A Nottinghamshire engineering firm says people are being defrauded out of thousands of pounds and left "distraught" by a fake website imitating their business. Staff at Rock Civils Engineering in Langar say one recent customer came from as far as Glasgow to find that what he had been sold did not exist.
As well as using the company's name and address on the fake website, social media accounts are also being set up in the name of company directors, which can easily be found on Companies House. Invoices are also being sent to customers using this information, with the amount stolen from people now standing at over £100,000.
The business was established in 2010 by Michael Kane, 53, and delivers groundwork services alongside its sister business, Rock Plant Hire, which lets out items such as diggers, trailers and dumpers. It is this latter side of the business which a website and several social media accounts have been imitating for the past eight weeks.
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Conor Kane, 25, the son of Michael and one of the directors of the business, said: "Whoever is doing it has set up a website using our name, our address and have also been setting up multiple Facebook accounts selling people stuff at a price far lower than these things are worth.
"People are obviously just seeing these cheap prices and getting caught in the trap of coming, but it's getting absolutely ridiculous. The phone never stops ringing and people are coming in person everyday expecting to pick things up that just aren't here.
"We had a guy come all the way from Glasgow yesterday morning and he was just absolutely distraught. He couldn't get his head around what we were telling him.
"A lot of the people are getting quite aggravated by the situation and so I'm not leaving the office at the moment. I've got two admin girls here and I can't be leaving them on their own dealing with some of this abuse."
Mr Kane says one recent victim of the scam had paid just under £20,000 for two dumpers that didn't exist. Chris Ireland, the plant manager with the business, said: "We first found out about this on July 27 when someone came in to collect a horse box which we hadn't sold.
"We don't actually sell anything through Rock Plant Hire, we only hire out the equipment, so we knew it wasn't right. There is a number on this fake website and I've been ringing it loads of times but it just goes through to a mobile voicemail.
"I've spoken to the police probably four or five times since this started happening and I've told Action Fraud about it as well. It just doesn't stop and we must have had seven or eight people here yesterday that had been scammed.
"People who have been paying on credit card have been able to get some money back from the bank, but they're never going to get all of this back. We just need the website taking down and the message getting out there to people not to buy from it or any of these social media accounts."
Action Fraud has confirmed that it has been made aware of the matter. In an email from Action Fraud to Rock Civil Engineering, shared with Nottinghamshire Live, the organisation said: "The use of another person's identity, often referred to as identity theft, is not a police recordable crime.
"Where the details are used to obtain goods or services, we can only record a crime on behalf of the person or organisation which was defrauded as a result of the misuse of an identity. Whilst the misuse of your identity cannot be classified as a police recorded crime, we do recognise that identity theft can cause significant distress and inconvenience."
Mr Kane added: "The message we're getting is that the actual people who have been defrauded need to be coming forward and I think reputation is a bit of an intangible asset. But it is using up so much resource to be answering all these calls and dealing with all these complaints.
"I've actually taken my address off Google and the signs down from outside the office to try and reduce the numbers a bit because it's just a nightmare. We do mainly work on repeat business so it won't affect that side of things, but we have obviously got a reputation to try and uphold and our online reviews now are getting really bad because of this."
Pauline Smith, Head of Action Fraud, said: "[The incident] has been recorded on our system as an information report. An information report can be made when a fraud has not been committed but has been attempted, or there is suspicion of criminal intent. An information report is also made if somebody is reporting a fraud on behalf of a victim or a person is the victim of identity theft."
Nottinghamshire Police has also been contacted for comment. Nottinghamshire Live repeatedly tried to call the number on the fake website, but it went through to a mobile phone voicemail on each occasion.
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