Right, I think my parents are getting scammed and I could use your thoughts on this. I don't have all the details yet, but here's what I know.
A few years ago, my parents registered with some sort of Holiday Club scheme where you invest £10,000 and you get shares in this company and you get really cheap holidays with this company. After 5 years, you get the £10,000 back plus interest and the company gets a lot of investors and working capital. This is all normal and overboard.

However, over the last few weeks my parents have been getting phonecalls from some woman representing a Spanish company that wants to buy these shares for €10,000 (Euros, that is, not pound sterling). She claims that the company we have shares in has gone bankrupt and we could lose all £10,000 unless we sell to her for €10,000 (which is £9,100 so we'd be losing £900).

From here it gets rather complicated, as the holiday club scheme is owned by some conglomerate and we're have shares in some subsiduary:
http://www.cashback-sa.com/english/company.html

Which certainly doesn't appear to be bankrupt. Moreover, to make this sale, my father would have to travel to Tenerife (which they will pay for) for some legal reasons. All of this seems rather dubious..
First of all, why would anyone buy shares in a bankrupt company? Why would they require you to travel to another country just to sell the shares? Why is she buying for €10,000 when we bought for £10,000 (this seems like a deliberate attempt to confuse)?
All of this stuff is flagging all sorts of alarm bells with me, but my parents are worried about losing the £10,000 and are considering going ahead with this deal. Am I being paranoid?
I'll try and get more details about exactly what companies are involved and I'll post them here when I do.

Alarm bells = call the police for me. If they can't deal with it, they'll point you in the direction of someone who can.

I agree. Doesn't sound right at all.

Yeah, I'd reccomend they get in touch with the authorities. The fact that the transaction cannot be completed in the country they're in now suggests its of questionable legality at best.

And like you said, if the company is gonna tank then why would she want to buy the shares. She's obviously expecting to make money on the deal unless she psychotic. At the very least, your parents should do their own research (which it sounds like they've done a bit of already) and decide for themselves if they're comfortable holding the shares and riding it out.

On the other hand, if they cut their losses now, they've got a gauraunteed way to make back some of the money at least, and if they've taken advantage of the holiday deals, they may not even be taking a loss when you factor in the savings from that.

I'd take the free trip, not meet up with the person, hang out until the return flight, and THEN report to the authorities.

Bad time to point this out, but I couldn't help but s****** at that line.
The term is "above board" overboard is when you go too far =p

Curses! I didn't think I'd fall victim to such an obvious eggcorn. Thanks for the correction.

haha! Speaking of overboard, snig-ger is a perfectly legitimate word and in no way racist or offensive. ><

Hmm. Right, my parents signed up with European Coast & Sun Holiday, which a few seconds of googling tells me that this company is responsible for a lot of scams. However, my parents signed a contract with them in Spain so is only covered under Spanish law. They were forced to pay the £10,000 even though they were quite suspicious at the time, and they were only contacted about it when they had left Spain.

The finance of the contract was being sorted with Designer way vacation club which I don't think is scam. The contract, however, was reassigned to Cashback Promotion and their contact phone number doesn't exist. I'm trying to find another phone number for their address.

The woman, a 'Claire Moreno', that seeks to buy the shares from us claims to represent Barclay Estates a subsiduary of Palm Tree Projects. The latter exists, but I can find no evidence of any Barclay Estates and the URL given just goes to some link site.

I'm now fully aware that European Coast & Sun Holiday was a scam, though my parents are not yet convinced that their particular contract is a scam (which I think is hopeless optimism). I'm especially confused by this woman, though. Why would she buy shares in a company she (presumably) knows is a scam?

Call New Scotland Yard!

wow, this whole thing sound really bad. is there a deadline for how long she is willing to pay €10,000?

If she pays cash, but do scammers ever pay in real cash?

it has scam written all over it.

Aren't there EU lawyers that you could talk to about this? I would talk to a legal professional be it a lawyer or the Police and explain the situation. Losing the 900 pounds, on top of having to travel to make the transactions, on top of websites and numbers not working... get the pros involved.

As much as it pains me to say, I have to agree with Mirthy.

Oh shut up! It "Pains" you?

Wuss... :-P

Stop talking to the internet, we don't have law degrees.
Find someone who does.

Oh it hurts.

I will end you... you... WENCH!!!


Oh I went there and I totally bet someone on this site would give you a sound spanking... :-P

You do realize that by saying that you're comparing yourself to she-who-must-not-be-named, right?

(Also - sorry to derail - they should definitely contact authorities however they can. That's bad news)

I think my parents will end losing a lot more than £900, but I'm finding it hard to find any compelling evidence of wrongdoing. At the moment, there's just a dozen things that just seem odd but not blatantly illegal (but yeah, I appreciate I should probably be talking to a lawyer). The contract expires in 7 months, at which point it should guarantee the return of the £10,000 but it's entirely possible that this company (or one of them) might not exist anymore..

And this curious woman confuses me. If this company is a scam, why would she want to buy our shares? Maybe she is with the company and is trying to avoid litigation when the contract expires..

How does this woman know your parents invested this money? How does she have their contact information? Why does she want to save your parents investment (this action sounds nothing like a stock investor)?

It's scam upon scam upon scam imo. My own parents have had a lot of near misses over the years, in the form of being presented with (on the face of it) desirable offers of one kind or another, with some sort of pressure-sell involved ("you must buy it today or you aren't legally allowed to buy it at all"*, and similar BS) which they had a bad feeling about in the end and backed away from. And when they did more research with the luxury of time afterwards, they found out that they were all scams.

* simplified example

They all involved holiday or timeshare deals of some kind and they were mostly located in Spain, Portugal, or the Canary Islands. No idea why it's so bad in those areas in particular but it seems like there are a lot of people in that region that seek to prey on unwary tourists with convoluted scams.

To me it's obvious this is a scam, and there could be more to it than meets the eye. E.g. there may be additional reasons why they want your parents to go to Tenerife to sign (on top of the "what we're trying to do possibly isn't even legal in the UK so you have to come to us" part). Perhaps they will try to sell your parents even more stuff while they're out there, perhaps this is some kind of bait-and-switch (i.e. what they're actually offering to sell to your parents might change a lot once they arrive in Tenerife, and/or perhaps the small print of the contract will be evil). Anyhow, basically this is extremely dodgy. It's a pressure-sell on a dubious (at best) deal. Avoid like the proverbial plague.

There's no guarantee that your parents won't still be screwed over on the original deal. But when you're in a hole, stop digging.

EDIT:


The burden of proof is not on you to show that it is dodgy. The burden of proof is on the alleged scammers to show that it is legitimate. Your parents need to understand this.

I feel confident in saying that the information you have currently is just the tip of the iceberg. A scammer has the advantage over his/her prey, it is easier for them to think up a scam than it is for the prey to work out exactly what the catch is.

Yes, those are all precisely questions I want asked too. I wrote a strongly worded e-mail for my father (his English isn't very good) asking this lady precisely how she got our phone number in the first place. The only way she could've done is through one of these various companies.

I've also found out that my parents were originally accosted by a Swedish woman in the street while on holiday in Teneriffe, she gave them a scratch card for free with the chance of 'winning' this holiday package thing. The won, gasp, and she took them to some company headquarters where they put on some expensive meal for them and had them put down a small deposit and sign this ridiculous contract.

I'm beginning to think my parents are idiots.

Thank you all for convincing me I'm not crazy!

No, you're not crazy.





Your parents on the other hand...

I saw the thread title and that it was by Mort-Hog, and was sure it would be about his parents joining a church and all the drama within.

I was disappointed.

Haha. No, then I'd just check them in to Bellevue.

Hahaha, I love Happydud's idea, but on the off chance that they're legitimate, you might get sued.

Also: TE thinks he's Rob now, and it's adorable.