Hi James

The numbers you need if you have not already done so :

Action Fraud Dept (Police) - 0300 123 2040
Consumer Service (trading Standards) - 0845 404 0506
Please also email watchdog@bbc.co.uk, I have sent them copies of all email communication with Synergy.

I urge you to contact them all today, the sooner we act, the sooner they will be caught.

I have a contact who works for one of the major banks and they are going to run a sort code check to advise me which bank their acct is held with, but on first glance it may be Natwest. I should know more on Friday and then I will report the account to that bank as being used for criminal activity.

i also found the company through Leasbam (who incidently hold no responsibility for who advertises on their site) - I was pushed into paying over the deposit by BACS, I had just resigned from my job and to my surprise they took my company car off me the same day, so I had literally a few hours to sort out a new car. I had another quote from a company on the A5 which was not too dissimilar to theirs (but did not include insurance) - so I thought they were pretty genuine. I am also work at senior level in the insurance industry and deal with claims management and credit hire companies, and their website seemed very genuine. The only thing that concerned me was the speed of their responses for information, but I just asssumed James Morgan was a bit slack, you do get them.

Lets hope this gets sorted ASAP and we can all get our money back.

I will also set up a facebook group for this and will post link so we can continue knowledge sharing on that also as it is a good medium for publicity.

Emma

Hi all,

Looks like the Scam Merchants have used other people to secure the premises on their behalf. As mentioned previously photo ID would have been used to secure the short term leases. Looks like the landlords of these premises are the only ones to have been paid, and initially the Vehicle Manufacturers / Dealerships in order to fulfill the first batches of sub leased vehicles. There will be greater out cry once these first batches of vehicles are repossessed by their real owners and the real scale of the deception comes to light.

The premises in Newhey, Rochdale have been used since November and where on month by month rental. I would recommend that anyone caught up in this scam report it not just to their local force but to their local trading standards and the other numbers mentioned in the previous posts. Once the authorities realise the scale of this operation and the reach of it then they may act against these Scam Merchants, until then the victims will have no recourse.

I have circulated a captured image from our CCTV of 'James Morgan' if anyone would like to receive this image then please email me:

swegger2003@yahoo.co.uk

Thanks

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Synergy-Manchester-Scam/354981077888626?filter=2

We also got scammed, offered an Audi A3, paid up £1795 and then saw the 'liquidation' notice on the website.

Feel like anyone we try to contact to take some action is not interested or unable to do anything!

Surely as we all have the bank account number and sort code then there must be a geniune ID behind the account, that can be traced.

Is there an existing police investigation, or does anyone know of a collective course of action? As there seems to be a lot of us that have been victims of this, surely we can make enough noise to catch this guy/guys?

Thanks, Joel

Basically, the route to go is to contact Trading Standards via Citizens Advice Bureau, we have a crime number. Police won't do anything as they can't act nationally, where as Fraud Squad can.

Someone wrote here previously that he has had his Business Manager at Lloyds contact their Fraud Department.

We have done the same....... Looking at this thread alone, we are talking over £15,000 of fraud.... You can't draw this out of the Cash Point, and if you do the account will be frozen.

There will either be an in-branch transaction, or a BACS transfer. As this gets investigated a tree of accounts will appear until they are finally traced.

Either the money has gone out of the account it was BACS'd into, or still there. Following any claims of Fraud (as far as I am aware) the bank by regulation HAVE to freeze the bank account pending investigation - this is regarless of if this information comes from the Police or at Consumer level.

I think the net will begin to close in fairly soon. In the grand scheme of things someone somewhere will (if they haven't already) cock up..... I am confident we will get our money back, however the question remains IF it they will be brought to justice.

Its going to sound REALLY stupid, but this was (acually) a very plausable business proposition...... Yes its a scam, we know that now..... BUT it seems they have scammed car companies, insurance companies etc..... IF they had actually applied themselves and not scammed people, it COULD have been a successful business!!

Also, I assume everyone sent their Driving Licenses in? Be careful of that, and watch the Bank Statements for irregulararities.

Lastly, whilst its good people are uniting here and displaying their phone numbers, I would strongly advise that you speak with high caution to anyone calling claiming to know about this case........ I have my leads and am reluctant to place them here, but displaying numbers here is no stopping them calling up and asking what you know, pretending to be someone else who has been 'scammed'!

I'm another victim of this scam! Paid my deposit of over £1700 in April, expected my car to be delivered a couple of weeks ago. James insisted the car would be arriving as arranged, on the delivery day there was no sign of the car and no answer on the Rochdale office phone. The next morning I called the Manchester office to be told by some receptionist girl that the "Company" had gone in to liquidation. Very unhelpful! By the next day the website had been replaced with a blank page and that was it! I've contacted all of the places mentioned on here (including Watchdog) and i've recently received a letter from Manchester Police saying the crime I reported is being investigated. I have also written to the Fraud Department of the bank involved. Just wish i'd gone locally in the first place rather than putting trust in these "people". I've written off the money and it would just be a bonus if I got it back. No lives lost!I did manage to track down that the owner of the company is an Abdul Quddus, he is a sole trader and has not gone bankrupt. So it's pretty much us against him.

sorry here is the free index reviews for Direct Auto Lease

http://www.freeindex.co.uk/more-reviews.htm?id=103421

Can anyone affected by this scam please post on the facebook page

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Synergy-Manchester-Scam/354981077888626?filter=2

please post brief details of vehicle, deposit, dates etc and your location (please do not post your full address) so that a picture / trail of the scam can be tracked.

OMG same happened to us, synergy manchester asked £1200 for a mitsubishi L200 and well you all know what happened next. I've been trying to serve a court orders to Abdul Quddis, no-wonder i have not had a reply!! So glad to of came across this site by chance, its almost relieving to see im not the only person to get sucked in. I will phone the fraud help line tomorrow and i have contacted watchdog, a massive thankyou to everyone for their advice on here .LETS HOPE THEY GET THE SCUMBAGS CAUSE IM GOING TO BE SITTING IN THE FRONT ROW SMILING WHEN THEY GO DOWN. I want to see if they look as gutted as i did when they took my hard earned money. I too xcontacted their bank lloyds tsb acc no 23109168 sort code 308462 on the15 may they were not much help at the time. Manchester evening news have written a report on it on the 7/5 it says police have arrested a man in Bolton check it out . fingers crossed!!

thanks again

michelle