South Woodhammer 11:55 Sun Oct 18
Bounce back Loan Fraud
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Spoke to a bank manager recently who was talking about the large number of Romanian and Albanian ‘business owners’ who were recipients of our generous governments bounce back loans. The 50 grand loans were in and out of their bank accounts within 24 hours .... and the same people were often getting multiple loans in different company names , seems like they were buying up shell companies off the shelf left right and centre and getting £50k loans from government for them. He said that most Essex branches of his bank across areas like Southend , Basildon , Grays , Romford etc saw the same thing , London much worse. Banks were told by government to advance these loans on a ‘no questions asked ‘ basis and the banks themselves aren’t accountable as its underwritten by government ... actually you , me and every other taxpayer.
Its a gold rush of fraud on an industrial scale absolutely staggering sums of money that has disappeared from the UK public purse never to be repaid. They’re already saying that at least 50pc of what was paid out has gone to fraudsters , up to £26 billion... and it’s overwhelmingly been done by organised criminal gangs from overseas...Romanians , Albanians , Asians and Turkish. Sometime within the next 12 months when the scale of this starts to unravel and the UK taxpayers realise that they’re footing the bill for Rishi Sunak’s Santa Claus profligacy I doubt he’ll be too popular..more like Public Enemy number one. It’s another mind blowing incompetence by the worst government this country has ever had by a country mile.
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Replies - Newest Posts First ( Show In Chronological Order)
Sven Roeder
7:50 Wed Oct 21
Re: Bounce back Loan Fraud
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Was reading some of the names & companies would have been details harvested via phishing so they can set up an account to receive the £50k on behalf of a genuine person and business
First they will know of it is when the government asks them to pay it back at some point
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arsegrapes
4:02 Wed Oct 21
Re: Bounce back Loan Fraud
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PwoperNaughtyButNot 7:05 Wed Oct 21
I am not questioning what you state, just seems to obviously open to fraud if there are no checks, nothing to stop anyone from requesting the maximum amount £50k transferring the money overseas and closing their account?
I can only assume they must check ID and your account to see whether UK resident, whether your predicted turnover is realistic, account is not dormant or set up recently since to take advantage of the scheme when announced and trading legitimately?
They are not obliged to lend and did turn down applications so there must be some checks in place.
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PwoperNaughtyButNot
7:05 Wed Oct 21
Re: Bounce back Loan Fraud
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Trust me aresgrapes , I got a bounce back loan and submitted my predicted turnover due not have filed any accounts. The company was set up in July of 19 and hadn’t traded for a year to March 20
It was 100% a bounce back loan backed by government through a high street bank with nothing to pay for 12 months and then 2.5% interest over 6 years
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arsegrapes
10:27 Tue Oct 20
Re: Bounce back Loan Fraud
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This from gov.uk
The Start Up Loans Scheme is available to businesses who have been trading for less than two years including newer businesses who began trading after 1 March 2020.
They ask for turnover from 2018/2019 tax return for BBLS assessment?
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PwoperNaughtyButNot
8:12 Tue Oct 20
Re: Bounce back Loan Fraud
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Nope, the bounce back loan is what I got.
This is c&p from the governments site
Eligibility
You can apply for a loan if your business:
is based in the UK
was established before 1 March 2020
has been adversely impacted by the coronavirus
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arsegrapes
7:46 Tue Oct 20
Re: Bounce back Loan Fraud
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PwoperNaughtyButNot 7:09 Tue Oct 20
I think you maybe referring to the Start Up Loans Scheme which was for newer businesses who began trading after 1 March 2020?
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PwoperNaughtyButNot
7:09 Tue Oct 20
Re: Bounce back Loan Fraud
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arsegrapes 5:23 Tue Oct 20
Re: Bounce back Loan Fraud
PwoperNaughtyButNot 8:01 Tue Oct 2
HMRC would still have to do that check for the bank on request, that's the criteria. If they gave out loans without doing that basic check that's another matter. If you apply for more than 20% of turnover it's classed as fraud as your trying to obtain money your no entitled to.
The point you may have missed is that companies with less than a year trading and therefore no filed returns were able to predict turnover. There was nothing to check with hmrc. When you predict turnover you then don’t reach that turnover because you were effected by Covid hence the need for the loan.
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arsegrapes
6:51 Tue Oct 20
Re: Bounce back Loan Fraud
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It's the same with Furlough claims, you have to repay if proved that your turnover was unaffected. £100m's already repaid as businesses with an online presence realised their online sales compensated for loss of brick and mortar sales.
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arsegrapes
6:43 Tue Oct 20
Re: Bounce back Loan Fraud
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South Woodhammer 3:41 Tue Oct 20
The person you give as an example with the internet business hasn't been negatively affected by the coronavirus situation, that's one of the lending criteria. HMRC say they will be checking this at a later date and anyone who has not been affected will be told to repay the amounts loaned. I expect this will be checked when the next tax return is submitted to see if turnover had reduced due to Covid-19. The same goes for those who may have claimed their turnover higher than actual and borrowed in excess.
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Fifth Column
5:26 Tue Oct 20
Re: Bounce back Loan Fraud
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Westside
My point is about scale. You can't claim a single £50,000 transaction on Eat Out To Help Out.
It's easier also to identify high scale fraud as with the Papa John's Franchise bloke.
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Westside
5:23 Tue Oct 20
Re: Bounce back Loan Fraud
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Eat Out To Help Out was much harder to defraud though.
Actually very easy on a small scale.
Party of 4. Order starter, one person gest bill, get the £10 per person off. Order mains, different person gets bill, another £10 per head off. Do same for deserts.
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arsegrapes
5:23 Tue Oct 20
Re: Bounce back Loan Fraud
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PwoperNaughtyButNot 8:01 Tue Oct 2
HMRC would still have to do that check for the bank on request, that's the criteria. If they gave out loans without doing that basic check that's another matter. If you apply for more than 20% of turnover it's classed as fraud as your trying to obtain money your no entitled to.
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Fifth Column
4:36 Tue Oct 20
Re: Bounce back Loan Fraud
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Eat Out To Help Out was much harder to defraud though. This is a shambles that even government agency say will likely lose billions to fraud - partly due to pressure from government on banks to award loans almost no questions asked. The government is a shambles in terms of competency even if some of their ideas are OK. When your prime minister has absolutely no concept of detail then this trickles down to everyone and everything else under him. 12 billion to a private company to run track and trace that doesn't work and on an Excel spreadsheet. It's OUR money as taxpayers.
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Sniper
4:23 Tue Oct 20
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It’s like that restaurant that ran £150k or ‘eat out to help out’ meals through the tills so they could claim 50% from the government. People are always going to exploit anything like this especially when the pressure is on to release the funds quickly
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Gaffer58
3:47 Tue Oct 20
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But if they’d done extra checks on companies/people with non sounding Anglo Saxon names then the do Goode’s would have been shouting racism at them.
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South Woodhammer
3:41 Tue Oct 20
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joyo...The post that I put up wasn't made up bollocks it came from a bank manager that I speak to on my own business. Looking online he wasn't exaggerating. The National Audit Office has put a report out on it and HMRC and DWP already have investigations underway but catching the crooks after the money's gone back to Albania , Romania or elsewhere is too late , its gone. The incompetence of the whole thing is mind blowing , in a panic to throw money at this virus they dished out billions to criminals. I recently needed to apply for a personal bank loan and the amount of forms and box ticking that was necessary even though the loan was secured against assets was a total pain and took ages to get approval. These loans were given out with minimal checks as they're backed by govt. so banks are off the hook. As a for instance I know a guy who has a business on ebay selling industrial clothing , he turns over around £250k pa. His sales went up after the lockdown actually but he got an invitation from HMRC to apply for 2 x £50k loans for the two companies that he uses for his ebay accounts. He took both and within a couple of days a tidy £100k of taxpayers money appeared in his bank account. He's set another company up which his stock will be transferred into at a later stage before he declares the loan co's insolvent ... so the £100k is his gift from government. He's English btw. They'll all do it. Staggering stupidity by the people in charge of taxpayers money , Sunak was seen as Mr Popular but needs to be sacked for incompetence.
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Mike Oxsaw
3:31 Tue Oct 20
Re: Bounce back Loan Fraud
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The (not really so) surprising thing is that there wasn't a system in place to check application details automatically against either existing records, earlier applications and/or Company House records.
30 years ago I was using a database (dBIII) on a first generation 386 computer that could search a billion records in less than 2 seconds. With today's computing power, real-time searches could have been set up so that issues were flagged at the time of entry into the system.
I guess the civil service still expects everybody who deals with it to behave in the manner of a fine, upstanding, landed Victorian gentleman.
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PwoperNaughtyButNot
2:55 Tue Oct 20
Re: Bounce back Loan Fraud
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joyo
The bank and hmrc didn’t check my company. I had not accounts posted. I provided my cert of inc and predicted turnover, 2 days later the money was in my account.
I’d say the thread is not bollocks. It was the easiest loan I was ever able to get.
I’d say there may be some misinformation though. The company had to be incorporated before March 2020 to qualify. I imagine some gangsters may well have had numerous micro companies for other uses all ready to go rather than buying off the shelf and applying. Either way I can’t believe fraud didn’t happen. It was a cash grab.
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Fifth Column
1:48 Tue Oct 20
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-54432916
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-54187581
The ONS themselves have predicted bounce back loan fraud of up to £26 billion and journalists investigating have found people have used off the shelf companies.
You'd think it would be easy to check but apparently they've been so incompetent at checking that actually people have been getting away with murder.
We'll never know how much has been stolen.
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joyo
1:34 Tue Oct 20
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Pwoper.... My main dig at this post is that you can't get a loan for a shell company bought off the shelf and it's dead easy for the government/banks to check at companies House
The thread is utter bollocks
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