New Amateur

[beachhutman]

Today I caught a fairly new entrant to the scam stakes, quite amateurish, the "World Foundation for Great Prize Awards" (FMAGG), of PO Box 58194 Amsterdam. They send a quite cheap and nasty letter confirming a £15,000 prize for a £25 "regulatory fee". The address format of the sucker list they used for this address (I am not the resident sucker here) tells me that it comes from the people behind many of the European Astrology and "Health" frauds. These are delivered under a contract Royal Mail has with Spring, and are serviced through 9 Trident Way Southall. As a guide, I regard any mail received under Royal Mail licence HQ 11802 and showing 9 Trident Way on the envelope as almost certainly a fraud.

[Kevin Harrington]

Since Spring is a business tie-in by the Dutch and Singapore mail deliverers, and Royal Mail, perhaps it should be renamed "Euro-Oriental Scam Delivery Services"?

[beachhutman]

"Royal Mail Euro-Oriental scam delivery service"
Bloody disgrace. I had a long correspondence with RM about delivering Spring Scam mail and obvious frauds, and they told me it was all in accordance with the UK CAP policy on direct mail. Utter bullnuts, and they know it. They even have a special manager to handle this scam business! It is the worst example of unethical business practice.

[sceptic]

FMAGG is quite old and is a Trademark of Eva Lorca.

I get them (for my deceased mother) under HQ 12138. The last 2 dates of arrival I have are 15/07/04 & 12/12/04.

You mentioned "health" frauds. The worst one I have comes from Hipsos:

Hipsos sell a "slimming aid" "Active Slimming 8-8-8" and used one of these "you have won" style competition entry forms (as exemplified by Eva Lorca) as a promotion to get you to buy the product. In the blurb that accompanies the order form, they say:

"ACTIVE SLIMMING 8-8-8" is a legally guaranteed slimming product.

The most worrying thing is what I found in the Rules of the Game:

14. By the very nature of this commercial offer for which the user's belief in success is essential, the Laboratories Hipsos are not bound to any guarantee of result.

So what is a "legally guaranteed slimming product" if you need to believe that the product will cause you to slim before it will work (as implied by Rule 14). That is implying that the product doesn't work and it's actually a case of mind over matter - ie the product is a rather expensive placebo.

[beachhutman]

Ah, slimming products. Yep, aged parent is into these in a BIG way. The one thing she hasn't tried is eating less.
The two worst here are Biotonic and Fitanova - real crooks. Fitanova in particular have a nasty scam which involves the scamee signinig up for a monthly "subscription" to their current snake oil. Aged parent is currently paying five times the market rate for fish oil, but she won't be told.