European Directory Guides

Across Europe there are a growing number of phony guides.

What is most remarkable about these scams is the similarity in tactics. It is not clear at this point whether they are all run by the same group of people or are simply copycat operations.

The fact that they all appear to target their victims in English does suggest that this may be the work of a small group of British Ex-pats.

The scam guides all use the method of sending out thousands, possibly millions of trick "contracts". They use legitimate publications such as Yellow Pages to garner lists of targets. They never hit large numbers of people in a single trade or area; they need their victims to feel alone.

The "contracts" are disguised as requests for information, the "legal" agreement and price are hidden away and printed very small and in hard to read capitals. It is very easy to fall for the trick, even trading standards offices have been duped.

Once a contract is returned they wait a few weeks before sending the first letter making it clear they are expecting money. From that point on all requests for cancellation are refused.

Most of these guides operate the "10% Rule"; a simple but aggressive tactic based on the fact that when threatened repeatedly approximately 10% of victims cave in and pay up. They often accept part payments as they are offering no service to speak of and any money they can weasel out of people is sheer profit. While court action is threatened it is never used. They would need to travel to the countries of their victims in order to pursue them in court. This would involve unwanted publicity and should they lose all contracts would then be deemed invalid, a risk they are unwilling to take.

Throughout Europe they have somewhere close to 100,000 victims, if 10% of them are paying up, the money extorted will run into millions of pounds.

Those so far identified

Click here for more information about these scams.