Your stories: Share scam targets

UK investors lose around �150m annually in boiler room scams Q&A: Boiler room scams

This type of fraud typically involves a few people sitting in an office, often somewhere abroad, who telephone and try to persuade you to buy shares in a company.

The shares offered are often in obscure foreign companies and the callers give you the patter that they are bound to go up.

Viewer Tony Coverdale managed to resist the offer of discounted mining shares, which have long been the target of share rampers because it sounds plausible that a share could jump in price if the miners strike lucky.

Fraud victim Rosemary Bradley bought technology stocks which are also popular with boiler rooms.

These shares can be made to sound on the frontiers of science even though the company on offer could be doing very little.

Find out about the experience of these two viewers below.

Tony declined the tempting offer of discounted mining shares

They rang me up on my mobile and I was actually shopping in M&S.

I actually asked them 'how did you get my number?' and they mentioned that they got it from a conference or something. Now with my occupation I do attend a few conferences which seemed fairly believable at the time, but it wasn't really answered to my confidence.

They sound very believable when they get going because they mention you can visit their website and they talk very technically about the procedures.

They approached me by saying that they have received some offers that are going through the process of being cleared by their solicitors. So they contacted me originally to see if I was interested in making a quick profit. In my case it was some shares that were being released on an IPO for 75 cents and they said they would sell them to me for 50 cents, so immediately you get pound signs in your eyes, thinking I'm going to make a profit straight away.

They followed up by saying that the only profit they would take is the actual 2% of the sale when you actually got rid of them. They continue by saying we'll advise you of when to sell them so everything can be left in their hands. They are, shall we say, your friendly broker.

They say people are very interested in the stock. There is a lot of approach by consortiums and such, but they have a certain percentage that they want to give to the normal investors like myself.

They say in fact we don't want you to make too much profit so we're going to cap the amount you can invest with us to I think it was US$10,000.

• Do some research and investigating into what's on offer
• Do you have a good gut feeling that it's all above board?
• Ask for a contact telephone number
• Ask for an email confirming the details of the offer
• Ask for a brochure from the company

Rosemary has lost �17,500 to a boiler room scam

Rosemary paid a Barcelona boiler room �17,500 a couple of years ago for US technology shares which she's afraid could be worthless.

Now she is being cold called by dealers claiming that the shares are worth over �600,000 and offering to buy them - investigators call this the Recovery Room ruse.

The catch is that they ask her first to send a release fee of �20,000, because there is a restriction on trading the shares.

They endeavour to give you every confidence in what they are saying. And are eager for you to follow up on this telephone call which will verify that they are genuine. But, of course once bitten twice shy, in my case.

The release fee set the alarm bells ringing for Rosemary - she did not want to lose any more money.

I got in touch with the Financial Services Authority (FSA) and they have a website on which there's a list of unregulated companies which they advise not to deal with. And lo and behold there was this company's name.

The FSA has recently managed to get back a �1m for investors who had handed over money to a Canadian boiler room - so there is some hope for victims.

But total annual losses for UK investors from boiler rooms are put at �150m.

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