Regulator warns on 'suckers list'
The Financial Services Authority (FSA) has warned 11,000 shareholders that they are on a boiler room's "suckers list" of potential victims.
Boiler rooms are illegal share selling operations that sell worthless shares.
The FSA obtained the list from the Canadian authorities who have been helping them close down the fraudsters.
The FSA said the database contained people's names, addresses and phone numbers and had probably been sold to other fraud gangs.
"The details on the database provide fraudsters with valuable information that can be used to convince people that they are dealing with legitimate stockbrokers, in order to win their trust," said the FSA's head of retail enforcement, Jonathan Phelan.
"These criminals sound authentic, are smooth talkers and can be very persistent.
"If anyone calls you out of the blue offering to sell shares, just hang up or you stand to lose a lot of money with very little hope of ever getting it back," he advised.
Canada
The Canadian authorities came across the list as part of their general anti-fraud activity, which has been increasingly co-ordinated with that of the FSA.
Earlier this year 153 UK citizens were lucky to get back the £1.25m they had lost to a Canadian-based boiler room.
The fraudsters had phoned their victims and convinced them to buy shares in two gold mining companies
The British Columbia securities commission, and the Ontario securities commission, froze the funds of the fraudsters before they disappeared.
The FSA's letter to the 11,000 shareholders on the "suckers list" points out that boiler rooms often share the details of their potential victims.
The details are easy to glean from legitimate registers of shareholders, which are public documents.
The regulator warned anyone being cold-called to check with the FSA because some boiler rooms now use the names of existing legitimate stock broking firms to perpetrate their frauds.
Story from BBC NEWS:
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Published: 2008/12/08 16:36:12 GMT
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