“They had a very impressive website and an ASIC listing,” he said. “It’s a pretty sophisticated set up.”
Professor Fisher checked the company’s ASIC record and found that it was registered with an ABN and an ACN. It had provided him with a comprehensive market preview, a daily report on his investment, a local bank account and an adviser he regularly spoke to on the phone using a local phone number.
“It all looked pretty good,” he said.
He said the initial public offerings (IPOs) the company recommended, which he didn’t buy, had done well at the time. But he later learned that overseas IPOs were a “standard scammer tool”.
“Although the scam has been reported to Fraud Squad, ASIC, and Scamwatch the website is still there and the ASIC registrations remain,” he said.
Professor Fisher initially invested $10,000 and then $18,000 and appeared to be making money from day trading; his bank contacted him to say it had blocked his account because it had detected “nefarious trading”. Initially, he did not believe the bank when it told him that QPE Securities was operating a scam.
He told them the company had an address in Chifley Tower. ‘Oh dear’ was the bank officer’s response – “everyone has an address in Chifley Tower”.
When Professor Fisher visited Chifley Tower to front the company representatives he had been dealing with on the phone and on email, the concierge could find no record of the company in the building. The concierge told him he…
