999 Publication Wound Up: Bogus Advertising

A High Court Order to wind up a magazine publisher which has made millions after making fake statements to advertisers has been acquired by the Insolvency Service.

Safeguard, a magazine published by Abingdon House, has been a quarterly publication since 2006 and claims it “aims to raise public awareness in local communities touch on broad contemporary issues such as crime reduction, drink driving, bullying and health issues.”

But surprisingly it appears that its own telesales employees are sailing close to the wind legally.

The insolvency service has discovered that telesales personnel at the Liverpool located organisation had been misleading advertisers by alleging they were serving police officers and that a proportion of the advertising costs are going to be donated to the emergency services.

It also identified that the title was “sent out in such a way as to be of little or no financial value to the advertisers” and “used hostile, misleading and unacceptable debt collection methods to convince businesses to pay up”.

The businesses turnover over the past three years of trading was said to be £4m with dividends of £600,000 paid out to shareholders.