Litimed

Hi, I have contactd by a mediation company called Litimed (http://litimed.com/) based in Malaga who claim they can recover losses against a UK property sourcing company called Instant Access Properties by pursuing a class action in the european courts for fraudulent mis selling. Telling me I need to place money in an off-shore ESCROW to show the court thaat I am a participant in this action. I get that money back and they a take a 8% fee if successful. Whilst I would of course wish to recover my money I am a sceptical about this. Could you advise? Rgds Gerald

Dear Sir,

Honestly, if you are receiving cold-calls out-of-the-blue from someone offering you "litigation" or "class actions" and asking you to deposit money in "off-shore" bank accounts, whether "escrow" or not, it frankly doesn't bode well.

The normal thing would be to give you a Spanish bank account. In our experience, over a decade now, companies that cold-call you requesting you send them money to off-shore bank accounts for "litigation" should not be trusted. It is nigh to impossible claiming legally back this money.

The company you mention registered their website on the 10th February 2010 despite their 2009 copyright sign:

"Copyright 2009 www.litimed.com"


Domain Name: LITIMED.COM
Registrar: FASTDOMAIN, INC.
Whois Server: whois.fastdomain.com
Referral URL: http://www.fastdomain.com
Name Server: NS1.HOSTMONSTER.COM
Name Server: NS2.HOSTMONSTER.COM
Status: clientTransferProhibited
Updated Date: 10-feb-2010
Creation Date: 10-feb-2010
Expiration Date: 10-feb-2011

I cannot see any lawyers mentioned on their website, in fact, no one is mentioned on their website.

How did they obtain your contact details?
How did they know in which company you had invested?
How did they know how much you had invested?

All the above are details protected by Spain's Data Protection Act and would naturally be only in the power of the original company you had problems with.

Is it not strange that a "Spanish" company, which is not a law firm, is cold-calling you offering you to litigate against a UK company which, to the best of my knowledge, was wounded up asking you to deposit your money in off-shore accounts?

Alarm bells anyone?

Please read the following article we've written, you may find it useful:

Public Warning.-Scammers passing themselves off as Spanish lawyers and law firms

I leave you and everyone else to make up your own judgement on this company bearing in mind the facts we've posted above.

Yours faithfully,

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Originally Posted by Gerry

Hi, I have contactd by a mediation company called Litimed (http://litimed.com/) based in Malaga who claim they can recover losses against a UK property sourcing company called Instant Access Properties by pursuing a class action in the european courts for fraudulent mis selling. Telling me I need to place money in an off-shore ESCROW to show the court thaat I am a participant in this action. I get that money back and they a take a 8% fee if successful. Whilst I would of course wish to recover my money I am a sceptical about this. Could you advise? Rgds Gerald

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I have had exactly the same experience. A man called Terry White keeps ringing me asking me to sum up all my expenses with IAP and a defunct company called Townfield Investments (Land).

Litimed are still contacting ex-clients of Instant Access. We too have just been contacted by Litimed. Patter is identical to European Mediation except that we are being told that "Instant Access and Inside Track have been denounced for Fraud and Mis-selling which allows us to claim any payments made direct to them from a European Fund. 10% upfront into an Escrow Account, (refunded if case is successful) - All cases thus far have been successful using European Fund set up from the sale of assets of Fraudulent companies. 8% charge for handling case."

Mr. Terry White sounds very convincing and plausible but we are asking questions about the Act/Legislation under which we can make our claim, the License Number of the Escrow Company and where he got our details from? It will be interesting to see the reply. Thank goodness for forums such as this to warn others.

I had the same call from these people. I can assure you this is a Scam and, personally, I don't even think they sound convincing

Hi, I just thought I would post my experience of Litimed. Thankfully this forum came up on a search to confirm my suspicions of the dodginess of this company. I thought another posting would help google searches for anyone else checking out the validity of Litimed.com or searching for Litimed scam as I did.

I had the exact same spiel from Terry White as Gerry and agreed to receive their e-mail which contained the details of the Escrow account. It was in their lawyers name of MJ Fairbairn who didn't return any results on a google search and was based in the Isle of Man so is effectively offshore.

Terry called me to ask if I had paid my up front fee but I told him I had changed my mind as I believed it was all a scam. A little taken aback he still tried to convince me but was stumped when I asked for the Escrow License details saying he'd never been asked that question before. The conversation didn't last much longer.

As the bank account is a NATWest account, shouldn' they have a duty to investigate if there are allegations that it's being used for fraudulent purposes?

I too have been contacted by Ben Smyth (Scottish?) and Henk Peters (Dutch?)with the same story re Instant Access. They gave me the name of their lawyer as MJ Fairbairn with an offshore escrow account. I have tried but can find no trace of any such lawyer registered in the UK and / or Spain.
I have a couple of questions though - 1, does anyone know of a way to check whether any European class actions against Instant Access have ever been made (successful or not)? and, 2, if so, is any properly registered law firm out there prepared to undertake such a case? I suspect there are a considerable number of very unhappy 'property investors' who might be interested if such an action is really possible.

I was also called by this guy and at first I taken in by it but it all seemed to easy plus once I read in the T&C's that they wanted some up front money alarm bells started ringing.

Like most others here - thanks goodness for this forum.

I certainly think Instant Access should be taken to court for mis-selling but would rather do it through a reputable UK firm if any are interested.

Thanks
Mike

I have been contacted by Ben Smyth requesting details of monies paid to Inside Track as Finders Fees and payments made to purchase properties off plan through Inside Track including deposits, legal fees search fees stamp duty etc.
At the outset he told me Litimed's costs would be 8% + VAT payable on successful completion of the claim which would be part of a group of 50 similar claims. They batch them up into groups of 50 for submission to the court. Then, right at the end, on the 3rd call he asked me to place 10% of my claim into this MJ Fairburn lawyers escrow account to start things off. This had never been mentioned before and I cannot see it anywhere in the paperwork Litimed sent me.
When Ben Smyth first called me on 2nd August I had just finished with another scam involving a company in Hong Kong wanting to buy some shares I had in a company which was supposedly being taken over. They wanted money up front and I relayed this to Ben as an introduction. He assured me Litimed would not do that as they were a reputable co recovering money through a "Settlement Pool" funded from the proceeds of EU Securities Class Actions. Surprise...Surprise, here he is asking for up front monies!!
This is a scam!!! Beware!!!

I was also telephoned by Litimed and informed they could recover money I had lost from Instant Access. They emailed me a contract which has made me, as a lawyer, very suspicious.

(i) Nowhere does it mention what there initial fee will be.

(ii) The contract does not appear to have been proof read by a lawyer e.g. It uses the word 'companies' when it means 'Company's' and there are numerous other mistakes.

(iii) It states that the contract is goverened by European Law. I am not sure what this is. If it means European Union Law, we would still need to know what other national law applied. England and Spain are both governed by European Union law, but have different laws of contract.

In short, I do not believe the contract was drawn up by a lawyer.

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Originally Posted by Unregistered

Hi, I just thought I would post my experience of Litimed. Thankfully this forum came up on a search to confirm my suspicions of the dodginess of this company. I thought another posting would help google searches for anyone else checking out the validity of Litimed.com or searching for Litimed scam as I did.

I had the exact same spiel from Terry White as Gerry and agreed to receive their e-mail which contained the details of the Escrow account. It was in their lawyers name of MJ Fairbairn who didn't return any results on a google search and was based in the Isle of Man so is effectively offshore.

Terry called me to ask if I had paid my up front fee but I told him I had changed my mind as I believed it was all a scam. A little taken aback he still tried to convince me but was stumped when I asked for the Escrow License details saying he'd never been asked that question before. The conversation didn't last much longer.

As the bank account is a NATWest account, shouldn' they have a duty to investigate if there are allegations that it's being used for fraudulent purposes?

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PLEASE NOTE: NATWEST ARE INVESTIGATING THESE PEOPLE AS I'VE REPORTED THEM. This is a scam.

I have submitted my experiences above but would add, Ben Smyth contacted me and I did supply the data of dealings I had with Inside Track/Instant Access which were not private and woyld have been available to Inside Track. When he asked me,at the very end, to deposit monies I told him I had reservations. He said he would call me back, that was 2 months ago and he has never called again.
Are they just after details? Whats the point of not following up?