It feels like we are increasingly having to be on our guard to avoid scams and fraudsters in our daily lives, whether this is due to increasing awareness (is ignorance bliss?) or due to increased prevalence is difficult to gauge.

In the last couple of months, Milsted Langdon has been instructed on two separate matters, which point towards this increasing prevalence but also show how hard it can be to unpick the dealings and trace assets.

Both these matters are ongoing and investigations continue, so the details have been changed to protect the (not so) innocent.

Firstly, an investment business. X Limited was advertised as a reputable investment company offering ISA investments which boasted that it could realise significant returns for individual investors.

Unfortunately, when the members of the public wished to deposit their hard-earned savings, they were instructed to make their cheques payable to another third party business, which would, they were told, make the investments on their behalf.

One of these businesses, far from being a reputable bank or investment institution, is claiming that it was instead a marketing agency and never received any of the funds.

Milsted Langdon’s Restructuring team have now been appointed as liquidators in an attempt to unpick the transactions and recover some of the millions invested.

In an entirely different scenario, Y Limited is an importer of regulated medical products that had achieved an enviable market position in its own niche. The investors left the day-to-day operations to an experienced senior management team.

Milsted Langdon was approached when shareholders became suspicious that a fraud was being perpetrated by which goods were being ordered and paid for but never delivered.

Whilst the introduction initially came to the Restructuring Team after a brief conversation it became clear that a Forensic Accounting Team review was required to gather evidence as to the scale of the misappropriation of funds.