It has recently emerged that the Department for Work and Pensions knew about the fraud allegations at the company a month before he appointed her to that position and that, following her appointment, the DWP awarded the company five contracts to run Work Programmes throughout the country.

Liam Byrne, shadow work and pensions secretary, has asked his counterpart Iain Duncan Smith to tell him when the government knew of the allegations and whether they had any impact on negotiations on the Work Programme contracts with A4e.

So, what did the government know and when? Mrs Harrison has since left the company and has resigned from her post with the government, but the questions concerning the government’s relationship with the company will not go away.

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Problems are often found upon trying to sell a timeshare, which is renowned for being extremely difficult. Craig Williams and his wife bought into a complex in Scotland and gave £500 to a firm, Yacht Trading, when trying to sell their share. However, the company did not repay the money after it failed to sell and was later wound up after a government investigation.

Williams was contacted again, this time by a company known as Asset Accountancy Services (AAS), which claimed to have a total of £4.5m available to refund people who had lost out in the Yacht Trading scam. However, this proved to be another scam and, if Williams had not been alert to it, it could have cost him another £500 at least.

A spokesman for the Timeshare Association says that companies, such as AAS are often firms involved in the original mis-selling who are now reinventing themselves as legal recovery specialists and this is how they have the contact details of their targets. So, beware fraud and mis-selling in timeshare!

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The Financial Services Authority (FSA) has said that while there has been a 19% increase in the number of inquiries about this type of fraud in the last year, those who have actually invested in them have fallen by 7%.

The practice refers to share fraudsters, known as boiler rooms, who contact people by phone and pressurise them into purchasing shares which turn out to be worthless as they are non-tradable, overpriced or even non-existant. The boiler rooms themselves often operate from outside the UK but have false UK addresses.

The FSA says that it is encouraging that the amount of people who have lost money in this way appears to be falling. It says it hopes this means that its warnings are getting through and that people are now better prepared when they are cold-called out of the blue.

Do you think you have been a victim of a possible boiler room scam or have you been called and been fully prepared for them? Let me know your experiences of this type of fraud.

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Boiler Room Scam2

Dynamics Inc have produced a credit card, powered by a tiny battery, which produces a different security code every time it is switched on while the number in the magnetic strip also changes. The owner of the card switches it on by entering a PIN code and it then displays a number without which it can’t be used.

The company also says that when the card is “off” the magnetic strip shows the old number rather than the new one, so it can’t be “skimmed” illegally, in a restaurant for example. The card is currently being trialled by Citibank.