understanding of people's emotions,

how close they are to their animals.

I'm so sorry it's happened to you.

-I am too.

-I think it's a terrible thing.

-Yeah.

For thousands of animals in this scam and their owners, it's a

-real tragedy.

-It is. It should never have happened.

Unfortunately, Jane and thousands of other grieving pet owners

suffered as a consequence of Emma Bent's callous scam,

but there are ways to check whether a company is legitimate.

To prevent this happening to you, here are some words of advice.

First of all, check out that the business you are about to send your

pet to is licensed by a local authority. It has to be licensed

in order to carry out cremations of animals. Look online for any reviews

about this business and ask other people in the town, have you used

this business before? If so, what do you think?

For more advice on this and other scams, just log on to...

Filling your tank can be a fairly pricy affair these days,

so, if somebody told you about an environmentally friendly fuel

that would make your richer, rather than poorer,

you'd be interested, right?

Well, that's exactly what was sold to over 900 British people

who bought shares in a firm called Worldwide Bio Refineries plc.

They were told the company made planet friendly fuel

called biodiesel and was set to rocket in value. But all was not as

it seemed and in 2005 the Serious Fraud Office began investigating.

They target UK investors,

often elderly, often vulnerable.

The effect can be devastating for the individuals concerned.

The sums involved can be quite great

in terms of life savings,

in terms of pensions.

And it would soon emerge that the men behind Worldwide Bio Refineries

had taken a whopping eight million pounds from ordinary British people.

They can be very sophisticated in their techniques and they can

take in very...relatively sophisticated investors.

One of those investors was retired engineer, Robert,

and he was no novice when it came to dabbling in stocks and shares.

I started investing in the stock market round about 1959.

On and off, I'd been looking after stocks and shares until now.

As an experienced investor in legitimate companies,

Robert's phone number became available to the scam artists

who were looking for new investment in what were actually,

bogus companies.

I got on a list of people, brokers and so on,

who call one up and ask you to invest

in brilliant sort of new schemes.

It was to do with bio fuels and I had taken a certain interest in that.

The man on the phone claimed to be a broker and initially he offered

Robert shares in a company that claimed to be producing alternative

fuels to petrol and diesel.

I thought I might make a small investment

which was making biofuels

and equipment for manufacturing biofuels.

But the so-called broker was, in fact, a conman,

working in what's known as a boiler room.

They operate illegally selling shares.

Generally operates from overseas, call UK investors and will use

hard sell, high pressure techniques to sell shares to these investors.

And the shares that boiler rooms sell are either worthless

or non-existent. But Robert believed he was dealing with

a bona fide broker and he decided to buy £2500 worth of shares

in the company. Sensing there was more where that came from,

the broker stayed in touch and three months later,

Robert parted with a further £2500.

I tried to buy some more shares. Then I got a call saying

unfortunately my share certificate...they couldn't send it,

because the company had been taken over by an Arab sheikh

and it was going to be called Worldwide Bio Refineries

and there might be shares available in that company.

It sounded innocent enough, but the truth was rather different.

The first bio fuel company had disappeared for a reason.

The monies which it had raised through using boiler rooms

was frozen by its bank.

The bank had become suspicious.

Monies were going out to these off shore accounts.

So in September 2005, worried that the authorities were investigating

the first company and in order to release the funds

from the frozen account, the conmen used the dormant company

called Worldwide Bio Refineries to take over the first bogus company.

They then managed to convince their investors

this was all part of the firm's expansion.

It sounded quite positive

and it made me feel that I did want to invest in WBR.

And to investors like Robert, Worldwide Bio Refineries

was presented as a major international company.

They completed the Singapore plant, so they said

and uh...they were doing business with Indonesia,

and India and Sri Lanka

and Nigeria.

All this looked very positive to a potential investor.

Robert was impressed

and decided to invest in a further £2500 worth of shares.

They were doing things I expected a company like that would do.

By this stage, Robert had purchased £9000 worth of shares in what he

been told was a successful global company. But the SFO had been

alerted to WBR's activities and begun a major fraud investigation.

As they trawled through records, WBR was soon exposed as a sham.

Worldwide Bio Refineries made claims that it was going to produce

the largest biodiesel plant in the world in Singapore,

producing 350,000 metric tons of bio diesel annually.

All of this was simply lies -

lies told to the investors

so they would invest their monies into the company.

Far from being a major global player, Worldwide Bio Refineries

was little more than a front.

Its company accounts

demonstrate that 99% of its income comes from investors monies

and only 1% came from trade.

And those investors had been well and truly scammed.

The value of the shares was negligible, if anything.

The shares couldn't be sold.

The reality was the shares were worthless.

The main men behind the scam were Dennis Potter and Redmond Johnson

known as Ray. They had set up Worldwide Bio Refineries

and used boiler rooms in Spain to sell the shares.

There was then a prolific period

in which the boiler rooms in question hit UK investors

and sold shares in WBR.

During that period between 2005 and 2007,

some £8 million was raised through investors.

And this staggering amount of money was split nearly evenly between the

Spanish boiler rooms and WBR. Potter and Johnson

used their ill-gotten gains to fund a jet-set lifestyle.

Mostly it was used by the company directors so they could fulfil

their dream of living the lifestyle

of a successful international businessman.

They spent a lot of time travelling the world, meeting people,

never getting beyond the agreement stage, staying in nice hotels,

playing the role.

But Johnson, Potter and the boiler room operators were now firmly

on the SFO's radar.

The tactic was to initially target the company directors

and then the boiler room operators.

Johnson and Potter were charged in 2009 and it wasn't long before the

boiler room scammers in Spain began to feel the heat as well.

Those individuals were charged in the summer of 2010 and it was at

that point they were joined with Potter and Johnson who had been

charged earlier to become a seven-handed conspiracy.

But to guarantee a conviction, the SFO needed as much evidence as

possible and investor Robert was about to offer

something very valuable.

I had already told them I had recordings of conversations I had

with brokers and one particular with Ray Johnson.

I was quite prepared to let them have those so they could assess them for

themselves and subsequently,

uh, they, um, asked me to be a witness in the case.

Robert had recorded his phone calls with the company as a precaution

and it was now vital evidence documenting the lies that had been

told by the boiler rooms and company boss, Ray Johnson.

'To July last year, we turned over about 3.8 million and we made

'just over £200,000 profit.

'It sets us out from the rest of the bio diesel companies.

'We're making money.'

The SFO now had all the evidence they needed and in September 2011,

Potter, Johnson and four others were tried and found guilty

for conspiring to defraud. Potter was sentenced to seven years,

Johnson to three years, as he pleaded guilty

and assisted the prosecution.

Ray Johnson has passed away since the court case.

Their boiler room co-conspirators also received a total

of 29 and a half years between them. It was testament to the hard work

of the SFO and Norfolk and Suffolk Police.

They were of great assistance

in taking witness statements from investors. They were involved fully

throughout the searches, arrests and interviews as well.

Investor Robert is pleased that justice has been done,

but losing a total of £12,500 of his valuable savings has taught him

a harsh lesson in buying from cold-calling brokers.

I would strongly recommend to anybody - don't touch it with a bargepole

unless you know far more about it than I do.

I don't think I'm ever going to invest in anything like that again.

And to help you steer clear of the scammers,

here are the Serious Fraud Office's top tips

to avoid boiler room scams.

Ask yourself the question - have you requested the financial advice

which you're being given and if not, don't accept that advice.

Ask for the details of the individual who's contacting you.

If in doubt, put the phone down.

If you would like any more advice about scams and how best to avoid

them, then go to...

Before we go, there's just time to tell you about some of the latest

scams out there. Today we're looking at a con

where scammers are masquerading as charities, tricking the generous

British public into handing over second-hand clothes.

People that use charities to carry out scams must be classed

as amongst the lowest of the low.

Well, we're getting an increase in calls around charity collection scams

and basically, organisations are

using real charity names to get people to give donations through

bags they leave outside their house.

What I can't understand is what they could possibly have to gain

from my old socks.

These donations are actually going overseas and being sold

for 100% profit.

They take it as far as to the developing world and Africa

-to sell these goods.

-We don't want to put people off from donating.

If they want to do it legitimately, what would you say?

Simply call the charity on the flyer that's come through your door

and ask them if they are doing a donation in your area

because that usually clears up whether it's genuine or a scam.

Another thing to look out for is the quality of the leaflet

coming through you letter box. Is the printing bad quality?

Are there spelling mistakes? Why?

Because your average scammer has very bad grammar!

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

with your cash, but armed with a little knowledge,

you can be one step ahead of them.

Stay safe and I'll see you next time.

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