Art "funds", fractional ownership and curated portfolios sold on inflated valuations or false promises of liquidity and resale. When it came time to sell, the market — or the value — simply was not there.
You were told the art could be sold easily for a profit, or valuations now look far higher than the work could fetch.
Cask ownership and maturation schemes promising strong, "low-risk" appreciation. Many investors later found the casks were unverifiable, overpriced, loaded with hidden storage and insurance fees, or impossible to sell on.
You cannot independently verify your cask, fees keep mounting, or the company has stopped responding.
Sustainable-agriculture, vertical-farming and ethical-forestry projects marketed on attractive "green" returns. In many cases the projects never reached production, or the promised yields never materialised.
The project stalled, updates dried up, or the returns you were shown never arrived.
Carbon-offset certificates and green-energy schemes sold to private investors as "the next big thing". The FCA does not regulate carbon-credit sales, and many investors found their credits effectively impossible to trade.
You were cold-called or pitched at a seminar, and now cannot sell or trade your credits.
Final-salary, workplace or personal pensions transferred into high-risk Self-Invested Personal Pensions (SIPPs) and unsuitable, often unregulated, underlying investments — frequently after a "free pension review" or cold call.
You were advised to transfer a secure pension into a SIPP holding risky or unregulated assets and have since lost value.
Crypto investment fraud, cloned or fake exchanges, fake trading apps, "pig-butchering" and blockchain schemes promoted on misleading advice. Claims are often pursued against banks that allowed the payments, alongside asset tracing.
A "broker" or online contact persuaded you to deposit funds and the platform later blocked withdrawals or vanished.
Losses on contracts-for-difference, forex, binary options and "boiler-room" trading platforms run on manipulated terms, high-pressure sales and unsuitable advice — often by firms that were never properly authorised.
You were pressured to keep depositing, shown impressive "gains" you could not withdraw, or used an unregulated platform.
Land plots, storage pods, car-park and overseas-property schemes sold on the promise of planning permission, development uplift or guaranteed rental returns that never came — leaving investors with assets they cannot sell.
You were promised planning gains or rental income that never arrived, and the asset is now hard to value or sell.