THREE hundred Scots have lost their pensions in a single organised crime scam worth millions of pounds, police believe.
Detectives are currently investigating what they believe is the biggest of a new series of frauds by Scottish gangsters exploiting UK Government pension reforms.
Criminals are encouraging people to take out their pensions
early – under new rules – and then
falsely claiming to invest the proceeds.
Senior law enforcement fear the true toll of such crimes – so-called pension liberation frauds – will only emerge when people go to claim their pensions in a decade and discover they don’t exist.
Detective Chief Inspector Kenny Thomson, of Police Scotland’s Economic Crime and Financial Investigation Unit, said: “We have an investigation on the go just now with around about 300 witnesses.
“The value is into the millions and it is people who have released some of their pension early.”
Known victims are in the west of Scotland and it is understood local organised crime organisations were involved.
Thomson, a former bank manager who specialises in the most sophisticated frauds, said: “These people thought they were ahead of the game because they have released some of their pension pot.
“They thought the remainder was being reinvested; instead it is being used by an organised crime group.”
Scottish criminals are tapping in to expertise within Scotland’s pensions industry to exploit those seeking to use new UK Government rules that allow anybody over 55 to draw down part of their pension and reinvest the rest.
Assistant Chief Constable Ruaraidh Nicolson said: “These are not the kind of high-profile organised criminals you see splashed across the red tops.
“For some time we have seen a shift in the profile of organised crime groups, as they diversify from drugs and firearms.”
Detectives stress “conventional” gangsters can often find a weak spot to exploit white-collar experts.
One said: “Some of these criminals are themselves university-educated professionals with all the skills needed; they are the gangsters themselves.”
Thomson said such gangs were frequently attacking a single community where, for example, a large local
employer has gone bust and newly
unemployed people were trying to get some emergency funds from their pension.
He said: “It just takes an advert in the local paper or word of mouth about a deal that looks too good to be true and suddenly a whole community can be affected to a dramatic extent.
“It could be devastating.”
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