This reminds me of the people posting “designer” sneakers, bags or watches/jewelry on certain forums to see if anyone catches that they are knock offs. (If they pass, those pics get used in the scammer’s listings on eBay, Poshmark etc).
I suddenly understand why r/purses and r/handbags are overrun with "REAL OR FAKE?????" posts even though purses discourages authentication requests and handbags straight up bans them.
I'm willing to go even further and bet that neither the bf or his "friend" exists and op is just trying to distance themselves as far as possible from the fraud to appear sympathetic
That's reaching a bit, I doubt OP is going to this much trouble because what use would any advice be if they are all the same person?
No the friend definitely exists, these scam operations are never entirely ran in the UK - they are based in a country like India, and they send 'peons' to come over on student visas and manage the receipt of scammed funds into bank accounts.
Yeah I think the real reason she doesn't understand is that she's trying to find an explanation where her BF isn't a criminal and that's making it really complicated.
Yeah people keep on asking why he would agree to take on all the risk of starting a company but none of the benefit. Even if you’re extremely friendly that is insane.
She keeps on replying he was just trying to help, but when people keep on asking why he did it she admits that he was actually running the company with the friend, but decided to not really bother after some time. Which is a huge tell. So it wasn’t just an administrative thing, he was involved. Some lawyers will probably argue about how involved he was but he was definitely involved.
"But he didn't do anything personally, it was other people who did things at the company where he should in theory have known of and approved everything that happened!"
My dad, who's favorite coping method is denial, recently had one of his in home caregivers steal 5 thousand dollars from him, and that's just what we are aware of. He spent several days frustrating everyone involved by continually painting this woman's actions as a "likely cry for help". He's now on board with the idea she needs a criminal record but man was he driving me crazy with his constantly painting her as some kind victim in all this. And she's only worked with him since August! Some people just really cling to denial.
That’s awful. Financial elder abuse and manipulation is such a huge issue that doesn’t get enough attention.
My grandpa was in a nursing home for the last year or so of his life and during the last few months, he was pretty cognitively impaired most of the time. He had always been very active in the Catholic Church and was fairly well known in that community.
My mom discovered that representatives of the Church had been visiting him and trying to get him to change his will to leave them just about all of his assets, even though my grandmother was still alive. They told him they’d pay her an annuity for the rest of her life for her to live off of if he agreed to it. I was only like 16, so I don’t remember a lot of the details, but I’ve never seen my mother so angry as she was over that.
Thankfully, they didn’t manage to get any changes made to his will, but he had already originally designated a good amount to go to them when he drafted it. The whole thing was just super fucked up.
Nah, dad is still very much in love with my deceased mother and this woman is ten years younger than I am, my dad has made quite clear he thinks age gap relationships that big are bizarre. It's more the thought he got taken in when "I used to work in the prisons, she doesn't have a criminal personality!" and "who is stupid enough to steal an entire envelope with 4,000 thousand dollars in it (he had recently sold a vehicle for cash) and expect to get away with it?!" that is bugging him.
Basically he is upset he was hoodwinked by someone that dumb. And like I said denial is his favorite coping mechanism but we had $680 of it on tape and she admitted the rest to the cop who tricked her into thinking we had a couple of the other incidents on tape so he had to come up with some other reasoning why she's really not a "criminal personality".
I'm disabled, my mom had dementia before my dad's downturn, we've had caregivers in and out of the house for a decade and until this lady they have all been incredibly honest. My dad once over paid mom's private pay caregiver in cash and she brought back the $40 extra he had given her. We are fortunate that the financial hit isn't devastating, most of the clients served by the agency she works for are on Medicaid and could easily be made homeless by that amount. The agency was enraged by her actions but very grateful that we had video and she could just be dismissed without being based on mere suspicion. And apparently her pattern with us was to immediately take the cash she stole to the bank and deposit it so there are warrants being pulled to look for that pattern with other clients.
The worst part for me is dad broke his arm a month before I caught her and the 5th anniversary of my mother's death was the day before I caught her so the stress level has been extra high and I basically subsisted on sugar for a week.
They stole money from (likely) vulnerable people in what could be a life-changing situation. I have very limited sympathy for the bf and for LAOP who doesn't seem to think it's a big deal.
I think the don't understand (and I coouldn't follow it either) is that the friends wife also has a company and somehow the fraud was done from bf company and then money was being funneled into wife's account. Best I can make is the wife's "company" was being used for the laundering part of the operation and friend could withdraw clean money from it (maybe).
She "doesn't understand" only because she doesn't want to understand. She understands well enough that she kept the most incriminating details (i.e. the BF's active involvement in the company) out of the post and only divulged it when commenters dragged it out of her.
Hoo hoo hoo, yep. Immigration fraud? In Britain, in 2025? With an officially "hostile environment" and a media, political class, and Home Office all screamingly keen to crack down on immigration fraud? Huh.
Probably about the only mitigating factor (from OP's boyfriend's perspective) is that they appear to have been taking money off prospective immigrants in exchange for sorting out UK Visas, pocketing the money, and simply never applying for the visas... vs. actually generating fake UK visas / documentation, or applying for visas using false information. Not great! But possibly slightly fewer crimes!
Also I guess that if these defrauded prospective immigrants are based abroad in India or Nigeria or somewhere, they may be slightly less likely to know how to complain to the British police and get their complaint taken seriously... or know how to navigate small claims court in order to sue? Silver linings.
Me too. At least (?) in terms of crime, the victims in this case appear to be primarily the prospective immigrants who they were ill-"advising" and relieving of their cash.
Act as an unregulated individual to mislead and defraud foreigners: oh, well, that's one thing. Mislead and defraud the actual British government / Home Office in order to facilitate illegal immigration...
look, in terms of risk of getting the book chucked at you, let's just say "and that book will be the prison library's complete edition of Archbold"
Except I can imagine a lot of their victims also residing physically in the UK at the time of being scammed, either on the asylum backlog or otherwise. They are really fucked
Also I guess that if these defrauded prospective immigrants are based abroad in India or Nigeria or somewhere, they may be slightly less likely to know how to complain to the British police and get their complaint taken seriously... or know how to navigate small claims court in order to sue? Silver linings.
Many many visa applications are made by people currently living in the UK. Sometimes it's people who were here on a Visa and need it to be renewed, sometimes it's people in the UK applying for a Visa for a family member to come see them.
One of my favorite YouTubers, Munecat, has a good video on Sovereign citizens that also covers the broad strokes of the Freemen of the Land in the Uk and Canada. You might like it.
Here in Germany we have our own flavor of this (I guess each country does).
The goals are the same: Not following laws, avoiding fines and taxes etc.
The means are different though. Besides a few really lost people who even tried arguing US law in Germany, most subscribe to the notion that the modern federal republic of Germany does not exist and that the Germany Reich and it's laws continue to apply.
That is funny for two reasons: One, the state the allege to follow would absolutely not have tolerated their antics (even before the Nazis) and two, the German Reich actually continues to exist in the form of modern Germany.
National and international law has long recognized that there is and has been a German state that was founded in 1872 and continues to exist to the present day under different names and legal frameworks.
Interestingly I've not yet heard of anybody that claims that East Germany continues to exist. If I put on my crazy hat for a second that makes much more "sense" because it "seceded" and never officially disolved (just lost all of its territory and people when they joined Western Germany in 1990).
But then country wouldn't suit the sovcits I guess because it had all the things they don't like in the modern world and is still in living memory.
I may be entirely wrong about this but I vaguely remember somebody here saying that yes, there are, but they go by some kinda name like "freeman of the land".
'We need a British citizen to act as a front for our scam where we take people's money and lie about getting them visas'. And he's had no money out of this operation? Pull the other one.
I love how LAOP doesn't seem to understand that people who make shitty decisions like this tend to be in debt because of their shitty decision making, not because they're getting zero money out of it.
Look, it's perfectly understandable that you'd sign all the necessary paperwork making it abundantly clear that you're personally legally responsible for the company's activities, receive absolutely no compensation for this, and just walk away and allow your friend to do everything in your name just because he asked nicely.
...Shit, might need to workshop this defense a bit more before we get the plod involved...
His victims will be, by definition, people without visas seeking to regularise their position with the help of a sketchy unregulated company. Such people will not want to draw attention to themselves via legal action. In the manner of whatever that sub is called that deals in unethical life pro hacks, if you’re going to defraud people, defrauding people whose standing to take actions against you may be limited is quite smart.
LocationBot is busy running a company “for a friend”
Need advice: Director in name only, company used for fraud (England, UK)
Hi, I’m posting on behalf of my boyfriend (UK).
He is a British citizen and was made sole director and sole shareholder of a small consultancy company registered with Companies House. A friend convinced him to open it and then ran the company himself. My boyfriend had no operational control, did not deal with clients, and did not receive any money personally.
We have now discovered that the friend was allegedly running scams through the company. There are bad Google reviews, and some people claim they have reported the company. The company is still active. My boyfriend’s name is on the business bank account, but again, no personal benefit.
He wants to protect himself legally but problem is he has no money and is currently in debt, so hiring a solicitor is very difficult.
What are the immediate steps he should take (order matters)?
Should he report this himself (e.g., Action Fraud), and when?
How risky is his position given he was director/shareholder in name only?
Any free or low-cost legal help recommendations?
We are panicking and really really worried. Any guidance would be really appreciated. Please be kind — we’re trying to handle this properly and quickly.
Thank you.
Cat fact: Cats don’t commit visa scams. But they may scam you for more treats.
The monasteries of Mount Athos in Greece do not allow human women or female domesticated animals... except cats. They allow female cats. Allegedly because of their mousing abilities, but I suspect the difficulty of stopping them was also a concern.
As this seems a good place, relevant comments from OP:
He agreed because he is a birtish citizen and he can open a company while that “friend” wasnt and he couldnt but he had the expertise so my bf agreed
and
It wasnt dodgy at first. They had rented out a proper office and had clients that they provided the services to. After some time when it wasnt going to well they moved out of office and worked from home. But my bf completely stepped away when he got into debt and was going to dissolve the company but the “friend” carried on with it on his own without my bf’s knowledge
It was apparently about visas:
Taking money from people for visa purposes but not gling forward with their applications and telling the clients that their visa was rejected
The guy had another company with his wife’s name and he says that he did the fraud with only the name of my bf’s company and recieved money on his wife’s name!! Idk its so complicated even i dont understand. Iam a medical student this is beyond me thats why i had to ask on here to get somee idea but there’s only been more and more questions
In the comments she ends up telling an entirely diff story where it turns out her boyf was def a part of the company, not just in name only..
“It wasnt dodgy at first. They had rented out a proper office and had clients that they provided the services to. After some time when it wasnt going to well they moved out of office and worked from home. But my bf completely stepped away when he got into debt and was going to dissolve the company but the “friend” carried on with it on his own without my bf’s knowledge”
When I read it I'm betting her justification that he "didn't benefit at all from it" was because his books are showing all the expenses from committing fraud but none of the profit. So she believes him that this venture "wasn't a benefit to him".
It wasnt dodgy at first. They had rented out a proper office and had clients that they provided the services to.
That might be the worst part. Scamming foreigners is one thing, but if they were actually submitting fake visa application, they're gonna get what I think UK law calls a royal boot up the ass.
There’s a second immigration fraud, in that the partner isn’t supposed to be working on a student visa. Right away the boyfriend had a problem since he abetted this. It’s fraud all the way down!
Am I the only one cynical enough to think that the OP is the actual guy pretending to be the girlfriend so they can claim ignorance for whatever imagined reason? OP changes stories multiple times to try and fit into the questions but it just keeps getting more and more convoluted.
No, with the inconsistencies around the stories, I was wondering the same, like perhaps he's testing out possible lines of defence to use for when the balloon goes up.
About the only way I can see the boyfriend not being involved is if he was so incapable that he needed a caretaker, at least part time and maybe full. But OP doesn't talk about being her boyfriend's caretaker or about how his past caretakers were negligent and how she's trying to unwind the results of their abuse.
So I assume either she's either part of the scam or she's now being scammed by him.
Gods that sounds like a nightmare. Sole Proprietorship is the the worst corporation type for any kind of protection of the corporate veil. LAUKOP’s boyfriend hasn’t just been left holding the bag, he standing under a sign saying “evil mastermind who orchestrated all of this!” This is Mr Bubbles “let me illuminate the precarious position you have found yourself in” territory. LAUKOP might also get some legal scrutiny for merely knowing the man.
Also, this is twice in as many days I’ve seen someone in the UK get legal/financial troubles from blindly trusting a friend. I wouldn’t loan a friend $5K blindly, I sure as fuck wouldn’t open a business under my name and my name alone for a friend.
Edit: seems one part of my post stirred a hornets’ nest of cross Atlantic bitterness. I have removed the offending part.
LAUKOP might also get some legal scrutiny for merely knowing the man.
Exactly what I thought, though I'd imagine it's worse for them - there's almost certainly an ongoing investigation, I can't imagine how telling tales on reddit will reflect well on them.
Being a “director in name only” doesn’t exist legally. If you’re listed as a director, you’re responsible, especially in a six-figure fraud. Courts look at what you allowed to happen, not at how involved you claim you were. Saying “I stepped away” usually makes it worse, not better.
Clearly the boyfriend is a liar and the OOP is a fool, whose medical career is about to collapse into chaos as the regulator weighs a living off the proceeds of crime conviction
But I am here for the comment that spells “aether” correctly.
Man the commenters are being such dicks to LAOP, she was not even being combative - everyone is just downvoting them because they don't like the answers she is giving, but it sounds like she is trying to explain the situation to the best of her ability. I think it makes sense that she heard secondhand from her bf that he got into shady dealings, she doesn't fully understand the depth of it, but wants to help.
The way that everyone is assuming the naivety is malicious is weird.
I love how she contradicts herself like 5 times in the post. Yeah I doubt that he didnt know anything about it.
Classic case of testing out excuses on Reddit to see how believable they actually are.
Unfortunately for OP and her boyfriend, the answer is "lol"
This reminds me of the people posting “designer” sneakers, bags or watches/jewelry on certain forums to see if anyone catches that they are knock offs. (If they pass, those pics get used in the scammer’s listings on eBay, Poshmark etc).
I suddenly understand why r/purses and r/handbags are overrun with "REAL OR FAKE?????" posts even though purses discourages authentication requests and handbags straight up bans them.
In the comments she says that her bf was running it with the friend at first and then stepped away which is a wildly diff story than what she posted
I personally think that OP is just the bf
It definitely reels of SWIM
What is SWIM?
Someone Who Isn't Me
I'm willing to go even further and bet that neither the bf or his "friend" exists and op is just trying to distance themselves as far as possible from the fraud to appear sympathetic
That's reaching a bit, I doubt OP is going to this much trouble because what use would any advice be if they are all the same person?
No the friend definitely exists, these scam operations are never entirely ran in the UK - they are based in a country like India, and they send 'peons' to come over on student visas and manage the receipt of scammed funds into bank accounts.
So she posted this over at r/askuk and there he was never involved at all...
If you look at the post history you can see the boyfriend was mentioned. Edit: so has the hive mind just remade reality???
Worse than it first appears, as they have been giving visa advice - a criminal offense if you are not a regulated individual.
Worse than that, took money to submit a visa application. Tell them they’re denied and pocket the money.
And she doesn’t understand because she’s a medical student.
Yeah I think the real reason she doesn't understand is that she's trying to find an explanation where her BF isn't a criminal and that's making it really complicated.
Yeah people keep on asking why he would agree to take on all the risk of starting a company but none of the benefit. Even if you’re extremely friendly that is insane.
She keeps on replying he was just trying to help, but when people keep on asking why he did it she admits that he was actually running the company with the friend, but decided to not really bother after some time. Which is a huge tell. So it wasn’t just an administrative thing, he was involved. Some lawyers will probably argue about how involved he was but he was definitely involved.
"But he didn't do anything personally, it was other people who did things at the company where he should in theory have known of and approved everything that happened!"
My dad, who's favorite coping method is denial, recently had one of his in home caregivers steal 5 thousand dollars from him, and that's just what we are aware of. He spent several days frustrating everyone involved by continually painting this woman's actions as a "likely cry for help". He's now on board with the idea she needs a criminal record but man was he driving me crazy with his constantly painting her as some kind victim in all this. And she's only worked with him since August! Some people just really cling to denial.
That’s awful. Financial elder abuse and manipulation is such a huge issue that doesn’t get enough attention.
My grandpa was in a nursing home for the last year or so of his life and during the last few months, he was pretty cognitively impaired most of the time. He had always been very active in the Catholic Church and was fairly well known in that community.
My mom discovered that representatives of the Church had been visiting him and trying to get him to change his will to leave them just about all of his assets, even though my grandmother was still alive. They told him they’d pay her an annuity for the rest of her life for her to live off of if he agreed to it. I was only like 16, so I don’t remember a lot of the details, but I’ve never seen my mother so angry as she was over that.
Thankfully, they didn’t manage to get any changes made to his will, but he had already originally designated a good amount to go to them when he drafted it. The whole thing was just super fucked up.
Maybe there were romantic feelings involved, as with LAOP. Love/lust are strong motivators.
Nah, dad is still very much in love with my deceased mother and this woman is ten years younger than I am, my dad has made quite clear he thinks age gap relationships that big are bizarre. It's more the thought he got taken in when "I used to work in the prisons, she doesn't have a criminal personality!" and "who is stupid enough to steal an entire envelope with 4,000 thousand dollars in it (he had recently sold a vehicle for cash) and expect to get away with it?!" that is bugging him.
Basically he is upset he was hoodwinked by someone that dumb. And like I said denial is his favorite coping mechanism but we had $680 of it on tape and she admitted the rest to the cop who tricked her into thinking we had a couple of the other incidents on tape so he had to come up with some other reasoning why she's really not a "criminal personality".
God, what a nightmare. I hope you have better luck in the future with caretakers.
I'm disabled, my mom had dementia before my dad's downturn, we've had caregivers in and out of the house for a decade and until this lady they have all been incredibly honest. My dad once over paid mom's private pay caregiver in cash and she brought back the $40 extra he had given her. We are fortunate that the financial hit isn't devastating, most of the clients served by the agency she works for are on Medicaid and could easily be made homeless by that amount. The agency was enraged by her actions but very grateful that we had video and she could just be dismissed without being based on mere suspicion. And apparently her pattern with us was to immediately take the cash she stole to the bank and deposit it so there are warrants being pulled to look for that pattern with other clients.
The worst part for me is dad broke his arm a month before I caught her and the 5th anniversary of my mother's death was the day before I caught her so the stress level has been extra high and I basically subsisted on sugar for a week.
They stole money from (likely) vulnerable people in what could be a life-changing situation. I have very limited sympathy for the bf and for LAOP who doesn't seem to think it's a big deal.
I think the don't understand (and I coouldn't follow it either) is that the friends wife also has a company and somehow the fraud was done from bf company and then money was being funneled into wife's account. Best I can make is the wife's "company" was being used for the laundering part of the operation and friend could withdraw clean money from it (maybe).
She "doesn't understand" only because she doesn't want to understand. She understands well enough that she kept the most incriminating details (i.e. the BF's active involvement in the company) out of the post and only divulged it when commenters dragged it out of her.
Medical school doesn't mean smart unfortunately. The number of times my doctor friend has been scammed is impressive.
Just look at Ben Carson.
Hoo hoo hoo, yep. Immigration fraud? In Britain, in 2025? With an officially "hostile environment" and a media, political class, and Home Office all screamingly keen to crack down on immigration fraud? Huh.
Probably about the only mitigating factor (from OP's boyfriend's perspective) is that they appear to have been taking money off prospective immigrants in exchange for sorting out UK Visas, pocketing the money, and simply never applying for the visas... vs. actually generating fake UK visas / documentation, or applying for visas using false information. Not great! But possibly slightly fewer crimes!
Also I guess that if these defrauded prospective immigrants are based abroad in India or Nigeria or somewhere, they may be slightly less likely to know how to complain to the British police and get their complaint taken seriously... or know how to navigate small claims court in order to sue? Silver linings.
Even if it's not fraudulent applications, giving visa advice is a regulated activity and I highly doubt they were.
Me too. At least (?) in terms of crime, the victims in this case appear to be primarily the prospective immigrants who they were ill-"advising" and relieving of their cash.
Act as an unregulated individual to mislead and defraud foreigners: oh, well, that's one thing. Mislead and defraud the actual British government / Home Office in order to facilitate illegal immigration...
look, in terms of risk of getting the book chucked at you, let's just say "and that book will be the prison library's complete edition of Archbold"
Except I can imagine a lot of their victims also residing physically in the UK at the time of being scammed, either on the asylum backlog or otherwise. They are really fucked
Many many visa applications are made by people currently living in the UK. Sometimes it's people who were here on a Visa and need it to be renewed, sometimes it's people in the UK applying for a Visa for a family member to come see them.
Yeah there was mention of setting up a physical office, which implies people visiting it.
That's okay. He'll be convicted in name only, and go to prison in name only. They tend to send the body into prison along with the name, though.
No, see here, the body corporate on the birth certificate committed the offences, not him as a free man.
Habeas Corpus
All rights reserved
Do they gold fringes on the flags at UK courts?
No. They typically don't have flags in the courtroom, just a coat of arms over the bench.
The CPS hate this one trick.
Are there UK SovCits?
They call themselves Freemen of the Land here.
Do they do the same gibberish with the person vs the corporation? That's a good "loophole" to get OP out of all this /s
One of my favorite YouTubers, Munecat, has a good video on Sovereign citizens that also covers the broad strokes of the Freemen of the Land in the Uk and Canada. You might like it.
It includes plenty of their gibberish
https://youtu.be/KcxZFmKrxR8?si=ppcm-qp0uEfwAmJ7
Here in Germany we have our own flavor of this (I guess each country does).
The goals are the same: Not following laws, avoiding fines and taxes etc.
The means are different though. Besides a few really lost people who even tried arguing US law in Germany, most subscribe to the notion that the modern federal republic of Germany does not exist and that the Germany Reich and it's laws continue to apply.
That is funny for two reasons: One, the state the allege to follow would absolutely not have tolerated their antics (even before the Nazis) and two, the German Reich actually continues to exist in the form of modern Germany.
National and international law has long recognized that there is and has been a German state that was founded in 1872 and continues to exist to the present day under different names and legal frameworks.
Interestingly I've not yet heard of anybody that claims that East Germany continues to exist. If I put on my crazy hat for a second that makes much more "sense" because it "seceded" and never officially disolved (just lost all of its territory and people when they joined Western Germany in 1990).
But then country wouldn't suit the sovcits I guess because it had all the things they don't like in the modern world and is still in living memory.
I may be entirely wrong about this but I vaguely remember somebody here saying that yes, there are, but they go by some kinda name like "freeman of the land".
But is the name all capitalized?
What color is the border of the flag, though? We need to know if there's fringe before we can make a full ruling.
'We need a British citizen to act as a front for our scam where we take people's money and lie about getting them visas'. And he's had no money out of this operation? Pull the other one.
have you noticed he upgrades his phone, watch and iPad every year and pays cash?
(Like, I'd love to look at the expenses that she might not quite see)
No cash, free coke though
I love how LAOP doesn't seem to understand that people who make shitty decisions like this tend to be in debt because of their shitty decision making, not because they're getting zero money out of it.
Wonder why he’s in debt now?
Sudden significant debt is a MAJOR green flag
Look, it's perfectly understandable that you'd sign all the necessary paperwork making it abundantly clear that you're personally legally responsible for the company's activities, receive absolutely no compensation for this, and just walk away and allow your friend to do everything in your name just because he asked nicely.
...Shit, might need to workshop this defense a bit more before we get the plod involved...
Best case, absolute best case, bf is bankrupt and barred from holding a directorship.
Worst case is prison.
He is going to get utterly rinsed when his victims seek restitution, and I say his victims because he must know more than OP let's on
His victims will be, by definition, people without visas seeking to regularise their position with the help of a sketchy unregulated company. Such people will not want to draw attention to themselves via legal action. In the manner of whatever that sub is called that deals in unethical life pro hacks, if you’re going to defraud people, defrauding people whose standing to take actions against you may be limited is quite smart.
LocationBot is busy running a company “for a friend”
Hi, I’m posting on behalf of my boyfriend (UK).
He is a British citizen and was made sole director and sole shareholder of a small consultancy company registered with Companies House. A friend convinced him to open it and then ran the company himself. My boyfriend had no operational control, did not deal with clients, and did not receive any money personally.
We have now discovered that the friend was allegedly running scams through the company. There are bad Google reviews, and some people claim they have reported the company. The company is still active. My boyfriend’s name is on the business bank account, but again, no personal benefit.
He wants to protect himself legally but problem is he has no money and is currently in debt, so hiring a solicitor is very difficult.
What are the immediate steps he should take (order matters)?
Should he report this himself (e.g., Action Fraud), and when?
How risky is his position given he was director/shareholder in name only?
Any free or low-cost legal help recommendations?
We are panicking and really really worried. Any guidance would be really appreciated. Please be kind — we’re trying to handle this properly and quickly.
Thank you.
Cat fact: Cats don’t commit visa scams. But they may scam you for more treats.
Cats don't need visas. They simply go where they please and good luck to anybody who tries to stop them.
My cats needed visas to move from South Africa to Dubai and then from Dubai to the UK. I still have their cat passports.
The monasteries of Mount Athos in Greece do not allow human women or female domesticated animals... except cats. They allow female cats. Allegedly because of their mousing abilities, but I suspect the difficulty of stopping them was also a concern.
As this seems a good place, relevant comments from OP:
and
It was apparently about visas:
I love that “renting a proper office” is apparently evidence that a company is legit
In the comments she ends up telling an entirely diff story where it turns out her boyf was def a part of the company, not just in name only..
“It wasnt dodgy at first. They had rented out a proper office and had clients that they provided the services to. After some time when it wasnt going to well they moved out of office and worked from home. But my bf completely stepped away when he got into debt and was going to dissolve the company but the “friend” carried on with it on his own without my bf’s knowledge”
"It can't have been a fraud, they did the fraud in a building and they had people they defrauded."
Yes having an office makes them "legitimate businessmen," at least in the Fat Tony sense of the word.
Now I want to know how the boyfriend got into debt, given his good judgement in general.
When I read it I'm betting her justification that he "didn't benefit at all from it" was because his books are showing all the expenses from committing fraud but none of the profit. So she believes him that this venture "wasn't a benefit to him".
Scammed too close to the sun
But why did the he not resign when he stepped away??? I just dont get it
Because the friend needed to operate without his knowledge, you see. It all checks out.
This "girlfriend" is iterating through cover stories, looking for one that doesn't end with him in jail.
That might be the worst part. Scamming foreigners is one thing, but if they were actually submitting fake visa application, they're gonna get what I think UK law calls a royal boot up the ass.
Soo, not only has "the friend" been committing fraud via a company registered in the boyfriend's name, that fraud is immigration fraud?
🎶 On a scale of 1 - 10 my friend, you're fucked 🎶
There’s a second immigration fraud, in that the partner isn’t supposed to be working on a student visa. Right away the boyfriend had a problem since he abetted this. It’s fraud all the way down!
Am I the only one cynical enough to think that the OP is the actual guy pretending to be the girlfriend so they can claim ignorance for whatever imagined reason? OP changes stories multiple times to try and fit into the questions but it just keeps getting more and more convoluted.
She’s the sole director and sole shareholder of this Reddit account but he’s running it /s
No, with the inconsistencies around the stories, I was wondering the same, like perhaps he's testing out possible lines of defence to use for when the balloon goes up.
Was thinking this. OP Is the dodgy boyfriend. And I hope there isn't a real medical student girlfriend/boyfriend who's oblivious to all of this.
About the only way I can see the boyfriend not being involved is if he was so incapable that he needed a caretaker, at least part time and maybe full. But OP doesn't talk about being her boyfriend's caretaker or about how his past caretakers were negligent and how she's trying to unwind the results of their abuse.
So I assume either she's either part of the scam or she's now being scammed by him.
Auto mod really putting in work in that thread
"He didn't receive anything" he has a business bank account!
I can't tell if OOP is really kinda dumb or if she's covering for the boyfriend.
Probably both?
Gods that sounds like a nightmare. Sole Proprietorship is the the worst corporation type for any kind of protection of the corporate veil. LAUKOP’s boyfriend hasn’t just been left holding the bag, he standing under a sign saying “evil mastermind who orchestrated all of this!” This is Mr Bubbles “let me illuminate the precarious position you have found yourself in” territory. LAUKOP might also get some legal scrutiny for merely knowing the man.
Also, this is twice in as many days I’ve seen someone in the UK get legal/financial troubles from blindly trusting a friend. I wouldn’t loan a friend $5K blindly, I sure as fuck wouldn’t open a business under my name and my name alone for a friend.
Edit: seems one part of my post stirred a hornets’ nest of cross Atlantic bitterness. I have removed the offending part.
Exactly what I thought, though I'd imagine it's worse for them - there's almost certainly an ongoing investigation, I can't imagine how telling tales on reddit will reflect well on them.
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This person probably signed some documents to help out.
the girlfriend?
Being a “director in name only” doesn’t exist legally. If you’re listed as a director, you’re responsible, especially in a six-figure fraud. Courts look at what you allowed to happen, not at how involved you claim you were. Saying “I stepped away” usually makes it worse, not better.
Clearly the boyfriend is a liar and the OOP is a fool, whose medical career is about to collapse into chaos as the regulator weighs a living off the proceeds of crime conviction
But I am here for the comment that spells “aether” correctly.
You couldn’t pry that shit out of my cold, dead lips.
What’s next, does he drop you off at work? Driving your car?
Fuck that. You committed fraud? Good thing we weren’t married, that would be my response
Man the commenters are being such dicks to LAOP, she was not even being combative - everyone is just downvoting them because they don't like the answers she is giving, but it sounds like she is trying to explain the situation to the best of her ability. I think it makes sense that she heard secondhand from her bf that he got into shady dealings, she doesn't fully understand the depth of it, but wants to help.
The way that everyone is assuming the naivety is malicious is weird.