Description
Hundreds of thousands of small investors across the world are being systematically defrauded in illegal share dealing scams, by criminals who easily elude police and regulators.
High pressure sales from a secret location, cheap communications, English speaking “phone chimps”, glamorous internet websites, listed companies and Boiler Rooms – these are all features of this industry.
The police and regulators are proving helpless to tackle the scale of this global phenomenon. It’s a plague that the SEC’s in the US, Australia and Hong Kong have been warning against for many years.
The Boiler Rooms – hard sell bucket shop telesales operations – use accommodation addresses in Switzerland, or Austria, Luxembourg and Hong Kong to make themselves look respectable. The shares look real – they are often listed and checkable on the internet – but the end of always the same: the victims never see their money again.
Often, they are persuaded to “load up” even when they lost money on a first, smaller investment. We interview victims in Canada and New Zealand who have lost thousands on these scams.