Letter of Warning

To whom it may concern

Having returned to my home country of South Africa for holiday, I am extremely disappointed concerning my tax return. I want to open a police case against JOHN VERDI TAX REFUNDS LTD for fraudulent activity.

A brief description of the situation is as follows:

I used the above agent/company to file my tax return for the year of 2008/09.

I also indirectly gave Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs the authority to credit my tax return of £3660 to the account of the above mentioned. JOHN VERDI was then meant to credit my account with the amount of £3575 having deducted an £85 fixed service charge.

My online account at HMRC states that the tax refund was issued on the 17th of MAY 2009 and this was credited to my online account. This was then credited to JOHN VERDI’s account.

I then waited for 2 weeks but the funds were still not transferred to my account.

I then contacted JOHN VERDI the week beginning the 1st of JUNE 2009 and I spoke to an agent called Martin Simmons. He mentioned to me that they have changed their payment structure and cannot transfer the funds electronically and that they would now be operating a cheque only payment method. Although, Martin Simmons said that because I am in South Africa, they could make an exception and electronically transfer the funds to my Barclays account. However, he would need to confirm this. I then rang Martin Simmons on Thursday the 4th of June and he confirmed that the transfer would be made the following week.

The following Wednesday I tried to contact Martin Simmons but was unsuccessful as the call was directed to the answer phone. The answer phone message stated that John Verdi Tax Consultancy would be unavailable for a short period of time as they were moving premises from Woodford, London to Newcastle. The message also conveyed that if more information was required customers could visit their website.

Having browsed their website I noticed that under the UPDATE section it stated that they will be unavailable for a period of between 2 to 6 weeks.

I continued to visit their website frequently and on the 15 of JULY 2009 their website was removed from the internet, loading a UKREG page mentioning that they have reserved their host name of; JOHNVERDITAXREFUNDS.COM.

I have contact the Companies house and this agent isn’t even listed under a registered LTD.

I have not heard anything from them since.

Regards

BvdB*

*name removed for the sake of privacy