I noticed a piece on the BBC news this morning. People are being cold called by scammers trying to get them to invest in land scams.
More and more people are being targeted by firms cold-calling them to buy land they say is ripe for development, the BBC has learnt.
Many are persuaded to pay tens of thousands of pounds for land which is unlikely ever to be built on.
The Financial Services Authority (FSA) said it was investigating about 20 such schemes.
The City of London Police’s Economic Crime Directorate said what it had seen so far was the tip of the iceberg.
They interviewed one chap, Billy McNaught who had lost thousands investing in worthless land that would never be developed. As Paul Lewis, the Money Box presenter said, you should always check with the local planning office before parting with money. That will tell you very quickly whether the land is an investment or not. Poor old Billy didn’t and it cost him dear. To be fair to him, he does admit that he was foolish, but it’s a bit late now.
Yet it is all too easy to avoid coming a cropper. These people cold call. If someone cold calls you offering you a deal that stands to make you lots of money, the alarm bells should be clanging like the Notre Dame. Why would a perfect stranger ring you out of the blue offering you free money? Surely if it was that good a deal, they would keep it to themselves. That alone should be sufficient to have you putting the phone down.
As Billy McNaught said when interviewed, these people pile on the pressure – it’s a time limited offer, there are people queuing up to invest and as a preferred customer you are getting first dibs and so on. The trick is to never let the conversation develop that far.
As a general rule, register with the TPS to stop the vast majority of cold calls. The unscrupulous bastards who are prepared to ignore the TPS will then be fairly obvious. All you do then is either screen your calls, use something like Truecall or put the phone down on them. At the moment, I tend to use the latter – it’s cheaper.
I’ve just been looking at Truecall; it seems over-complicated and as my daughters often ring me from their offices, where the number is withheld by the company, they wouldn’t be able to get through.
When is someone going to invent a simple answering machine which asks for a PIN?
I’m thinking of something which answers any calls with “If you are a person or organisation which has been provided with a PIN number, please enter it now, otherwise press “#” and leave a message”. Only if a correct PIN is entered would the phone actually ring.
Meanwhile, I pretend to be going to get a pencil and paper and leave them hanging on (with background music from the radio!)
Some greedy people with more money than sense deserve no sympathy.
Well, yes, greed is the hook.
Two thoughts
1) a fool and his money are soon parted
2) why is Paul Lewis covering this as a money piece. It’s a crime piece.
1 – indeed.
2 – you would have thought so.
They are scamming bastards of course, and everything you say is true.
But it’s worth remembering that one of our biggest and most successful housebuilders got started by buying land that other people had been refused permission on, and just waiting and waiting, and submitting application after application, and eventually, bingo, big profits.
So it can be done – but not by these tossers and not the way they’re doing it.