Those PO BOXES in Staines exposed

[MG]

The Daily Mirror
Feb 17 2005 Penman & Greenwood Investigate
LID IS PUT ON PO BOX SCAM by Andrew Penman and Michael Greenwood

[e-mail]

PARASITIC Tony Liddle isn't crooked - he just makes a mint by helping people who are.
For years he's run a network of PO boxes which he rents to foreign-based cheats who rip-off the British public.
Among the cons he's helped are bogus miracle cures for diabetes, arthritis and high cholesterol.
He forwarded mail for the liars behind Fortune House, which promised - for a fee - to explain how you could boost your chances of winning the lottery.
The latest operation to use his PO Box 295 in Staines, Middlesex, was NutriPLUS, which sold Oceans 72 pills for prostate problems.
The Advertising Standards Authority asked NutriPLUS to prove its string of claims, but it didn't bother to reply.
In February 2004, another of Liddle's boxes collected money for Pharma Naturlab which claimed to "permanently cure you from aches and pains" - more rubbish.
Oh, and he's helped a load of dodgy psychics, too.
Now Liddle's operation has been smashed after an investigation by Surrey Trading Standards prompted the Royal Mail to pull the plug on seven of their PO boxes registered in his name.
We confronted Liddle at his home, from where he runs Tony Liddle Consultants Ltd.
He whinged, "I don't know why they have done this, I'm waiting for an explanation from Trading Standards."
We offered to show him the nasty material he'd been handling, but he said: "I don't know what's in the mailings and I don't want to know."
This is nonsense. As he admitted, we have forwarded to him readers' complaints about companies using his address.
He insists that all complaints are dealt with to the satisfaction of customers.
When asked how much he was making by helping scammers, he said: "I pay my taxes - I'm not saying how much I charge."
Christine Gregory of the Royal Mail says: "In this case a number of our terms of service have been breached.
"We are keen to work with the police and trading standards where people are misusing our services, but we are reliant on customers telling us when there is a problem."
To set up a Royal Mail PO box you have to prove you live in Britain - the likes of Liddle provide UK access to overseas crooks. Now the Royal Mail plans to bar "sub-letting" of their PO boxes.
Peter Denard of Surrey Trading Standards says: "Victims who are vulnerable, such as the elderly, are parting with cash for dreams that can't be realised.
"They do not know that offers come from abroad because they have British PO boxes.
"Consumers should treat unsolicited mailshots - especially those guaranteeing lottery wins and making extravagant health or slimming claims, with extreme caution."
Any mail sent to Liddle's boxes will now be intercepted and returned to the sender.
www.mirror.co.uk/investigate
;D

[Kevin Harrington]

Thank you for this information, I mentioned Tony Liddle several years ago as being behind the 3, Millers Close, and PO Box 295 address.

In case the Investigate team don't know about my crusade against scammers, I am sending them an email tonight.

But, as always happens, crooks soon look for another source of income, as soon as one door closes, another one is pushed open.

[sceptic]

I don't know if this is related, but I've had a couple of these [probable] scams for Arthritis sufferers from "ArthroSenter" (for my deceased mother). The first return address was:

Po Box 389,
Staines,
Middlesex
TW18 1EY

Their latest offering (arrived yesterday) has a return address of:

Suite 3,
3 The Precinct,
High Street
Egham, Surrey
TW20 9HN

[Kevin Harrington]

Suite 3,
3, The Precinct,
High Street,
Egham, Surrey.
TW20 9HN

3, The Precinct is a Mail Boxes, Etc branch! It is listed on the Egham business page, www.egham.org.uk/business/egham_business_list.html as in "Packaging Materials". (Like the Bank of England is a non-ferrous metal stockholder!)

Does this mean that the Royal Mail statement about Tony Liddle's PO Boxes, and mail being intercepted, is not yet in force?

[sceptic]

It's mail to the boxes that's being intercepted. However, which boxes are they? Pox 295 is mentioned, but what are the other 6? The change of address here (from Pox 389 - one of Liddle's?) leads me to supect that this is a new pox that the R Mail haven't linked to him - especially as it doesn't read as a Pox.

[beachhutman]

As a general rule, for scammers asking you to mail to a UK address, Google as follows first "<Mailboxes etc NN High street anytown".
9 out of ten of these will turn out to be the local MBE ltd office. The "co-incidence" of scammers using MBE is overwhelming. Several MBE locations seem to run nothing but scams - 60 Westbury Hill, Westbury on Trym is one such, with at least five different scams running at the same time.
Colchester and Harlow are both catching up rapidly - Harlow sent 4 to this address the other week, all for variations of the samce scam!
By absolutely no co-incidence, many addresses in Canada turn out to be MBE locations. But US scammers - often in Vegas, seem to us US mail locations.

[Kevin Harrington]

There is a Mailboxes, Etc franchise at 33, Southgate Street, Gloucester. Though not known to be used by psychic scammers, it is used by a phone-sex company.

As long as the number they allocate is used, it can be called Number, Suite, Box, Flat or anything else. It is done to give an impression of an honest business address. Only the Police, and Customs & Excise, are given access to the hirers identity.

[sceptic]

One thing I find interesting that the US scammers don't use the US postal service to send out the scams: the ones arriving here are posted in UK, France, etc; not the USA. An attempt to avoid mail fraud in the US?

[Kevin Harrington]

It's more likely to be for economic reasons, It will be far cheaper to put the mailshots into a container, and ship in bulk, than send individually. The mailshots will be pre-sorted into postcoded bundles and sent to local sorting offices for final distribution.

I asked my local sorting office about how many Reader's Digest competition envelopes had been distributed in my very small home town. "Sacks and sacks", was the the answer!