£317K Investment Fraud – A Victim’s Story

Fraud: Investment Fraud (AKA Boiler Room Fraud)
Promised Returns: 30%
Commodities: Diamond Shares, Gold Shares, Gold Bullion
Scammers Active Today: Yes
Introduction: Email > Online Survey followed by Cold Call
Contact Methods: Email, Phone (Caller ID: “International”, “Unavailable”, “Withheld”)
Fraud Techniques: Advanced Fee, Recovery Room, Reverse Takeover
Sales Techniques: Aggression, Befriend, Fear, Loss of Opportunity, NLP, Scarcity, Time Sensitive
Broker Companies: Global Investment Group, Marcus Jones International, Newport Management Group, Steiner Haus Capital Group, Suzhou Capital Group, Vredestein Investment Consortium (VICO)
Gold Companies: Blackhawk Mines Corp, El Alto, Eldora Gold, Inca Peruvian Mining, Own Gold LLC, Regal Resources, UK Own Gold Ltd
Escrow: International Escrow Services
Company Directors: Jon Craig Nelson, Mark Edward Viner, Patrick Hill, Cao Yupeng
Independent Broker: Peter Deboer (main man who links all frauds, apparently worked for Vredestein Investment Consortium (VICO))
Sales Agents: David Cooper, Mark Carter, Peter Allen, Marcus Collins, Kevin Lee, Marc Osgoode
Admin: Matt Collins, Mei Shao, Stephanie Anderson, Vanessa Hill
Banks: Amegy Bank National Association, Berliner Bank, CitiBank, Commerzbank, Credit Suisse, Frankfurter Sparkasse, HypoVereinstein UniCredit Bank, Metro Bank, RBS (Royal Bank of Scotland), Standard Chartered, V-Bank
Countries: Bahamas, Germany, Netherlands, Singapore, Switzerland, UK, USA
Financial Loss: £317,000 ($500,000)
Victim Age: 73

The Fraud – Description

My dad had recently retired, had some cash and was looking to invest. Out of the blue, he was presented with a BT survey asking typical demographic questions; age, income, savings, investment interests and was happy to help, so submitted it. After submitting the survey he was approached by a cold call, it was a company offering investment opportunities and they never mentioned the survey. The survey was fake and it wasn’t sent by BT.

After investing a small amount of £5,000 to open his gold investment portfolio, the fraud began. The fraudsters follow a very well organized protocol using well honed sales scripts, fabricated scenarios and processes. It has one intention, to extract as much money as possible from the victims, by any means possible. They use a multitude of different fake names, company names, brochures, stationery and websites.

The fraudsters quickly build rapport and gain confidence in their victims using NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) & other sales techniques with clinical language patterns and literally befriended their victims (or at least victims feel this way), this enables them to brain-wash them so they have complete control over their decision making.

After investing £5,000, more investment opportunities were presented and further investments were made. The payments got larger and larger over time as my dad’s confidence grew in the main sales adviser who called himself Peter Deboer or Peter De boer – he had a Dutch accent, but the southern Swedish accent is also very similar. He talked a lot about Enschede in Holland and West Germany. He is still active defrauding people today, he still phones but my dad no longer takes international calls. The last time I spoke with him myself was approx June 2014. We have many voice recordings of this fraudster — all audios can be heard at Name My Scammer.

Peter Deboer has links to these fake companies: Vredestein Investment Consortium (this appears to be a legit company and does have an employee called Peter Deboer), others include; Global Investment Group, International Escrow Services, Eldora Gold Resources, Black Hawk Mines, Inca Peruvian Mines, Own Gold LLC, UK Own Gold, Marcus Jones International, Regal Resources.

These 2 websites below are still live and have new designs since 2013. I believe these are or were Peter Deboer’s 2 main sites.

– global-ig.com

This was always used as Peter Deboer’s lead broker company along with the name Vredestein Investment Consortium. But he distanced himself from global-ig by calling it the “broker”, but when you phone the number and leave a message, Peter Deboer always returns the calls.

This website is hosted in Florida, US, registrant name = jorge alejandromendez muñoz, you’ll find him on FB and Google+ looking very smug. I emailed him without reply.

– internationalescrowservices.biz

This company and website was always used as a fake escrow and used to convince my dad to transfer payments by Marcus Jones International and all linked companies, including all of Peter Deboer’s trades – this site is hidden by DomainsByProxy and is hosted in Atlanta, USA.

As discussed the scam itself started with a fake BT survey which my dad naively responded to – cold calls then started. The first scam was via Marcus Jones International (agent Marcus Collins). After a few payments they disappeared, and Peter Deboer made his mark by carry out the ‘recovery room scam’ which had many facets and was persistent and ruthless. Boiler Room fraud like this gains momentum and if you feel trust for your investment broker, you can lose sight of precaution and risk and the result can be devastating.

After reporting the fraud and dealing with ActionFraud, NFIB, Police (16 page blow-by-blow statement of every email, phone call, share certificate delivery, etc) in the UK, US and Germany and having submitted so much evidence, plus dealing with FCA, Police Complaints Commission, my local MP, various newspapers and documentary companies I burned out and quit the investigation for a few months respite.

The Police promised monthly updates, they’ve actually emailed 3 times in 2 years. In all countries they refused to trace domains, Skype and BT phone numbers, weren’t interested in checking bank accounts (my dad paid into 8), voice recordings or physical addresses. It can take the Police months just to get a response from the banks, let alone be given access to freeze assets. Civil action and serving a Freezing Order is the only way and this can cost you up to £20,000 to action.

And reporting the fraud was not easy. It took me 10 weeks to get a small Police station in Kent to take on the crime. Initially ActionFraud, NFIB, GMP, City of London Police and my local Police all dismissed it. Not interested. Kent took it on because I had a few leads to Kent. Kent passed it to the The City of London Police who now have the crime, but I’m not sure that’s a good thing, because they have so much to do.

Own Gold LLC and Own Gold UK:

This accounts for 20% of my dads loss. We believe all frauds are linked, but I have a feeling that Peter Deboer buys leads from other scammers and deals on his own. We have reports that these fraudsters are in court in Florida in 2015. Apparently a guy who used to work for them came out as a whistle blower and sunk the operation. Watch this space on that case.

The Fraud – Damage

The Fraud – Timeline

1. Introduction:

Email received with a link to an online survey, purporting to be from BT — it was fake! A few questions were related to age, income, savings, investment opportunities. Survey was submitted in good faith.

2. Marcus Jones International [Broker]:

Post survey, was subsequently called by Marcus Jones International via cold call — they did not mention the survey. Invested in El Alto and Regal Resources gold shares through fake escrow service, International Escrow Services (InternationalEscrowServices.biz).

3. Steiner Haus Capital Group [Broker]:

Approach made to purchase more Eldora Gold shares. Purchase not completed.

4. Marcus Jones International [Broker]:

Purchased Eldora Gold shares through fake escrow service, International Escrow Services (InternationalEscrowServices.biz). Regal  Resources were subsequently dropped in favour of Eldora Gold as recommended by Matt Collins.

Recovery Room Technique

5. Peter DeBoer – Vredestein Investment Consortium (VICO) [Independent Advisor]:

Marcus Jones International introduced Peter DeBoer as an independent advisor who works for Vredestein Investment Consortium. They said he offered a better price for Eldora Gold shares. Continued to buy Eldora Gold shares from Marcus Jones International through Peter DeBoer acting as the agent. Marcus Jones International disappeared after this deal and we never heard from them again.

6. Newport Management Group: Marc Osgoode offers to buy under performing Regal Resources shares in a deal involving the exchange for diamonds.

7. Global Investment Group [New Broker]:

Peter Deboer introduces new broker Global Investment Group.  More Eldora Gold shares are purchased with Peter DeBoer as the advisor and agent. Payments are always  made through the broker and his fictitious escrow, International Escrow Services, into various German Banks and not directly to Peter DeBoer.

Reverse Takeover 

8. Blackhawk Mining Corp./Eldora Gold: Peter DeBoer discussed a Reverse Takeover deal of Eldora Gold by Blackhawk Mining Corp, which would result in the company subsequently being sold off and major windfalls with 30% returns being promised.

9. Blackhawk Mining Corp: Purchased Blackhawk shares. Peter DeBoer is the advisor and organiser using Global Investment Group as the broker.

10. Peter DeBoer Recommendations: (No Broker Involvement – Cash Sale)

a. UK Own Gold Ltd (AKA Own Gold LLC)  Purchased gold bullion bars. Contract delivery date 6 months after purchase.

b. Inca Peruvian Mining  Purchased shares at lower cost with Initial Public Offering (IPO). With stock market listing due soon.

Recovery Room & Advanced Fee Technique

11 – Suzhou Capital Group: Received phone call out of the blue asking if I have Regal Resources shares. Suzhou Capital Group negotiated to buy holding of Regal Resources shares and claimed they could “de-restrict” them—but at a cost.

The Fraud – Clues

The Fraud – My Story:

January 2013, I was visiting my parents and my dad just happened to take an international phone at the time. When questioned he said it was regarding an investment he’d made and the share agent was currently selling the shares as part of a reverse takeover and all investors were about to receive a large windfall with 30% return on investment. He was naturally buoyant, but on the flip-side I knew something wasn’t right as he was undergoing heart tests at the time. Putting 2 and 2 together I instantly knew he’d been scammed, and I also had an inkling he had an idea, hence the stress and heart tests. But why was he still investing?

Knowledge is power, almost…

The ironic thing is, I was a regularly reader of The Salty Droid website from 2009, being at the wrong end of some dodgy internet marketing training purchases myself. I’d listened to heart-breaking recordings of Utah based boiler rooms scamming the elderly, where victims had lost thousands of dollars and sometimes their life savings without any recourse. I’d actually discussed it with my father at the time but not in any great detail and only thought the scammers targeted people in the USA selling them fictitious educational and training materials. I hadn’t even heard of investment boiler room scams at the time. Little did I know that a few years later my family would be targeted and become victims.

Is it a scam or not?

After I became suspicious of my fathers overseas investment, I waited a few days until I had a chance to personally check his emails in private. It wasn’t pretty! I found a plethora of emails from and to the scammers, along with attachments of fake brochures, invoices, mandates, bank payments, etc. A subsequent and comprehensive Google search including [company name scam] confirmed there were other victims – but I had to search pretty deep to find them. The reason being and something I later found out, is that most victims feel such intense embarrassment, guilt and shame they don’t even report it to the Police, let alone documenting it online — if they did, the internet would be full of victim stories. The effects of fraud (regardless of loss) are devastating to the psychology and health of victims — some sadly take their own life.

I exported his emails to a pen drive and drove home to investigate further. What followed was a fervent 72 hours of trawling through endless emails, sorting documents and creating some pretty large spreadsheets working out who he’d paid, when and how much. I wanted a total sum to establish the damage before saying anything. It was £458,000 and my I was devastated, but at this point I didn’t have access to his bank to fully reconcile. Because I was exhausted at this point, I broke down as I thought my parents house must have been remortgaged to pay for it all — they certainly didn’t have half a million quid lying around to blow on shares. My next dilemma was, how the hell do I break the news to my mum and dad!

The hardest thing I’ve ever had to do in my life…

It took me an extra day to do further research and seek advice online before breaking the bad news. I first spoke with Salty Droid in confidence and I then told my Sister and it was just nice to share the problem, as the saying goes “a problem shared is a problem halved”. We still haven’t told my Grandparents as the stress would be too much. I have to say the advice online at the time was completely non-existent and any ‘potential’ help available had to be paid for and there was no way I was being scammed as well. To this day I’m still hyper-sensitive to scammers.

Day 5 after finding out, I plucked up the courage and drove to my parents. I was physically shaking, but it had to be done. I ensured they were both sitting down and explained my findings as gently as I could, they went as white as a sheet, but I quickly sensed my dad was relieved it was all over – it transpired he did think he was being scammed, but felt he was in too deep to stop investing and the windfall of £1,000,000 was just 2 months away — or so the scammers told him. You can see the conflict victims have, is it or is it not fraud? He’d also previously made inquiries with the FSA (Financial Services Authority) now called the FCA (Financial Conduct Authority) in February 2012 as to the authenticity of the companies he was investing with. Unfortunately they were too vague with him (I later heard the recordings), as opposed to saying bluntly “IT IS FRAUD, YOU MUST STOP INVESTING”. They could have saved him a £200,000 if they’d have been stronger and their website was up to date, as they list known boiler room scammers and their fictitious companies on a Warning List.

£458k became £317k, but it’s still a lot of money!

As I started to report the fraud to the appropriate authorities including ActionFraud, Police, FSA (FCA), NFIB, RBS Bank, plus a myriad others to get some help I gave my dad a few days for it to sink in a bit before we sat down and worked out if my spreadsheets were correct and it was in fact a total loss of £458,000. As it happens he had more physical documents and fake share certificates and some other bits I’d not seen including bank statements, and to my relief he hadn’t paid all of the invoices. 24 hours later we had the real loss which was a total of £317,000. It was bittersweet as this meant he hadn’t remortgaged the house and had a bit of cash left, but he’d still lost a shit load of money and what a journey lay ahead for us all. It continues today…

Resistance. Resistance. Resistance.

Even though my dad knew the investment was a fraud at this point, he didn’t want to believe it and this conflict fluctuated back and forth for months and caused resistance during the investigation. Something to be aware of if you are involved in fraud, you will face a lot of resistance from victims and the authorities. Just like after a death, he went through a bereavement period and a plethora of different emotions. As the days, weeks and months went on and we dug further into the investigation you could see my dads health deteriorate which was the worst thing for me — he’s 73 and before the fraud he looked under 60, at his worst period he looked 80. I hated seeing that change.

At times he resisted anything and everything and even 3-6 months in, one day he was sure they were scammers, the next he wondered if his gold bullion would soon be delivered. This I believe was exacerbated by the lack of communication and transparency from the Police, they tell you next to nothing. I think this resistance from victims is natural and just part of the healing process.

Reporting Fraud is not as easy as you would think!

The first place you report a fraud in the UK is with ActionFraud the UK’s crime reporting service. At the time it was relatively new and the process wasn’t exactly smooth as detailed in this Mail Online article I was involved with. I first tried to report the fraud through the ActionFraud website and quickly found the website wasn’t fit for purpose as there were only 2 fields to enter company names, we had over 10, plus 10 bank accounts. I then phoned instead, only to feel as though the call centre staff at ActionFraud were going through the motions and weren’t exactly interested in our plight — I quickly realised it was an outsourced operation, not exactly helpful and needed a lot of work to fix.

The Role of ActionFraud and the NFIB.

Once ActionFraud get the report they ship it off to the NFIB (National Fraud Intelligence Bureau) — a department of the City of London Police — who determine if the fraud is worth investigating or not. In our case not, they dismissed it, just weren’t interested. I had lengthy chats with a NFIB employee who was in charge of our file and he said they’d heard of one of the fraud companies but weren’t prepared to take it on and investigate. At this point, I’m sure you would have the same response as I did. We are victims of crime to the sum of £317,000 and the Police are happy to dismiss it? I honestly could not believe this was possible.

What followed was 10 weeks of intense graft, investigating the fraud myself for leads while at the same time trying to get someone of authority to listen and take on the fraud. Lots of phone calls, emails and letters day in, day out to my Local Police, GMP County Police, City of London Police (the home of the UK fraud squads), Interpol, Belgian Police, Dutch Police, German Police, US Police, Banks, FCA (Financial Conduct Authority), Financial Ombudsman, Complaints Commissioner. I spoke with anyone and everyone from Police chiefs to bank managers and nobody was interested.

During this time I also pushed hard with my Local MP (who has a seat in parliament), banks, the press, and private companies such as fraud lawyers and enquiry agents (Private investigators) and some were helpful, but most wanted big money to help. This process actually continued for at least 18 months with little to no results. Highly frustrating because you have leads, you know the banks involved and there is nothing you can do about it unless you take civil action.

Civil Action… An Alternative to using the Police and the Criminal Prosecution service?

A freezing order (previously called a Mareva Letter) can be served on the fraudsters via a court to freeze their personal assets. Cost to you and me £15,000 – £25,000. So although that was an option for me and I was heavily looking into this process and spoke with a lot of lawyers and enquiry agents, we simply didn’t have enough information on the scammers to do this. You need to know their personal and real identity and location to serve a freeing order. We didn’t have that key info and would have needed to employ an enquiry agent which may have been fruitless.

Thank You PC Ben and my local MP…

By this time I’d collected and created a lot of documents including a master spreadsheet and fraud timeline; detailing all frauds, payments, banks and addresses, dates, share certificates, couriers used, fraudster names, phone numbers addresses, and company details. My own investigations produced good fraud links to Kent in the UK and so I put together some documents based on this data to supplement the master data — I swiftly emailed it to a local Police station in Kent asking for some help. A PC looked over my info and for whatever reason agreed to take it on. Result… At Last!

After a lengthy chat he quickly arranged for someone to call to Manchester to take a statement from my dad, he needed this before progressing. This statement was key and ended up taking 2 weeks to create, as it needed a blow-by-blow account; Every phone call, email, attachment (exhibit), name, bank, payment, etc all in date order and clearly referenced and supported. It was 16 pages long. We boxed up the information and shipped it by 24 hour courier to a small Police station somewhere in Kent. Within a week we had an call to let us know the box had been forwarded on to the City of London Police for full investigation – apparently they were now interested. I was a bit disappointed at first but at least it was now in the right place, with the UK fraud Squad. Whether it would actually be touched was in question.

We had a large period of silence from the Police and I had to chase them a lot. This is where my local MP came in handy. He helped by putting pressure on the City of London Police multiple times as their communication was non existent for very long periods. A few nudges from my MP ensured they knew we wanted action and we weren’t lying down like I think a lot of victims would.

Thanks for ‘not’ helping RBS (Royal Bank of Scotland)

My dad had banked at the RBS for 38 years prior to the fraud and never once made an overseas payment until 2010 when the fraud started. Surprisingly they didn’t run fraud checks and stop any of the payments to ensure they were legit and were safe. But interestingly they stop my credit card if I spend over a few hundred quid, or make 3 transactions in a day to run security checks, slight contradiction. Not only this but when my mum went in to the branch to speak with the manager and prevent any further payments overseas she requested the total my dad had sent to the fraudsters — they wrongly quoted £430,00. They gave the wrong information which was a massive shock to my mum and not recommended. In the following weeks I and my dad wrote to the RBS bank and subsequently the Financial Ombudsman to complain and requesting an immediate investigation, wanting some form of compensation and demanding change in their security protocols. After 6 months of letters back and forth “as a gesture of good will” they paid my dad £100 for the inconvenience. Amazing!

Scammers Never Quit… So collect evidence.

Once scammers have a taste of you’re money, they want more, and they won’t quit until you are empty. Phone calls and emails from the fraudsters continue until the present day although the frequency did tail off as time moved on and we started to ignore them. You have 3 options when you realise you are being defrauded. 1. Don’t answer the calls. 2. Change your phone number. 3. Take the phone calls and record them as evidence. As soon as I knew it was fraud I set up option 3 (with my parents consent) and my dad continued to take the fraudsters phone calls to keep them interested, this did exacerbate his stress but it was his choice. We initially and naively did this as we thought the Police could trace phone numbers, but as it happens they can’t, because the fraudsters route calls through various Skype systems, so it’s impossible to trace them via phone numbers. In any case, we subsequently submitted over 40 audio recordings of the scammers, and I have the audios on this site and on YouTube, so it was worth doing for us at least.

Victim Welfare is Critical!

PC Ben at Kent was also generous enough to arrange for a local Police welfare officer to visit my dad (something our local Police hadn’t offered themselves) to ensure his understanding of the fraud had some form of clarity and to explain that he was not at fault, but more importantly and categorically to not transfer any further payments to the fraudsters. They also look at the psychology of the victim to look for any serious signs of mental health changes — quite an ambiguous subject. This visit was important as my dad listened to this authority figure and it only helped reinforce the fact it was fraud and no money was coming back. If you are victim to fraud, Victim Support is another option for you to explore.

Fast Forward to Today (2 Years and 4 months later)…

I can’t say much publicly about the progress of the fraud but you have to be prepared for a long haul and relentless in your approach. If your loss is small, I’d personally write it off and move on best you can — after reporting it of course. There’s a lot of resistance and a lot of stress involved which is not recommended for most people. The US Police have made arrests and communicate very effectively with us, the fraudsters are in court in 2015 at some point apparently. But this is for a smaller portion of the fraud — but the reality is all frauds should be linked so we are confident over time that the main man peter Deboer will be caught and jailed. We have to be patient.

European Police made 100 plus arrests in early 2014 and this may or may not be the fraudsters who targeted my dad. It can apparently take years for them to collect and collate the evidence ready for prosecution — we are waiting for the call. My own research tells me the majority of fraudsters are based in the Far East and they purposely make themselves hard to access, paying off the local Police forces in the process. They also run satellite boiler rooms across Europe. I can’t disclose any more info at this point.

Latest Update (Feb 2019)

Fraud and stress kill… almost. My Dad is very fit, played football until his knees packed in at 45, then continued to swim, play racket sports and gym daily. His friends use him as a yardstick for good health. Only 7 years pre-fraud discovery he had a heart angiogram and got a clean bill of health.

June 2016 – HEART ATTACK, the 2 main arteries in his heart were 100% blocked. How when his exercise and diet hadn’t changed? STRESS = PRESSURE = BLOCKAGE. Unbelievably he drove himself to the walk in centre with what he thought was “indigestion”, they immediately threw him in the back of an ambulance and rushed him to A&E on blue lights. He had 2 stents fitted to his arteries, underwent rehab and is now on a mix of tablets for life. He was very close to death. The day before he was on a hillside in Wales enjoying life. He’s lucky to be alive.

January 2018 – BRAIN HEMORRHAGIC STROKE, bleed to the thalamus which is located just above the brain stem. He was put in the same stroke ward that my Grandma passed away in just 12 months earlier. Lovely. Bleed to the brain caused loss of speech, loss of the use of right side of his body. 12 months on, the speech is back, but he’s still working through rehab on his right arm and leg, his walking especially is affected to the degree he needs a stick and gets tired very easily. He’s very lucky to be alive.

Deep Depression? you bet! And intrusive thoughts continue to surface today. He’s just agreed to seek help though energy based psychoanalysis which we are using with the intention of releasing, resolving and reconciling the nasty emotions of guilt, embarrassment and shame. I’ve suggested this for years, but victims will only go when ready, you cannot force them. I’ll update on this.

Fraud does and can KILL or if you’re lucky maim. My Dad is old school, “I can handle the stress”, “I just push it down, brush it under the carpet and suppresses it”. Well, this is what happens, the subconscious needs some form of resolution, or it will kick your ass, until you take action. you are given multiple warnings to “deal with it” until BANG!

I wish you and your family well if you find yourself in the same scenario. Watching your family deteriorate because of the innapropraite actions of a scammer, scammers that don’t care or don’t fully understand the repercussions of their actions. I’ve spoken to some ex-scammers who have made contact and they say, it was just a sales type job to them, until one day they realised the devastation they were causing. Something shifted in their philosophy, I guess they reached some form of empathy for their victims.

The Fraud Conclusion