02089564110

used up my precious work time today fielding another call I didn't like the sound of - "Parliamentary Information Office" - they say they write reports for Government and Industry - not happy about their provenance so googled - and found this site high up the enquiry.  Not going to pass the number on to my boss.

I perused another thread populated by someone called Eastway that TAPA would "protect us" from these scam calls for a "fee" but it seems to be a protection racket scam run by a Mr Simister who was done for fraud, rather like Mr Blake who was done by HMRC for tax irregularities. Googled both and found the high court reports and HMRC report. I simply refuse to take advertising calls now and replace the receiver. FO and saying action fraud next also works well if they ring again.

Keep getting messages from 'various' people calling from Parliamentary Office Publications. As it's so obviously a con why are these people allowed to keep trading?

Support Publishing Scams

Support 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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                          ACTION FRAUD - www.actionfraud.police.uk - ACTION FRAUD
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We keep getting calls from these people, with vague messages about "good news" they would not divulge to underlings like secretaries!
Mostly male callers with posh accents - obviously schooled in how not to answer questions, which sounds like cold-calling and makes me suspicious. Today's caller was Richard Aspray, Head of Science & Technology.
I shan't bother passing the message along.

Had a call from Monica Khan at the Parliamentary Info Office wanting to speak to my MD, refused to leave a proper message.

Just had TWO calls, from someone who called herself Monika and given the line about being carefully selected from a team that were only looking for 6 companies, all of which seemed to good.
And when asked if there were a publishing house looking to sell advertising - kept avoiding the question until finally directed me to the website when all became too clear.
Really hard sells stuff and not very honest in their approach with talk about "Gov Inititives" and about our objectives and Goals...!!!
Well kept away from !

I have just had the same call from a Richard Aspray, very false posh voice and very rude, adamant to speak to the MD before he is "off to Westminster".

I shall look forward to receiving his call tomorrow now I have looked on here!

Dickie Asspray - lovely chap. So honest. Read about these scams on www.actionfraud.police.uk

Just had Someone from the Parliamentary Information office called very Rude and insisting to speak to our MD.. baring in mind we had received a call from the same person the week before telling them to F*** off.
then when confronted hung up. this is ridiculous

Received call this morning from Charles Hudson. Good thing I looked it up as we were talking and ran into this site. "Excellence in Petroleum" was their shtick.
He sounded very well educated with a BBC accent.
Don't be fooled. I quizzed him a bit and received no clear answers.

Got a call from Richard Aspley about 'Security risk mitigation' wanting to feature us (an SME) in a publication that would be sent to 10,000 senior MPs, Lords etc.  Usual nonsense - scammers - avoid at all costs.

I just received a call from 0208 956 4110, the guy called himself Andrew Hamilton and said he was from the Parliamentary Office and was phoning regarding a Parliamentary Initiative on behalf of Greg Barker - did I know who Greg was? as if a mere PA wouldn't know that.  He was very abrasive and forcefull wanting to speak to my MD, calling him by his first name (which always makes me suspicious - I've worked for my current MD for over 10 years so know most of the people who call him by his first name and they wouldn't speak to me like he did).  So I googled the number and this is what I found.  I won't be passing the info on and if he calls again he won't have a hope of getting through.

Yes, I too have just received a call from Monica Khan. Extremely pushy and failed to actually tell me what her call was about, other than to say it was "good news" for our company. Advised without further info / an email I wouldn't be able to put her call through. Took her details, but again will not be passing them on. Am waiting to see how long it takes for her to call back!!! Very rude.

My MD just got off the phone to "Richard Asprey". Wouldn't speak to me. This website is marvellous. We Googled the number and we knew he was a con artist before calling him back. Sure enough, was after sponsorship for a publication about "risk mitigation, security and intelligence", needed 1000 words etc etc. Complete BS.

Just received a delightful call from someone called 'Felicity Harper', its almost worth getting the call just for the comedy voices...

Called for my manager - Charles Hudson re new initiative for excellent in clean energy. Said it's good news!

Felicity Harper on the phone (got to lover her accent!) said she had been told to give my Headmaster a call at 10:00 am - when asked by whom she said his PA - wrong answer as that is me !!! Have had calls from this company before so they will not be getting through.

received plenty of calls each and every year from the same number, each reflecting all of your above points, and looked further on the basis that I have come across their work before and wanted to get to the bottom of why they are trading and haven't been forced to close - it didn't add up. I am dissatisfied with the findings and reports so far so have tried a different tack: if you are transparent and friendly rather than challenging with whoever is calling you you can usually get a clearer idea that they are creating something they believe in, no matter how articulate or not they may be, or whatever accent they have. If you get a hold of a copy of the Yearbook from your local MP it is obvious of it's role and function.
Whoever you're called by and whatever their accent, bear in mind they are actually creating something of value.
Interesting to find that their product is very real - which I was aware of before I began the investigation and all of my military friends and senior civil servants and those who lead industry are aware of it - it is a significant and recognised entity in government departments. the website they point to is www.parliamentaryinformationoffice.co.uk. Check out too www.theblakeorganisation.co.uk. Make up your own minds, but be careful of jumping to conclusions. The organisations who do contribute are varied and of significant credibility, and they are not fooled easily.
http://www.actionfraud.police.uk does not list the site or the organisation who have been around for allegedly 40 years.
You decide.

Had 2 calls now from Richard Asprey on 0208 9564044 - obviously part of the 0208 9564110 group of numbers! Said he was from Parliamentary Information Office and that he was Head of Strategic Defence and Security. Wanted the MD but I wouldn't put him through without him telling me what he wanted. He claimed to be working for the government yet when I challenged him to confirm that he was a UK Government worker he said no but he worked for them!  It's all a lot of nonsense. I suggested to him that he was in a call centre and that he was trying to sell something and he got bolshy but insisted this was in our best interests and we had 48 hours to get back in touch!  Needless to say after reading all these comments, we won't be bothering!