01695574367

Anyone get calles from this number? they leave messages but dont say who they are.

Yes, it is Vardis. The company is conning people, taking their money for adverts that dont exist. They need sorting.

Vardis SCAM, have received many of these so called 'Crown Debt Recovery' letters but nothing has happened as of yet... This has been going on since mid 2009, ignore them!
No valid address, a PO box and 0871 number (what does that tell you) something to hide perhaps?
NOTHING BUT SCAMMING SCUM!

Definately Vardis, I made complaint to Lancashire Police today !

SCAM SCAM SCAM!!!!!!!! Now going by the name of vision! no debt collectors just bad actors from the company trying to get you to pay! Trading standards have said don't pay them a penny!

Are you sure it's a scam? The vission group contacted me early november 2010 asking me to put a business advert in their magazine for the Foresters Fund for children, i have paid them over £170.00 for the add, they sent me a copy of the magazine with my add in it, looked realy good and they gave me a courtasy call last week to thank me and they said the magazine has raised over £100,000.
How can i check if this is a scam or not?

There in Ireland now trying to scam people in the west so just tell them where to go

Tel: 01695 574367

Phone Prefix 01695 574

CITIES: Skelmersdale, Lancashire

Carrier: BT

Vardis:
03353073 VARDIS G.B. LTD
10 Eagley House, Deakins Business Park, Bolton, Lancashire BL7 9EP
Incorporated 15 Apr 1997        **Dissolved 2007**
http://www.levelbusiness.com/doc/company/uk/03353073

got a call from this Sigma in November 2011 claiming to want to put an advert in Blue Light Magazine which is for ex fireman , ambulance workers and ex police , they are now hounding for money and on checking them out on the internet it looks like it may be a scam .

This is a Massive scam on every level....kids charities etc...watch out for recorded telephone conversations etc they will use any means to make you belive you are in a contract with them, will be poppping there magazine in down the local police station today...trading standards said dont pay!

check out this number on this site 01695581077

we have also been contact on several occassions by rebecca trying to sell advertising for our home fitness hire company to advertise in th blue light magazine which is distributed to police fire and ambulence workers was £200 for the year plus vat sounded good to us but after googling blus light magazine found lots of info on scams by company sigma. tried ringing number back but goes to a recorded answer machine everytime saying they are on phone at moment please leave a message.
we will not be advertising or paying anything.
even worse they are posing as non profit charities to scam people

It is a scam - they are an awful company to deal with. Adverts were wrong, I cancelled, they said I couldn't cancel even if it was wrong. Rebecca is who called me after the idiots in advertising failed to bother getting back. I did think it was legit at first, but after seeing the way they perform it can only be a scam - no company operating the way they do could be a success! BEWARE OF VARDIS / VISION GROUP!!!!

I got a call from this number as I have cancelled an advert I originally agreed to in the Blue Light Magazine. I got suspicious about the calls back I was getting to ask if I could pay within 30 days. I was originally told I could pay in three instalments in the new year!! most of these calls have number withheld but the last one didn't.

They even sent me a copy of the blue light magazine which had a double page of adverts slipped into other preset pages, it looks quite convincing but all the press on the internet says this is a scam.

I think they got my details from the FSB, I asked them and they confirmed they knew it was happening and they said they used to warn new members about this sort of thing but were told they had to have evidence of a scam before they could publish a warning.

I am trying to set up a small business and don't have much money to back me so I have to be very careful. Sadly this isn't the only scam like this as I also had calls from someone doing a Fire Safety magazine. I am glad to say I haven't sent them any money.

SCAM***SCAM***SCAM***SCAM***SCAM***SCAM***SCAM***SCAM***SCAM***SCAM***SCAM***


I also got a call from this number to go into the Blue Light services magazine. A chap called mike richard but i think thats an alias he also stated that he was apart of the police community support. and that i had been chosen by a PSCO within my area he said they are running a magazine 3 times a year and would i like a advert space?
prices £195, £295 & £395 and that the most popular was £295 i said i would go for the £195 and wait for them to email me to test pages and all there information via email nowt so far! he mentioned i was to get contacted via a compnay called Sigma in half an hour who would run over the details..

No more than 5 mins person called Natile from sigma called and said that we shall go over the details to conirm order! i said do i need to pay now she replied: No but the call is recored and if i say yeas i would like to go throught i shall get an invoice in 4 weeks time for the amount due. I replied i would like to ait for the email to arrived befour i agree to anything, she replied ok (end of conversation).

I drove to the police station and asked if there was a mike richards and something about a magizine that was meant to be running,  ***Straight away he said SCAM*** its not the first time people have paid and nowt happenes. i called back the company the mobile number that phoned me first straight to answer machine, I then went on to phone sigma comapny and asked to speak with a manager low and behold all are busy and that would ring me bk i said no thanks she really wanted my details to bring up my s called "file" neither of them witheld there number eveytime i phone SIGMA they dont pick up as i with hold my number... i figure they dont like it

I was told by the "Real POLICE" to see trading standard which i shall do!!

Mike Richards 07785 469157
Sigma 01695 577166

SCAM***SCAM***SCAM***SCAM***SCAM***SCAM***SCAM***SCAM***SCAM***SCAM***SCAM***

01695 581077 www.whocallsme.com/Phone-Number.aspx/01695581077

Mike Richards 07785 469157 www.whocallsme.com/Phone-Number.aspx/07785469157
Sigma 01695 577166            www.whocallsme.com/Phone-Number.aspx/01695577166

upport Publishing Scams

MAJ portrait AvatarSupport Publishing is a recognised term used for businesses that manage the publication of a range of items such as desk diaries, wall planners, pamphlets, magazines and books. The items will be used to promote a particular good cause. For example a diary might be prepared on behalf of a police sports foundation or a booklet might be published in support of child safety on crossings outside schools.

The intention is for the publication to be circulated to schools and community centres in such a way as to raise public awareness of the messages contained within, such as child safety, safety at work or the good work a charity might be doing.

Of course the publishing company needs to be paid for supplying the publication and there are two ways of doing this. The first is for the charity or good cause to approach the publisher and commission the required item. They may order and pay for several thousand desk diaries to circulate around potential donnors. Details of the charity and the work it is doing will be contained within the diary. This is no different from the marketing products that may be commissioned by commercial companies to raise awareness of their brands.

The second method for funding the publication is for the publisher to include commercial advertisements. An advertser may be happy to fund an entry in a good cause booklet knowing that the public will associate their name withe the good cause and in doing so raise the commercial awareness of their brand. In theory it would be a good method of marketing.

There is nothing futrther to mention concerning the first method of funding. However, the second method is wide open to abuse by con merchants who see this as an easy way to solicit money from the millions of gernerally small businesses around the country who find it very difficult to say “no” when asked to support a good cause locally while at the same time gaining valuable marketing exposure.

To illustrate the support publishing practice that has grown up in the UK over recent years consider the case of McPherson Publishing Limited and Cavendish Publishing Limited. The names have been changed but represent very real companies that were trading fraudulently.  These support publishing companies have been well reported in the press following what was apparently the greatest number of complaints to Trading Standards offices around the UK ever received for one business. They were the same business, one simply setting up and taking over when the regulatory heat became too much for the other. Both companies have now been closed down by the authorities. In fact there were other forerunner companies and there are currently subsequent companies still operating! All were managed by the same people and utilised the same staff out of the same offices.

The business produced quarterly magazines aimed at off duty police, ambulance and fire service personnel. The publication included a few articles of general interest, recipes and puzzles together with around 200 advertisements for local businesses. Each magazine was produced on a regional basis, with the same content but with paid advertisements from businesses in each region.

200 advertsiements through 50 regions, four times a year at an average cost of £250 per entry gives a potential annual revenue of £10,000,000! When you consider that each advertiser received a copy of the magazine and a few hundred were distributed between a dozen or so police stations and ambulance centres – only about 50,000 magazines were printed each year.

Each magazine cost around £2 to print and post out. This leaves most of the £10 million to pay the dozen or so telesales staff around 40% commission and the rest, the lions share, going to the directors running the company.

The business worked because the sales team were self employed on commission, and used various devious means to hook the clients, whose names were simply extracted from phone directories and local papers. Most people don’t like to say no when asked to support good causes, partcicularly if names of charitable causes are used as a hook. The first telephone call would spin the tale of widely distributed publications… “100,000s in your area” and thereby solicit a real commercial interest. The second call, often only minutes after the first would be recorded and would exclude any detail of the false promises. It would simply confirm some of the victim’s details. The customer was often left somewhat bemused, thinking that they would make a final decision when they received their advertsiement copy for approval. However, what they would receive was an invoice with the only option for cancelling being the payment of a charge!

A large proportion of small businesses will pay such an invoice not wishing to enter into any dispute. Those that knew their consumer rights a little better were more likley to bin the first payment demand or return it with a letter saying they did not wish to go ahead with the advertisement. But the support publisher has a plan for increasing the proportion of targets who pay from the initial 40% or so to around 60% or even 70% by a sequence of demanding letters and phone calls robust enought to shake the resolve of even the most resolute victim. In the illustration, the business even passed the unpaid bills over to another debt collecting business that it had set up itself to give the illusion of escalating seriousness in the matter. They even resorted to “door-stop” collection techniques and a video of the threatening behaviour of one particularly nasty instance was caught on the victim’s mobile phone and aired on BBC’s Watchdog in 2006!

That this is a fraud there is no doubt. However, it is a problem that is very hard to deal with. The methods used by the support publishers make it harder and harder to close them down, with sanctions being fairly lenient to date (director disqualification etc). It is likley that the Fraud Act 2006 could be a better route if it was possible to get the police economic crime units to take an interest. The trouble is they are very often unwittingly caught supporting these very cons themselves by agreeing to take nominal quantities of the publications which they simply see as being “freebies”.

The telesales opperators in the business pay no tax. When investigating this particular support publisher I had a whistleblower contact me to say that all the staff used aliases and most were drawing supplementary benefit as well as earning £30 £50,000 per year!

So we have tax fraud, benefit fraud, Misrepresentation Act offences, Telecomunications Act offences, Data Protection Act offences and Fraud Act offences (plus the Company Act 1985 offences that I was investigating).

I tried to arrange a meeting with senior tax representitives from HMRC to inform them of the scale of the tax evasion, not only in the few companies that I investigated but concerning the industry as a whole, but the feedback was that theyconsidered the problem one that they could not deal with. The message was that they would have to wait until legislation changed.

Eventually a High Court Order was obtained to close the companies down. When the Official Receiver went in to the business the next day he found that the bank accounts had been stripped. Within a few days the business was back up running under a different name from the same (rented) premises.

Support publishing is a recognised problem for the authorities who continue to close these companies down only to have them reopen later under different names. Some open as partnerships or sole traders, having cottoned on to the fact that Companies Investigations Branch will not investigate them then. The police are unlikley to have the time and therefore if the perpetrators can make sure the complaints to Trading Standards are kept to a minimum by not pursuing debts too rigorously they will continue for the forseeable future to keep trading below the radar!

By Mark Jenner, forensic accountant and fraud investigation expert. You can keep up to date with his investigator’s diary blog.

Taken from
www.mark-jenner.com/category/scams_cons/
www.mark-jenner.com/support-publishing-scams/

His blog www.fraudadvice.co.uk

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