Scam Details
The wording was as follows:
As you are aware we are a claims management company (MOJ regulated) and we are currently undertaking a financial investigation into a number of fraudulent companies, not limited to but including “High Street Group” and other property development businesses.
We have already investigated successful claims and received payouts for victims of this scam. We would be very keen to take your case moving forward.
I have attached to this email a copy of our terms and conditions.
Kind Regards
Simon Marshall
ACL Consultancy Ltd
The e-mail used was acl-consultancyltd@outlook.com and the scammer attached a copy of our terms & conditions, which is accessible via our website.
Please note that we only act on instruction, we do not buy data and we do not operate a call centre or participate in cold calling.
No Simon Marshall has ever been employed by our company
We only contact existing clients via our registered office number and our registered e-mail address, which can by confirmed on the FCA register following the link below.
https://register.fca.org.uk/s/firm?id=0010X00004KTYuMQAX
Please do get in touch with us by telephone or e-mail and seek assistance should you have been contacted in a similar way.
The company or person operating this scam is trying to ‘’clone’’ our business to gain your trust.
How Clone Firms Work
All Claims Management (CMC’s) Companies in the UK must be authorised by the FCA.
Clone firms aren’t authorised; they are scammers who are trying to convince you that they are.
They’ll often use the name and address of a genuine firm, or they may copy the firm reference number (FRN).
They might also:
- Copy the website of an authorised firm, making small changes (for example, to the phone number)
- Point you to the genuine firm’s website, but use different details to contact you
- Give you the details of a genuine firm but give you the wrong phone number
- Use email addresses that look similar to the genuine firm’s or use providers such as Outlook or Gmail
- They may even claim that a firm’s contact details on the FCA Register are out of date. This is unlikely to be true, as the regulatory body updates the FCA Register every evening.
Scammers may contact you unexpectedly by phone or email, but they may also get in touch via newsletters or social media.
They might even reach out to you after you search for loans or investments, and submit your details online.
The scammers may offer you investments in products such as bonds, shares, foreign exchange (FX) and cryptocurrencies that are non-tradable, worthless, overpriced or even non-existent.
They may also operate follow on scams, trying to convince you that they have recovered your lost investment funds and will forward you the returns for a small fee which can be recovered via an insurance policy you should take out.
You can find out more, and report scammers using this link.
As you can see the scammer took our regulated business name and terms and conditions in an effort to gain the victim’s trust.
We suggest you do not respond to any cold calls – please keep your personal information safe.