Jim Moore and Instant Access Properties Back in Action

This is from some time ago (February 2009), but worth noting nonetheless. Andrew Penman, of Penman and Sommerlad Investigate, which runs on the Mirror website, has been on the tail of Jim Moore, a name that will be familiar to many, but perhaps not to others. The guy was responsible for the phenomenally successful (for him) but spectacularly unsuccessful (for his clients) companies such as Inside Track, which mass-sold (or more correctly miss-sold) thousands of over-priced apartment units, most of which now lie empty, around the UK. Inside Track spawned another, equally useless, offspring called Instant Access Properties, which has now resurfaced as IAP Global.

I'll let Penman take over here:

"With property company IAP Global running seminars (aka recruiting sessions) nationwide, the following might prove a timely alert.

It's from a retired couple who were badly stung by IAP's predecessor, Instant Access Properties.

Both are the brainchild, if that's the right word, of former perfume salesman turned buy-to-let property guru Jim Moore. Not that many of the thousands of victims who raided their savings to attend his Inside Track property seminars or invest through his Instant Access Properties will consider him a guru.

Both companies are now bust, which isn't stopping Jim. He's back with IAP Global. Before you decide to fall for the dream of becoming a 'property millionaire', it's worth reading this tale we received today from a chap we'll just call Clive."

Read Clive's story here.

In case you've had dealings with any of these, here's another piece from Penman on the seamless handover of information from the Instant Access Properties scam to another con-operation, European Mediation (who've been mentioned before on this blog with reference to Fortuna Estates and Oanna) and then onto another entity called missoldinvestments.com.

Suffice to say, buyer beware - the overseas property industry (and the property industry in general) is still, essentially, completely unregulated. A simple Google search on any of the entities above would get you a huge amount of information, unfortunately, normally too late.

Try to find out who is behind the company with whom you are considering investing your money. This will never be easy if they are a con organisation, so this should ring alarm bells for a start. If you do a bit of sleuthing around their website and documentation you'll often find hints, however. For instance, if you take a look at the following page in the IAP Global website you'll find the following statement:

“Rousing speech from Jim Moore!. I am open to options. I am very interested in high earning/high growth property/land fund. I consider property a safer investment than stocks and shares.”

Most of these con-men (they are predominantly men, but you should also be wary of the fairer sex as a few have also been implicated) are serial offenders, so you may well find a lot of information about them on the internet before you run the risk of losing your hard earned cash to their nefarious schemes.

Inside Track File for Bankruptcy

The success of Surrey based Inside Track, the agressive off-plan property investment and investment seminar company, has come to a shuddering halt. The news, reported in the Guardian yesterday, will not come as much of a shock to insiders in the industry who felt the company's 'buying off-plan to flip' model of property investment was intrinsically flawed. It was generally felt that such a model works in a rising economic cycle, just about, but comes to grief when economic conditions are less than favourable, as has been proven to be the case. Even where the company claimed property could be let for a profit these claims were often without foundation, leaving many of its clients in large negative cashflow situations.

The company was the leader of a slew of 'property investment clubs' around the UK which promoted the purchase of off-plan city centre apartments claiming to have sourced from developers for reductions of 15-20%. Accusations have recently been made that developers were merely inflating their properties by this amount in order to offer the reductions, thus falsely inflating the market and leaving buyers with properties worth less than they paid for them. So 'successful' were these property investment clubs that they were responsible for up to 30% of all UK apartment sales in 2006, but then the wheels started to come off.

It would appear that, even in the good times, Inside Track's clients were struggling to achieve the profits claimed by the company. You can see an article on one of their 'clients' who ran into trouble here.

The announcement last month that the company was to cancel its controversial 'property seminars', which could cost potential clients anything up to £15,000 if they were to go through the full seminar course, was a sign of things to come.

If you've been burned by Inside Track and want to have a good moan about it you could visit here, it'll give you plenty of opportunity to vent your spleen.

www.OverseasCafe.com