I thought I’d look at what was making headlines in the trade press this morning and found, not surprisingly – two stories on fraud. The first involves my friend and hero Margaret Snowdon.
Margaret looks not just at the crime but the cause of the crime – in this case the capacity of a scammer to legitimise its actions by using the HMRC registration of an occupational scheme as cover for illegal activities which pockets the criminals large fees and left the victims exposed to large tax bills on money they no longer had. Here the problem is systemic and the complaint that the system was both cause and prosecutor.
This kind of systemic crime is caused because of weaknesses in the system, the worst excesses of the pension transfer debacle sprung from the crazy valuations of pension scheme liabilities during the period of QE – since QE has become QT, transfer values have returned to normal levels and the criminal opportunity has gone. We can do something about systemic weaknesses that offer criminals opportunities to exploit the cracks, that is what Margaret does and what I and others try to do.
Opportunistic theft
The same paper, Corporate Adviser, also ran a story yesterday about two idiot advisers who thought it a good idea to rip off their clients using an overseas property company to syphon off funds while explaining that the money was invested in low to medium risk funds.
This isn’t systemic exploitation , it’s just plain fraud – exploiting people’s assumptions that IFAs know what they are doing, there is tax to be saved offshore and that property is fundamentally a safe bet. These kind of frauds will always be with us because they prey on behavioural bias’ in ordinary people and rely on high quality deception from the advisers.
These advisers don’t look to have been able to keep the deception going very long and now they are out on their ear with big fines to pay. Well done the FCA.
Our predilection for sensation.
The work of Margaret in stopping systemic fraud prevention does not feature in our top 5 reads this week (despite it being promoted by Corporate Adviser). However, the salacious tale of the two rogue advisors is #1.
Sadly, we are attracted to crime and punishment and not so bothered about the 10 year struggle to stop the scamming that Margaret is talking about.
Aren’t we showing ourselves up in this? I include myself in this as I am all too prone to wasting my time reading about the scams -pretending I’m working on stopping them.
Over the years, I’ve been involved in various scam prevention initiatives from pension snakes and ladders to “Scam Man and Robbin” . All have had some local impact but have failed to stop the problem
The bottom line is that it takes the hard work of Margaret Snowdon, Andy Agethangelou and Al Rush to put scams right. For most of us, scamming provides voyeuristic pleasure, we know that guilty feeling but leave it to others to clean up the mess.
It really is all our responsibility to stop the scammers, not just a few noble individuals , Action Fraud and the regulators.
Pingback: Office Security Upgrades To Keep Your Possessions Safe - Alain Guillot