The 20 strangest scams I’ve seen – together with a £21.7bn telephone invoice…

In my 30 years writing a column for The Mail on Sunday I’ve filed more than 5,000 reports. Many involve readers’ complaints against their bank, insurer, card issuer or utility supplier. Others involve more serious investigations. Hundreds of people I’ve named in warnings have been banned as company directors. Hundreds of companies I’ve advised readers to avoid have been shut. The number jailed after being named by me, or who were behind the companies I warned against, goes well into three figures.

I’ve been Consumer Champion of the Year four times and Consumer Journalist of the Year and Financial Journalist of the Year. I won a Judge’s Commendation at Southwark Crown Court in London for my investigation into carbon credit fraud and for the prosecution evidence I gave against the ringleader, who was jailed for 13 years.

Some issues never go away: banks that close customers’ accounts without explanation, and unqualified will writers who rip off the mainly elderly. Both issues cry out for official action but sadly are unlikely to get any.

City regulation had not begun when I started in the Eighties. When it did, lots of tricksters were kicked out of the industry. Some moved abroad and continued cheating from places the UK could not touch and some moved into schemes that fell outside the regulatory perimeter, such as investing in diamonds, coins, watches and wine.

But in 2011 authorities turned their focus to bribery, corruption, insider dealing and money laundering. Investigating fraud against ordinary investors would take a back seat. There has been one nasty but predictable consequence: junior staff – cold callers – at bogus investment outfits saw bosses raking in a fortune without any action being taken. Typically, the worst slap on the wrist was a ban on acting as a company director – no problem as it was easy to get someone to front for you in your next scam. So yesterday’s junior cold callers moved on to become today’s rip-off operators, just as today’s juniors will become tomorrow’s crooks. Here are 20 of the most extraordinary examples in my Readers’ Champion case files.

1. Ostrich scam victims

In the ’90s there were very active companies marketing investment in ostriches, advertising that the only bit of the bird that could not be sold was the beak. It was claimed they were easy to farm and breed, feathers were used in fashion and the meat edible. But figures didn’t add up. Investors who visited farms were pointed towards one ostrich in a field of them and told, ‘That’s yours!’. I gave warnings in 1995 and ’96 before the Department of Trade and Industry shut the biggest offender, Ostrich Farming Corporation. Its boss Brian Ketchell tried to sue me and in 2000 he was jailed for three-and-a-half years. Victims lost some £22 million.

2. My biggest cash victory

In 1995 I was thrilled to win £100,000 for a reader from an insurance company refusing to pay on a house subsidence claim. But my biggest cash victory came in 2011, just before Christmas, when a reader received a demand from BT for £21,756,470,275.49. It ordered the reader to pay within ten days or face legal proceedings. I got the bill reduced to its correct figure, £275.49. This must be a record for a consumer champion!

3. Millenium bubbly loses fizz

In the late ’90s, a string of dodgy champagne sellers set up, claiming worldwide parties on December 31, 1999 would lead to a world shortage of bubbly, making it a must-have investment at the current price. My first warning was In January 1997 when I sounded the alarm over House of Delacroix, its seriously overpriced fizz and marketing lies. Other warnings rapidly followed. In 2001, three of the people behind House of Delacroix were jailed for fraud.

4. Downfall of a conman

In 1995, I investigated Chase Global International, an investment company run by Giuseppe Castiglione, a Canadian conman trying to get a foothold in the UK.

His marketing centred on a signed letter and photo from then Prime Minister John Major. No 10 confirmed both were freely available at trade fairs and were not in any way backing for Castiglione.

He wrote to his investors describing me as a ‘sick, vindictive, unknowledgeable and uninformed ass’ who collected information from readers about their finances then sold it to the taxman.

I’ve framed his letter and it’s in my office. In 1997, Castiglione tried again, registering several impressive-sounding UK companies, none with genuine assets, before trying to sell shares in them. I sounded the alarm again and his companies were shut down.

5. The serial fraudster

Chris Ineson came up with business ideas that might have worked. Instead of developing them he sold franchises in companies that didn’t exist. You could be an area franchisee for his scheme to fly NHS patients abroad for treatment, avoiding NHS queues. But he had no planes, no medical staff and no intention of getting them.

I warned against several of his schemes between 1995 and 2002, when he was jailed for five-and-a- half years for fraud. I appeared on a TV programme about him and he said my praise for his ideas (but not the scams) raised his reputation in prison. We are still in touch.

6. Warning list victory

The Financial Services Authority (FSA) had the power to ban people from the regulated finance sector but refused to make its list public. So I started publishing my own list, based on intelligence I obtained. In April 2001, the FSA saw it was being ridiculed and made its list public, which it still is today – thanks to the MoS.

The same happened with the FSA warning list of unauthorised firms. It refused to name the firms, so I compiled a list. It took time but in May 2002 the FSA began publishing its warning list. That warning list is now huge and is only on the FSA website because of the MoS.

7. Betting racket arrests

In 2002 I worked with Royal Gibraltar Police investigating a bogus betting forecast business targeting UK victims. After I posed as a victim and gathered evidence, nine arrests were made.

8. I get armed protection

In 2005, I warned against an offer of shares in a US stem cell research company called Regal Technologies. There was no sign of a business at its supposed address near Tampa, Florida.

I interviewed a man who answered the company’s phone. He was British and gave his name as Paul Baxter. Several years later, I was called by police in London, asking for permission to give my phone number to the US Secret Service, who wanted to speak to me. ‘Paul Baxter’ was the ringleader of a share fraud network spanning three continents.

The Secret Service had arrested him in a sting based on Al Pacino’s movie Sea of Love, telling him his US citizenship had been approved and to come to an official ceremony. On arrival he was arrested. Then in 2013 I was flown to Florida to give evidence at the trial of Paul Gunter – his real name – who was once a Hertfordshire financial adviser. I got armed protection.

Another UK witness was a widow from Huddersfield whose husband committed suicide after losing everything to Gunter’s scam. There were 2,300 victims in the UK alone. It is estimated victims lost £85 million. Gunter got 25 years, so he’ll be 89 when released.

9. The biggest UK Ponzi scam

Former black cab driver Kevin Foster ran the biggest Ponzi scam I’ve seen in the UK. He held revivalist-style meetings where he handed out big prizes. I first wrote about him in 2004. He had an amusing brush-off for every question: I asked for a copy of his investment scheme’s accounts – he replied that he didn’t need to produce accounts as his office was papered with cheques!

The next month police raided his Kent farmhouse. In July 2005 he appeared at the High Court to defend a bankruptcy petition, owing £36 million to 8,500 investors. Just as he was about to be declared bankrupt, he called to the judge that he had something important to show him. The judge beckoned Kevin forward, expecting to be shown evidence of financial backing that would repay creditors. Instead, in a stage whisper, he plonked down a photo and said it was a rare albino wallaby.

‘I’ve got two of them!’ he said, suggesting he could make millions by breeding albino wallabies and everyone would be repaid. The judge couldn’t decide if he was deranged. He waved Kevin back and declared him bankrupt. In 2007 Kevin was charged with theft and breaches of investor protection laws. In 2010, I was a few feet from him when he was sentenced to ten years. He looked shocked.

10. ‘Mastermind’ is jailed

Jeffrey Revell-Reade was the Australian mastermind behind an international network of crooked investment firms. My report in 2004 came with a world map showing his links. The biggest firm he secretly controlled was an authorised London stockbroker, Pacific Continental Securities.

Six years later, in 2010, the Serious Fraud Office opened an investigation and in 2014 he was charged with fraud. I acted as a go-between, negotiating between the SFO and a witness who refused to give evidence without an assurance they would not face action. I got the assurance and the SFO got the evidence from the witness.

About 1,000 investors lost £70 million, with JRR making £37million personally. Ahead of his trial, the MoS website took down 40 of my stories as they would have influenced a jury. He was jailed for eight years.

I had revealed that Pacific Continental Securities had fallen under JRR’s influence in 2004, but the regulator took no action. In 2005, I wrote about its sale of high-risk foreign shares to UK low-risk investors. I recovered £100,000 for a reader who fell victim. I warned again in 2006, reporting that Pac Con paid a reader a huge sum on condition he stopped talking to me.

Also in 2006, I reported that a reader was contemplating suicide after becoming a Pac Con victim. I went to the FSA HQ and handed over more than 100 letters from cheated readers. In June 2007, the FSA banned Pac Con from taking on new clients, effectively putting it out of business. This is believed to be the first time a member of the London Stock Exchange has been shut down as a result of a newspaper investigation. But it took until November 2008 for Pac Con to be declared formally in default, with the Financial Services Compensation Scheme starting to accept claims from victims, estimated to total £100 million. Later the FCA (the renamed FSA) imposed a lifetime ban on senior Pac Con broker Jay Rutland, who married Formula 1 boss Bernie Ecclestone’s daughter Tamara.

11. Berlin police raid

I received intelligence on Atlantic Capital Partners (ACP), selling dodgy shares at dodgier prices in 2007. Staffed by British brokers, its sales literature was in English and marketing consisted of sales calls to UK investors – yet the operation was based and licensed in Berlin. This was because the German regulator was known to be weak and, on paper, the company was headed by two Germans.

Highly unusually, City of London Police raided ACP in Berlin and found a classic ‘boiler room’ of phones and high pressure sales staff. I followed officers to Berlin, went to the boiler room and took the two Germans to lunch. We discussed names of those who really controlled ACP and found strings were pulled by international crook… Jeffrey Revell-Reade.

12. Downfall of Allen Stanford

In March 2009, I produced a major story about Sir Allen Stanford, the central figure in a £5.6 billion fraud investigation of his international banking business.

It involved his political control and influence over Montserrat and Antigua in the West Indies, his knighthood and his £70 million sponsorship and influence over England cricket. I revealed I had investigated him years earlier for an international magazine and found he was falsely claiming to run a Texas bank when he had no licence there, and that he was running a bogus London insurance company in Piccadilly.

The authorities took no notice, allowed him to take virtual control of Antigua, and gave him a knighthood. It was the US that eventually investigated, leading to Stanford’s conviction and in 2012 to his 110-year jail sentence.

13. Taxman’s threat foiled

I revealed HMRC had launched a new tax collection tactic in April 2011, writing to bad payers and threatening to seize their car, TV etc – and sell them at auction for knock-down prices. HMRC was making threats that licensed debt collectors are banned from voicing without taking court action.

Two weeks later, I reported that HMRC had admitted it had no legal right to seize goods and that its threatening letters were never approved by ministers. I published part of a letter received by an MoS reader, saying, ‘We will view your possessions and list those we will sell at auction. Once listed, your belongings will become the property of HM Revenue & Customs.’ All totally false. In July 2011, MPs ordered HMRC to scrap the threatening letters.

14. The likeable rogue

I warned against share investment schemes run by or linked to Tom Wilmot, a City character who had been running fringe share dealing firms for decades in 2004.

He was refused authorisation following the 1986 Financial Services Act and dropped out of sight for a while, opening a sausage business. The FSA refused to believe what I told them, except to give Wilmot a private warning which he shrugged off. Finally, in late 2007, the FSA did investigate. And yes, there was a serious fraud.

In 2011, he was jailed for nine years. He was a ‘likeable rogue’ and never took my warnings personally. He asked me to visit him in jail, which I did. While there he was diagnosed with terminal cancer. When I last visited, he was wheelchair-bound. I made a private approach to the Home Office, asking for his release on compassionate grounds as there was no danger of reoffending. I was still in touch with the Prisons Minister when he died. At least he spent his final days in an outside hospital.

15. Carbon credits scandal

In March 2012 I sounded my first warning about investing in carbon credits – basically, bits of paper that supposedly offset carbon emissions by industry, sometimes by promising to finance tree planting. There were two types of credit, one bought by heavy industries which could potentially sell their bit of paper on to a different business that needed to emit more carbon, and a second type of ‘voluntary’ credits, bought by anyone with ‘green’ sympathies to offset their jet flight to the Costa del Sol.

Fraudsters used marketing materials highlighting industrial credits, but actually sold voluntary credits for many times their original value, and there was no way for investors to turn them back into cash.

City of London Police invited an MoS photographer and me to join them in a raid on one of the scam firms, resulting in 11 arrests. At the office housing the scam phone room, we were warned the main lift opened directly into the phone room, so we were told to take a second lift, as the first lift full of uniformed police had gone up. The police lift stopped on intervening floors. Ours didn’t and the lift doors opened to find us facing crooks just as surprised as we were!

In December 2012, the FCA opened investigations into 77 carbon credit sales firms. Early in 2013, I put more jigsaw puzzle pieces of intelligence together and linked every scam carbon credit firm to one company, Carbon Neutral Investments – authorised by the FCA. The watchdog took no action and a few months later one of the carbon credit firms I’d named in the paper collapsed, costing victims £18 million.

In November 2013, the Government woke up, announcing High Court action to wind up 19 carbon credit companies. I offered to hand over my list of 90 more companies. In 2017, one carbon credit scamster, Brett Jolly from Southend, was banned as a director for 11 years. I’d warned in 2013 that his company falsely claimed Chancellor George Osborne was guaranteeing investors would make a profit. I found Jolly was a serial offender who once falsely claimed to own the world’s biggest diamond.

In 2021, the ringleader I’d named eight years earlier Paul Seakens appeared at Southwark Crown Court. I was a witness as I’d questioned him for the paper. He was linked to 74 carbon credit dealing firms and evidence showed £30 million passed through his accounts. The FCA did not remove his authorisation until four years after my first alert. Seakens was jailed for 13 years and I got a commendation from the judge.

16. Murder by hitmen

In 2010 I reported that the FSA was struggling to keep Lithuania’s Bank Snoras and its Russian boss Vladimir Antonov out of Britain.

I revealed the bank had been linked at one time to the Russian Mafia but Antonov took charge in 2002 and in 2006 it bought a small FSA-authorised bank in Leicester. I gained access to documents showing Antonov also ran a Russian bank and had lied to the FSA, saying that this bank was part of a deposit protection scheme.

Among the documents was a letter to the FSA from the Deputy Chairman of the Bank of Russia. This alleged a lack of money laundering controls at Antonov’s Russian bank. Antonov’s lawyers tried to get the letter thrown out ahead of an FSA tribunal hearing to consider Bank Snoras’s licence. The next step was to get the Deputy Chairman of Russia’s central bank to come to London and give evidence. But he was shot dead by two hitmen.

The outcome was that Bank Snoras won the right to a UK presence, using the EU rule that anyone with a licence in one EU country must be ‘passported’ into all other EU countries that it wishes.

Once in the UK, Antonov took over Portsmouth FC, with grand plans for expansion, but abandoned it months later, with the club collapsing into administration.

In 2014 I reported that he was to be extradited to Lithuania to face £402 million fraud charges. Antonov then vanished after losing an extradition appeal. In 2019, he was jailed for fraud in Russia.

18. Trees are growing scam

Trees have often been used as the product in investment scams. They take years to mature and are often said to be growing overseas, leaving investors in the dark for a very long time before they find the trees either don’t exist, are of low value or have been sold to more than one investor.

Global Forestry Investments (GFI) was run by Andrew Skeene and Omari Bowers from South London. In 2009, I warned against an earlier scam by Skeene and in 2011 I said he was behind GFI, offering 12 per cent returns on trees in South America.

GFI responded by opening a fake Facebook page in my name, with me supposedly confessing to tax offences. In 2018, I reported the pair had been banned as directors for ten years, after the Insolvency Service found that of £24 million put into the company by investors, £13 million was pocketed by the pair. In June 2022 I reported that they had been convicted of conspiracy to defraud and jailed for 11 years. By the time of their trial, the sum lost by 2,000 investors was put at £37million.

19. Shame of royal guest

In 2019 I exposed Freddie Achom, linking him to a wine investment swindle and reporting his background which included a year in jail and a directorship ban.

He had subsequently reinvented himself as a successful ethnic minority businessman, gaining invitations to Downing Street, etc. We published a picture of him with PM David Cameron. A week later I reported how a client’s £70,000 wine investment had gone missing – and we published a picture of Achom with then Prince Charles’s wife Camilla at a St James’s Palace reception. I asked: does no one vet royals’ guests? Subsequently, his wine company collapsed and liquidators could find only 15 to 20 per cent of the wine it was supposed to have in storage for clients.

20. The great art scam

Just before Christmas in 2022, I exposed Smith and Partner, an art investment company, after it cheated an elderly investor out of £17,000. It marketed hugely overpriced prints with exaggerated predictions of massive profits.

I revealed its boss Luke Sparkes had borrowed almost £500,000 from his company, on top of other drawings. I warned that S&P was lying that it is regulated by an art trade body, when in fact it was expelled from that body. I published a further warning after S&P bought off a reader who asked for my help. In June 2023 I reported that S&P has gone into liquidation. I denounced it as a multi-million-pound scam. Police are still investigating complaints.