Tan Kin Lian's Blog: Bad experience with land banking plot

Monday, December 28, 2009

Bad experience with land banking plot

Dear Mr. Tan,

Some years ago a good friend of mine purchased some UK Land Banking plots. She was so blinded by the opportunity that when I questioned it we fell out for a while. She could not believe that such opportunities could be allowed in Singpaore and advertised on the TV if they were not true. She was not particularly greedy in fact I found her to be a very kind and gentle person.

Like many of us she wanted an opportunity to help her get ahead in life and be secure. The upshot was she has lost a significant portion of her savings to a scheme that has no chance of success.

I felt ashamed that such things could happen in the UK. After investigating and contacting some UK local authorities I was horrified at the way these schemes are run. They are designed to have absolutely no chance of success and to extract as much money as possible from the unfortunate investor.

Unfortunately what i've also discovered is that defamation law makes it very difficult to criticise a scam unless it is almost 100% proved especially in Singapore. It seems the only way to prove a scam without time and huge resources is to wait for the company to fail.
Even then typically the company will restart 2 or 3 times under different names claim mismanagement by a single executive and take more money from their loyal customers.

SF

17 comments:

Anonymous said...: 2 years ago, I received a call from a local guy and met him at Mcdonald. The discussion was land banking. As ths sum was huge and I don't understand how it works, I passed. He did followup with a couple of calls and then stopped. Thinking aloud, cold call can happen to anyone. Once we got over the PNotes/MNotes saga, the land bank victims will start all over again. As long as the authorities refuse to stop it, we will have to depend on ourselves from falling into the trap.; December 28, 2009 9:50 PM
Anonymous said...: What is the MAS equivalent authority in UK doing about this?; December 28, 2009 10:02 PM
Anonymous said...: Canadians are lucky to have ASC on advising investors on scams etc.
Check this website:

http://www.albertasecurities.com/Pages/Default.aspx

Time to learn from others!; December 29, 2009 8:03 AM
Anonymous said...: Do we have a Consumer Protection Laws? If so why is it so lax?; December 29, 2009 8:33 AM
NFO said...: The MAS equivalent in the UK is the FSA. However these investments are not regulated by the FSA in the UK. Anyway the land may be in the UK but the company selling it is often not allowed to operate in the UK.

Like Singapore it has been almost impossible to prosecute this kind of fraud in the UK and as mentioned in the post the fraud often cant be identified publicly until the company fails or runs away.

In order to try and tackle this kind of fraud the UK National Fraud Office was set up in late 2008.

From their PR

Fraud is estimated to cost in excess of £14 billion a year in the UK. In terms of widespread losses and policing costs, this adds up to an average of £231 for every man, woman and child. The sheer scale of this problem pointed to the need for a small but high-powered body to draw the numerous counter-fraud initiatives together.

Whether it is effective only time will tell.; December 29, 2009 8:49 AM
Anonymous said...: The UK FSA is now prosecuting 5 land banking companies.
It has prosecuted life insurance companies and made them compensate policyholders fully and on top of this it fined the insurers hundreds of million POUND.
Our MAS? don't say about this....nothing worth saying; December 29, 2009 8:53 AM
Anonymous said...: "What is the MAS equivalent authority in UK doing about this?"

I think the following up question is "Since MAS is doing nothing about it, so how are we protected?"

Taking the que from MNotes saga, MAS said they are not going to Micro Manage. From my prospective, nothing change i.e. you are your own responsibility. Look after yourself. Go get financially educated. Rule of thumb: If you don't understand, don't sign.

Cruel as it may sound, it is the reality. I wonder why should the minister earn millions a year and tell the people that the regulator is not there to micro-manage?

I think we are not asking them to micro-manage but to ask them to protect. Isn't this what other country regulators are doing?; December 29, 2009 9:20 AM
Anonymous said...: Any savvy or experienced investor will shun "land banking" schemes offered in S'pore. The sad thing is that it's usually the "more gullible" and newbie investors who are lured into such schemes - and usually they are the ones who can least afford to lose the $$$.; December 29, 2009 9:34 AM
Anonymous said...: I am biased against land banking and I recalled an interesting tele-conversation with a tele-marketer who cold-called me few months back.

+ She asked me to attend a sales seminar and I could get some supermarket vouchers.

+ She resisted telling me what kind of financial product it was and finally yielded after I kept on probing her.

+ She said her land banking company has just arrived in singapore and there are many exciting projects.

+ Then I told her that I knew what is land banking and I expressed my view that her rival company **l***
is an evil scam company.

+ Then she said how can **l*** be a scam? She said **l*** has been around for 30 years and have been in singapore for many years.

I can't help comparing this to Madoff's ponzi scheme which has been around for almost 20 years before it was brought to light.; December 29, 2009 10:15 AM
Anonymous said...: I think all Singaporeans should just learn to help ourselves. After 10 years of self-help, we can then ask our ministers exactly what it is that we are paying their salary for.

I know right now we are paying them to tell us it is not the government's job.; December 29, 2009 7:06 PM
Nice Quote said...: Singaporeans charge naive stupid Ang Mohs S$30 for tiny prawn at Newton - Singaporean gets shut down and get fined.

Ang Mohs charge naive stupid Singaporean $18,000 for tiny plot of useless English land with no prospect of development - Ang Mohs get rich

Justice ? None !; December 29, 2009 7:42 PM
Anonymous said...: It's not what UK will do about it. It's our MAS or gahment will do to prevent re-occurence. I learnt from my friend in Malaysia that their gahment do not allow many of these garbage to be marketed there. The bank Nigara runs something similar to MB but guarantee by Malaysia gahment and pay 5% interest every year. So this should be safe. Why Temasek or our gahment cannot do something similar?; December 29, 2009 9:21 PM
Anonymous said...: what happened to profitable plots? Why has it been renamed to profitable group?; December 29, 2009 9:56 PM
Anonymous said...: The mention of MAS always raises my blood pressure.; December 29, 2009 11:22 PM
Anonymous said...: It is very true (and sad too) that defamation law makes it very difficult to criticise a scam in Singapore. That is why it is important for consumers to be educated.; December 30, 2009 1:57 PM
Anonymous said...: i wonder why the press in singapore has not been able to do anything to this company which I am sure is conning more and more investors as we speak?!?!

sad state of affairs in a country where regulatory systems governing these land banking ang mohs are unable to protect its citizens. how will this country ever fight if an ang moh army ever invades! I guess no point having all the national day parade and the show of military might which means nothing without the inner will to do something for our country or citizens.

shame; January 03, 2010 9:01 PM
Anonymous said...: Just found something REALLY interesting, after reading the ASC website that someone else recommended in the comments above. Have a read, then see if I interpreted it correctly.
http://www.albertasecurities.com/Companies/Exemption%20Orders/15182/2537024%20v1%20-%20PARTNERS--%20WALTON%20AZ%20SHARES%20_ORDER_.pdf

1. Alberta Securities Commission (ASC) is aware of Walton and their investments through this letter dated June-07.
2. This letter states that Partners in Planning Financial Services Ltd. made a disclosure to ASC regarding their intention to sell Walton's products.
3. ASC did not object, and then gave some recommendations.

So, it is now almost 3 years that ASC has been made received this disclosure. I can't find any issues or write-ups regarding Walton in the ASC website. Am I right to assume that Walton is not a scam?

I mean, if it is a scam, ASC would already have taken action right?; January 29, 2010 12:12 PM