Author: comptroller

TV License Plus

The official website for renewing your TV licence, registering a change of address etc. Is www.tvlicensing.co.uk

You have to pay for a licence of course but address changes etc. are free.

Operators such as www.licenceplus.co.uk  make money from offering free services at a premium price, such as TV licence address change and often users don’t realise they’ve been conned into paying for something that is actually free.

This is legal but it catches people out as they trust the first result on Google search and may unintentionally choose a service without realising they are being charged for it.

To try to combat this, the official site  www.tvlicensing.co.uk pays for Google adverts, so they appear twice on the search results.

If you were warned in advance by the website that there will be an extra charge to pay then most people would stop and go to the official website, but often for people in a rush they expect Google to show up the official site and just start entering their details.

You will still get your licence renewed or address changed etc. by using one of these premium operators but it will cost you more for no good reason.

If you have any been caught out by these premium charge operators – do let me know, by email.

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Stupidest Scam of the Week Free Cyber Currency

Some time ago there was a scam prevalent on social media which promised to double your money – you simply send Bitcoin to a specified ID and they would return twice the amount to you.

As unbelievably stupid as this sounds – thousands of people did reply and sent money to a stranger expecting to get twice as much back.

The only thing they got a was a shock that it was a scam and this scam circulated for months before disappearing.

It has re-emerged but in email form this time.

The title of the email is “You have received 2700 XLM in your wallet”

XLM is the name a currency run by the Stellar Network and uses Lumens as the name of the coins. It is a competitor to Bitcoin.

The message then explains that you should send $100 worth of Bitcoin to a specific ID and in return you will receive $400 worth of XLM which gives you an instant profit of $300.

Obviously no-one gives away lots of money and it’s a simple scam but sadly some people’s greed and stupidity will lead them to a harsh lesson.

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Binary Options Trader in Court

Binary options is a form of stock market trading where essentially you are betting will go up or down rather than on how much it will move.

That sounds straightforward and maybe a 50:50 chance of winning but in fact 80% of people who try lose their money.

Lee Elbaz, the former chief executive of a major binary options company, goes on trial today in the US charged with defrauding clients of nearly $150m.

Her role in the fraud was first exposed with the help of a whistleblower, in November 2016, and some of the evidence presented by that insider has been used to prepare the case against Ms Elbaz.

The binary options scandal was a high-tech variant of boiler room scams. The fraudsters would cold call potential investors in other countries and persuade them to put money on whether a share or commodity price would go up or down. Initially the investor would see their money growing in an account held by the company and be encouraged to invest more — sometimes hundreds of thousands of pounds. However, when they tried to withdraw the money the binary options company would prevaricate and then stop taking their calls.

Billions of dollars was stolen from consumers all over the world, including the UK and US.

Ms Elbaz, also known as Lena Green, was the chief executive of Yukom, a company that operated binary options trading platforms under trade names such as BigOption and BinaryBook. Her team modelled themselves on Jordan Belfort — the New York stockbroker and scammer who inspired the film The Wolf of Wall Street. Ms Elbaz even took the team to see Belfort when he visited Israel.

The US government alleges that from around May 2014 through to around June 2017, Ms Elbaz directed a scheme to defraud binary options investors by lying to them and misleading them about the nature of binary options trading. Ms Elbaz, an Israeli citizen, was arrested when she flew to New York in September 2017.

Before the exposure of the fraud, binary options companies were allowed to openly advertise in the UK. One, Banc de Binary, sponsored Liverpool and Southampton football clubs. It was later forced to pay up $11 million in fines in the US before being wound up. The Israeli government banned such companies operating from Israel in October 2017 and in 2018 European governments barred the operators from selling to their citizens.

Good riddance.

If you have any experiences with binary options or similar scams – do let me know, by email.

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The Timeshare Resale Scam

Timeshares were a great idea – you buy the rights to the same holiday home for set weeks each year and then you can book travel early on, save money and you know the place so no worries about a poor holiday.

But, that great idea was largely taken over by con artists who used high pressure sales techniques to get people signed up at huge expense and facing risings costs each year that they didn’t expect.

That collapsed and everyone realised it was better to stay away from timeshares.

But what about the people left with timeshares they can’t sell and facing high costs each year for basically no return?

Another generation of con artists sprang up to make life even worse for those people by making false promises – “We will sell you timeshare at no cost to you”.

Often they claim there is no upfront cost to you at all. But once they have you hooked – a variety of upfront charges appear, such as a closing fee which strangely has to be paid in advance of a sale or an assessment report needed for the sale to go through or Brokers fees (they will be allied to the Broker if it exists and hence get that money themselves).

The con artists take whatever they can from you (and many others) then disappear – the phone number goes dead, emails are bounced back, the company name turns out to have been false or they used the name of a legitimate company not connected with the scam.

Guaranteed Sale Scam

Watch out for companies that guarantee a sale as no company can realistically guarantee that. They can certainly guarantee to advertise it until sold, but that’s all. They’ll also likely tell you that you’ll get your money back at closing if anyone else sells it before they do, but that carries the same level of truthfulness as the guarantee i.e. none.

Guaranted Offer

Be cautious of companies who guarantee to bring you an offer on your timeshare. What typically happens in these cases is that the same company who is guaranteeing to bring an offer will themselves make you the offer for a ridiculous price, maybe $100. This keeps their guarantee of an offer “legitimate,” but obviously isn’t what you had in mind. Guaranteed offers are never worthwhile.

The Buyer Waiting Scam

Some companies try to get you to sign-up by claiming they have a buyer waiting to purchase your property. Of course you’ll be required to pay a fee in order for them to forward this buyer to you. Once you pay the fee, the buyer either suddenly gets cold feet, or you never hear another word from the person or their company again.

Timeshare scams continue, so be careful. Don’t be caught out a second time.

If you have any experiences with Timeshare scammers do let me know, by email.

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Official Crime Figures 2018

 

Overall levels of crime showed falls in recent decades, but levels have remained broadly stable in recent years.

In the last year there has been no change in overall levels of crime although this hides variation seen in individual crime types.

Headline figures

  • Theft showed a 13% increase compared with the year ending March 2017. Despite this increase, estimates of theft remain much lower than 20 years ago.
  • a 2% increase in vehicle offences, which includes an 8% increase in the subcategory of “theft or unauthorised taking of a motor vehicle”
  • an 11% increase in robbery
  • a 3% decrease in burglaries, following rises seen in the previous two years
  • a 17% increase in fraud offences
  • a 21% decrease in computer misuse

Figures for year ending March 2019,		 Things to note
Computer
misuse		 21% decrease (to 966,000 offences) in computer misuse offences estimated by the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW). The CSEW is the best source for measuring the volume of computer misuse offences as it captures offences that go unreported.
Fraud 17% increase in fraud offences estimated by the CSEW (to 3,809,000 offences). The CSEW provides the best indication of the volume of fraud offences experienced by individuals as it captures the more frequent lower-harm cases that are likely to go unreported to the authorities.

There are figures available for all types of crime – above is just for computer misuse and fraud.

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