Great start to the year!

You mean they all paid up front for farm machinery? Bizarre!

Sorry to hear you got off to a bad start and I hope things improve.

TBH though, I don't have much sympathy for these business folk who part with large sums of money without doing any due diligence.

Oh that's terrible! You have my sympathy.

I'm sure once it's sorted you'll bounce back stronger than before. Maybe you can even try to spin it to your advantage and somehow use the story in some advertising... I'm not quite sure how, but there might be a way if you think hard about it.

Is a little odd, but suppose when something seems a bargain.... sell the goat, and scrape the shekels together...


It's no major drama, just a bit of identity theft. Only thing I was worried about was any potential commercial fallout with our name being tarnished.

The dodgy website is still up and running, so be interesting to see if anything actually happens when you log an online crime with Action Fraud. Apparently it's passed onto the cyber crime bods, who no doubt have a back log of stuff, and a dept staffed with interns and part timers

Also filed a cease and desist with the dodgy websites ISP, good old 1and1 and as expected, not even an acknowledgement back. Good to see our online security is taken so seriously.

Barclays made me chuckle, after phoning their specific fraud hotline, and then getting the option "press 1 if you would like to open a bank account..."

The fraudsters are using our name and address details, but taking payments via a Barclays account set up by themselves. After finally getting through to the right dept, I was told that the incident would be logged, but the people who actually had lost their money need to phone them and report it.

Patiently explained that I could tell them of the people who had contacted me, and they were poor English speakers, and wouldn't it make more sense to freeze the account and get the Police involved, and I'm sure they could reverse the fraudulent transactions. But seems to be a minefield of bureaucracy, complacency, with the familiar theme of, "well this happens all the time".

Judging by the lack of seriousness all the agencies I contacted seemed to take it, I'm not surprised it happens all the time

Ah well, another chapter for the book of life

Its a tad worrying one can open up a bank account with someone else companies details

I thought banks did a whole host of background checks?????

Yeah I must admit, it seems like these guys did is pretty easily.

I'd have hoped there were more security checks involved, making it much more difficult for people to do this. But I guess not :S

Huzzah! After waiting patiently and getting nowhere, I took a leaf out of Clives book and started ranting at 1and1 hosting for a cease and desist for the scammers website. Obviously worked as it's just gone off the air

So moral of the story, persevere, have a moan and you'll get there in the end...

Glad to hear you got the website taken down.


Sad that you had to kick up a big fuss to get them to do anything though. Shouldn't have come to that.

Unfortunately just seems to be part of doing business in the UK

Banks, Hosting companies, Suppliers.... wouldn't it be great if we were all efficient. Mind you I think 1and1 are German, so that's that sterotype blown out of the water

Is the UK really worse than other parts of the developed world?

Somehow would have expected Germany, Canada and the Scandinavian countries to be well-organised and secure - but that's personal prejudice speaking!