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Greater Manchester Police have issued a warning in relation to frauds involving a crime prevention journal. The force is currently undertaking a prosecution against seven individuals charged with conspiracy to defraud.
The success of this scam has become so widely known that numerous other similar enterprises have sprung up, mainly in the North West of England but also in London, being run by former members of staff, or former tele-sales staff, who have realised how easy it is to make large amounts of money for little expenditure.
The method used by these fraudsters is to occupy short-term rented accommodation and recruit tele-sales staff to cold-call businesses, usually identified from Yellow Pages, and solicit payment for an advertisement in a crime/drugs/fire/accident prevention publication. The payments are purportedly to finance the publication and its distribution to local schools/hospitals/youth centres etc. Invariably either no publication is produced or one of poor quality is produced and all the income goes into payment of wages with a substantial rake-off for the fraudsters.
As telesales staff are usually paid on a commission basis they will use any and all means to entice potential sponsors to part with their money, from claiming to be charity volunteers to actually claiming to be police officers or crime prevention officers. There is also evidence that staff are tutored by management and provided with scripts as to what to say.
The scale of the problem has grown to the extent that businesses up and down the country are being bombarded by unsolicited telephone calls seeking their sponsorship for one publication or another.
If you are approached to make a contribution to a "good cause" publication, do not hesitate to ask for evidence that the request and the publication are genuine. In cases of doubt you should report the details to the local police.
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