TCA regret to announce that we have to expose yet another incarnation of what is a long history of fake Spanish law firms. This time we have Jesus Perez an upright firm of solicitors (Abogados) working from Santa Cruz, Tenerife, except they are neither upright or solicitors nor real in any sense of the word.
As we delve deeper we find that a search of the main register of Spanish lawyers and law firms can find no reference to this firm. Being more parochial we searched the Ilustre Colegio de Abogados de Santa Cruz de Tenerife register, and no surprises here, again no record meaning this firm of lawyers doesn’t exist. This we find odd because the covering letter sent to the potential victim states the following:
“Our Company, founded on Wednesday the 11th of November 1992, consists of a consortium of well-respected Lawyers, Consultants and Administrators, overseeing all aspects of civil and criminal law, tribunal attendances and compensation claims.”
OK, maybe we made a mistake, above it clearly says “our company” so logic dictated that we search the equivalent of Spanish Companies House (Registradores de España). These nice scammers provided their company registration number (Numero de NIF), A21876391, this is what we found:
No se han encontrado resultados para los datos de búsqueda indicados. Translates to; No results were found for the indicated search data. So Jesus Perez doesn’t exist on any lawyers search and the company also doesn’t exist. We think this is proof enough to label them as fraudsters.
To the trained eye, another stand out giveaway is the email address quoted:
jesus-perez@legislator.com and foreign-liaison-department@email.com
@legislator.com and @email.com are open source platforms such as Gmail or Hotmail; anyone can set up an email with these domains. Surely a solicitors practice would have their own domain name, they haven’t and neither do they have a website. That is another big clue as to the illegality of this outfit.
The scam
Again, nothing new here it’s the old Silverpoint court case scam. Before we start to dig even deeper we will now state without any fear of contradiction that there has never been, and more importantly probably won’t be any court cases in Spain regards Silverpoint, so all the fake claims and paperwork are just that, fake. You would think that if you are going to try to scam someone then you would at least get your facts right. Below is an extract from the covering letter:
Allow us to correct these idiots! Jake Kaiser is a principle at Canarian Legal Alliance, a bona fide claims and exit company. At no time has Mr Kaiser been a Director of Silverpoint. Equally, whilst Mark Rowe was involved with timeshare, once again he was never a Director of Silverpoint. As for Mark Cushway, for sure he was a senior manager/ Director at Silverpoint, last heard of languishing in Dubai so good luck in getting him into court in Tenerife.
Needless to say, in the covering letter is a request for payment:
Not bad eh? €1,310 in exchange for €29,638, bargain, except given there is no court case; there equally is no €29,638 to pay out. Not looking so good now, €1,310 for absolutely nothing!
The letter goes on from the mildly believable to sheer stupidity:
Has no one at this prestigious law firm ever heard of the EU General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR). Who are they kidding when they say they have “legal status” to obtain account details from Spain’s central bank, this is like saying the average high street solicitor in the UK has authority to get account details from the Bank of England, utter rubbish. Anyway, since when has a lowly solicitor been extended the powers to levy a countries national bank accounts!
The letter finishes with:
“We pledge to be as proficient and professional as you would expect from a Company of our standing and look forward to finalising your payout shortly”.
Slightly adjusted it should read:
“We pledge to be as proficient and professional at stealing your money as you would expect from a Company with our highly dubious standing and we also look forward to robbing you shortly”.
As a final point, the usual fake Spanish court document accompanies the letter as a convincer. Needless to say the document bears absolutely no relation to the real document. As this is a mirror image of a scam that has been doing the rounds for years, you may be interested in this article as it shows all the documents that if you have received communication from Jesus Perez may just look a tad similar.
TCA comment
We have tracked this scam through numerous identity changes of fake Spanish law firms. We have to admit that the scammers are getting much smarter in a dumb sort of way. Relying on the inability to speak or understand Spanish is key to this scam working, taking Spanish aside; here is a simple checklist:
- IF YOU ARE CONTACTED BY COLD CALL, EMAIL OR LETTER BEWARE.
- IF THE FIRST YOU HEAR OF A COURT CASE IS AN AWARD, IT’S FAKE.
- IF A BREXIT FEE OR BREXIT TAX IS MENTIONED, IT’S FAKE.
- IF YOU RECEIVE COURT DOCUMENTS, THEY’RE FAKE.
- IF YOU RECEIVE SPANISH TAX FORMS, THEY’RE FAKE.
- IF YOU PAY THE SUPPOSED TAX, IT’S MONEY LOST.
- IF YOU PAY A RELEASE FEE, IT’S MONEY LOST.
- BRITS SCAMMING BRITS, EXPECT NO HELP FROM THE SPANISH AUTHORITIES.
We hope this article will put this scam to bed once and for all. If you receive communication from lawyers in Spain unsolicited and are at all in doubt, call us at TCA, we are here to help.
For more information regarding this article or assistance in any other timeshare related issues please contact the TCA on 01908 881058 or email: info@TimeshareConsumerAssociation.org.uk