In what appears to be an extraordinary blunder, the Office of Fair Trading has sent out an email to money laundering officers at estate agents and firms which give credit – with all 450 or so of the recipients’ email addresses clearly shown.
A potential crook’s charter if the email falls into the wrong hands, the email would enable criminals to know exactly who to target – possibly for bribery or blackmail purposes – if they wanted to set up a scam.
The email could land the OFT – which exists to protect consumers and cannot afford a reputation for incompetence – in trouble over breaches of data protection.
The OFT could easily find itself the subject of complaints to the Information Commissioner’s Office. One of its specific remits is the Privacy and Electronic Communications regulations.
Ironically, the OFT’s own website carries a prominent warning on its home page about ‘mass marketed’ scams.
The email invites its recipients to comment on its consultation on anti-money laundering – an unpopular enough topic as it is with estate agents.
The email is from Peter Swan, consultation manager (we have resisted giving you his own email address).
One horrified recipient of his email, Henry Pryor, wrote back to Swan saying:
“Dear Mr Swan, Thank you for your email inviting responses to your consultation exercise.
May I respectfully suggest that the very first thing you might consider is not circulating an email on the subject to an identifiable list of nominated officers. You appear to be unaware that such emails are routinely harvested by unscrupulous web users and sold on to spammers who will then inundate our mailboxes with more ‘exotic’ offerings than the OFT might consider sending.
There is also a view that sending open emails in this manner is poor form, not to mention the fact that it also allows mistakes to be rather more widely witnessed.
I was going to copy it to all the other 450 folk too but sobered up just in time…”
The consultation closes on May 7. It can be found at:
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Comments
Interesting to note that. What a shambles. Estate agents emails www.emailsetc.co.uk seem to be not at all difficult to find.
ohhh talking of registration fees ..... we hate them....the corporate agent in our town do these.....they are loosing so much business through their greed. As far was we are concerned we say keep it up!!!
can I have my money back please? or is this all going to be swept under the carpet. What if I made a mistake like this? How comes they suddenly need a registration fee, surely anti m.l. should come from central funds.
He should be sending encrypted emails...as everyone should when sending out sensitive information. Email is not secure...it's too easy to hit send casually and it goes to the wrong person/people.
I think I'll send Mr Swan a good contact I have who can sort it out!
Here we go again.............. I've now had 27 touting e mails, this morning, as a result Peter Swans brick dropping exercise ! Cheers Pete !
Well.......... surprise, surprise.... thanks to the good Mr. Swan, so far this morning I have received 12 touting e mails from all & sundry!
What a joke!!
I guess this could open up a can of worms and be story of the week. If you take a look, there are some very interesting email addresses and if you look further the exclusion of so many that we know who are in the business is perhaps more interesting. Does this mean that it is only we who have registered as legally required by 31 January!! Whilst we appreciate the corporates and multi branch operations only need one officer per firm there surely are more than 450 firms left in estate agency, or perhaps not or perhaps they haven't as yet taken on board that EA's have to deal with the Money Laundering Regs as in the main they don't handle money. Now had a visit and received a survey questionnaire form Trading Standards asking if we're aware of the ML Regs and if we've registered with the OFT.
These public sector parasites should lose their jobs.
I was on the OFT HIT LIST and responded accordingly on saturday copying in ALL parties whose email addresses were made available to me! :
WHAT A JOKE! CONFIDENTIAL MY BACKSIDE! THAT’S WHAT THE BCC IS FOR PETER SWANN.
ANYWAY MY VERY PUBLIC RESPONSE (THANKS TO YOUR GOOD OFFICES Mr SWANN) TO THE MONEY LAUNDERING REGULATIONS
IS WHY?
WHY ARE ESTATE AGENTS WHO DO NOT OFFER FINANCE, DO NOT HANDLE CLIENTS FUNDS, DO NOT HANDLE £’s IN ANY SHAPE OR FORM HAVING TO JOIN A SCHEME WHICH IS TOTALLY IRRELEVANT TO THEM? WHAT SORT OF MONITORING ARE WE SUPPOSED TO INDULGE IN THAT IS NOT ALREADY OVERSEEN BY OTHER PARTIES INVOLVED IN SALES TRANSACTIONS SUCH AS SOLICITORS, BANKS, MORTGAGE BROKERS AND FINANCE HOUSES, ALL OF WHOM ARE ALREADY UNDER THE MONEY LAUNDERING UMBRELLA. TO ME THIS IS WASTEFUL DUPLICATION AND ABOVE ALL A MAJOR MONEY SPINNER FOR THOSE COLLECTING OUR FEES. I WOULD RATHER DONATE THE MONEY TO CHARITY AT LEAST THAT WAY I KNOW IT IS GOING TO A WORTHY CAUSE!!!
I’M SURE I’M NOT A LONE VOICE……SO THOSE WHO ARE WITH ME ON THIS PLEASE FEEL FREE TO COPY AND PASTE THIS MESSAGE ADDING YOUR OWN THOUGHTS AND SEND IT TO MR PETER SWANN. MAYBE THEY WILL GET THE MESSAGE THAT NOT ALL OF US SHOULD FALL UNDER THE SAME SWEEPING BUREAUCRACY.
Looks like Mr Swan will be getting some swift IT lessons.