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You and Yours - Transcript 大象传媒 Radio 4 |
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TX: 10.09.07 - Law Set to Change PRESENTER: JOHN WAITE |
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THE ATTACHED TRANSCRIPT WAS TYPED FROM A RECORDING AND NOT COPIED FROM AN ORIGINAL SCRIPT. BECAUSE OF THE RISK OF MISHEARING AND THE DIFFICULTY IN SOME CASES OF IDENTIFYING INDIVIDUAL SPEAKERS, THE 大象传媒 CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS COMPLETE ACCURACY. Waite Now no doubt you've received, as I have, many of those kinds of letters popping on to the doormat suggesting you've won a cash prize and you should respond immediately. And equally, I've no doubt, most of us have long since learned to put them straight into the recycling bin. But the scammers persist because there's money to be made and what they do isn't against the law - all they need it to find the right target. Like Lynn Norris's father. He suffers from dementia and as Lynn has been telling our reporter, Carolyn Atkinson, he's been receiving letters like these for over two years - streams of them. Norris These letters were offering him or telling him that he'd won lots of money, varying amounts, and that the cheque was there, ready and waiting, if he'd just like to send £15, 20, 25 more of processing fees, they would then send the money to him post haste and he actually believed every single letter that he did. Atkinson And how much money were they saying was waiting for him? Norris Oh varying amounts, I mean 300,000, 200,000 upwards, it was always large sums of money. Their letter would come telling him he'd won a lot of money or other prizes. If you read the small print it was other prizes. But when it finally came it was usually an envelope, there was no money in it, there was just a little piece of cheap jewellery and there would be a little note attached to it saying that this is part of the promotion that we had. So there was never any money, it was always the jewellery. Atkinson How many letters were coming, how many bits of jewellery kept accumulating? Norris He was getting 60 to 80 letters a day, sometimes a 100, on average he was answering 10 or 11 letters a day. And you're looking at £20, £30 sometimes more. So it soon added up the amount of money he was spending. Atkinson And from the company's point of view they obviously had found their own personal cash point effectively, do you think they were targeting him because he was responding so well? Norris Oh I'm sure, the more letters he responded to the more he got. Atkinson And overall he spent over £50,000 on this and presumably has got the most enormous stack of jewellery. Norris Oh yes we could actually set up a very nice market stall and get perhaps a pound a throw if we were lucky for it. Atkinson And how do you think they found him first of all - was it totally random? Norris I think these - they send these letters out in the hope. I can't think of any other way. They all get on to this suckers' list, as it's called, and it gets passed around and they think oh there's something right for the plucking, you know. Atkinson But I presume he's never won any money? Norris Well he has had a few cheques for 60p. Atkinson And do you think there's anyway you can get any of his money back? Norris Not a hope. Waite Lynn Norris from Hereford. Well joining us now is Harsha Shewaram, a legal director from the Office of Fair Trading. Lynn's father lost, as you heard there, more than £50,000 to these scammers but she still can't get these letters even stopped. If that amount of money was lost in a robbery the police would get involved wouldn't they. Shewaram Well yes, this is a big problem and we're taking it very seriously - the Office of Fair Trading. It costs the UK economy more than three and a half billion pounds a year and what Lynn and her father's story shows is that this has real human effect on victims and their families. Waite And Lynn was talking there about a suckers' list - people who are vulnerable, who can easily become victims to these scammers - is there such a thing do we know? Shewaram Well that's what we hear happens. These scammers sent out hundreds and thousands of letters and whenever a person responds to them they instantly go on to a scammers' list which is circulated to other scammers and lo and behold, as happened with Lynn's father, hundreds and thousands of these letters come through their letterbox because they know that, as your reporter said, there's a cash point at the other end. That's why we say very strongly to people when these letters fall through your letterbox the one thing you mustn't do is reply to them because you get on this list and it's very hard to get off. Waite So how, Harsha, does the law apply to this sort of thing? Shewaram Well we can take action against these letters when they're misleading - as Lynn pointed out - they say that you've won a lot of money when you haven't, so the law exists and we take action whenever we can. The problem is that by the time we find out about this the scammer has already made so much money out of it and UK consumers have lost the money and then we're trying to take action after the event. So what we're doing is as well as taking action against these businesses is warning consumers about what to look out for so they don't fall victim in the first place. Waite Have there been any convictions? Shewaram Well we don't take criminal actions at the moment. What we do is we get orders in the courts against businesses who breach these laws. But often they're based abroad, they're quite difficult to get hold of. What we're dealing with is big business but it's not legitimate business. But we do take action - very strong action - against these businesses whenever we can. Waite So are things going to change at all? Shewaram Well we have new laws coming into effect next year which will strengthen our ability to take action against these scams and other unfair business practices. And very importantly it will also give us criminal powers to enforce these laws. So we're confident that we can take more effective action in the future. Waite So in the meantime your advice is when you see one of these things straight into the recycling bin? Shewaram Well yes. We're all tempted by these promises of hundreds and thousands of pounds that we might have won but what we'd say to people is follow your instincts - if someone contacts you out of the blue asking you for money, promising you something wonderful, you're not quite sure what you're going to get don't send the money off, take - get a second opinion, ask your friends and family, if you're concerned call us up at the OFT but don't send that money off because chances are you won't get it back. Waite Harsha Shewaram of the OFT thank you very much. Back to the You and Yours homepage The 大象传媒 is not responsible for external websites |
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