Forum about Lanzarote

....must not get sucked in................must do some work......must agree with LA about the meaningless article - it has no context whatsoever to make it either newsworthy or relevant......daren't register though, or my machine might explode lol.

C
x

Be strong celty!!!

Seem to have hooked a victim!!

I did say back in December that I'd look into the Law Society's recommendations for Spanish legal experts, however a quick look at the Law Society's website makes it clear that they although they list foreign based lawyers they cannot recommend any - and in fact their list of foreign lawyers is now closed to new listings.

Google comes up with a few English firms of solicitors who have a Spanish law dept - look at this firm for example which looks a lot more credible for someone UK based that Quill who don't even give a UK address on the UK section of their website. www.labrums.co.uk

Josie x

We arranged the formation of a Shelter two years ago with Quill and following all the information and complaints on various forums we saw a local Accountant and then a local Lawyer. They both said the legality of the Shelter provided to us was not effective in providing us with a way out of paying the excessive Inheritance Tax & Capital Gains Tax which Quill assured us would be available.
We questioned Quill about this and their answer was " Lanazarote Lawyers don't
understand these matters which are available under international tax laws"
However, after making many enquiries we found that there is no such thing as International Tax Laws unless it is written into thew Law of the Country concerned. - that is Spain & the UK.
Our Lawyer then found out that the registration fee of 2000Euros that we had paid Quill to register the change of ownership of the house to the Shelter had not been paid and the property was still in our own names. Also, we had paid a annual fee of 500 euros to Quill for them to do the annual Spanish tax return
due by June 07 for the year ending Dec 2006 and this also not been attended to.
Various phone calls and emails to Quill are unanswered and Lawyers tell us that they & other lawyers have several identical instances of this same predicament.
No doubt there are many other families that are in the same position but are not aware of it.!!!

What I was going to ask on Feb 18th was if we knew whether the guy got his 3000 euros back or not?
The second question was to ask Josie if she had made any progress on looking into the U.K. Law Society's recommendations, but she has now answered that.
I deleted my questions as I thought the reactions might end up as heated and useless as on the other forum.
There seemed to be a bit too much assuming and a good bit of jiggery-pokery to the point that nobody even believed who the posters were.(apart from the regulars)
I have used Quill for my will and despite all the discussions, I still don't know if it is all a maliciously inspired witch-hunt or an outing of a scam.
I know that some of the posters badly let down their standards of normal behaviour, but that doesn't necessarily prove that they were wrong. (or right)

To answer your question Smokie i’m ‘Quill Client’ from the ‘other forum’ though I have decided to change my name to a more appropriate one!!

So that everyone elso knows I am the one who paid Quill 6000 euros to set up one of their shelters, gave them 3000 euros for the capital of the company, which incidently for those who followed events on the ‘other forum’ I never got back despite Simon Harris’s promises on that forum. I also got stung for 11700 euros from the Spanish tax man in sales tax that I was told I would never have to pay. Just when I thought things could not get any worse I have now had to engage a UK accountant to sort out the tax issues on my UK LLP set up by Quill as the tax returns they told me they had submitted turned out to be non existant which seems similar to Joey's problem.

Now I’m wasting more money paying a Lawyer from Tenerife to sort this out as I am not prepared to let him get away with it.

I may not have bothered starting any legal action if he had repaid my 3000 Euros which he has effectively stolen, Estupendo Mike touched on this earlier. He told me in writing that he had taken out of my account, despite telling me previously he could not, and sent it to the Quill account in the UK for some strange reason. He has had this money for well over a year.

Simon Harris has only last week stooped to a new low. After my lawyer sent several registered letters to Quill and made several phone calls in which he never managed to get any sort of reply she finally received last week a letter from Quill. It made for unbelievable reading, they stated that they had never heard of me and had never had any dealings with me saying that I must of used a Quill ‘sister’ company in the UK. How low can this guy go? The letter was actually signed by Derek McCall and I am starting to think, though do not know for sure, that Simon Harris and Derek McCall are the same person – Anyone able to help me out here?

Does Simon think that I am that thick as not to keep records of all his communications and invoices, I know I was stupid enough to use his company in the first place but this just goes to prove that he takes everyone for idiots. The invoices, when you look at them closely, are mostly from his UK LLP though, luckily for me I do have some from his Spanish SL so his denial will not help him much. He also tried to give her the run around by listing, in one of his typical long winded letters, all of the possible Quill companies.

It is a shame for some of us that these forums where not discussing this company before myself and others got stung by Quill though hopefully people will now read these forums and not fall into the trap.

I will try to keep everyone updated as I am certain Simon can still stoop even lower.




Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/21/2008 09:56AM by Conned.

Thanks for the update.

Please do let us know how it all pans out.

Elle xx

I don't know if Simon Harris & McCall are the same people but he does have a UK
0800 number but I cannot find it at the moment.
The UK office of Simon Harris - Quill is in Denbigh, North Wales and run by
Ceri Thomas who I understand is Harris's daughter.
At Denbigh they do the UK tax returns and no doubt other things. The Costa Teguise office is supposed to do the Spanish tax returns but doesn't !.

we have also been stung by quills paid the set up fee paid 1000 euro for a so called bank account which is locked only quills can access it ,paid hundreds to them for tax returns etc and still almost 2 yrs on our shelter is not up and running I have sent numerous letters and emails to quills asking how we can 'dissolve' this so called shelter but none of them can be bothered to reply.we are coming over to Lanza in May and will be seeking advise from another solicitor to see if he can get anything sorted for us .

When all this started out on the other forum, my view was that the tax shelter idea was currently "workable", but that the loophole would be closed at some point. We therefore advised our clients and friends not to go down that route, thankfully.
What I've been reading recently, though, is far more sinister, and if these allegations of taking money for taxes and not paying them, not completing tax returns when contracted to do so, witholding people's money, denying they have ever dealt with them etc etc, turn out to be true, then it would appear that some serious fraud has been committed.
What we don't know is whether there are just a couple of isolated cases, or if there are hundreds of people across Lanza and Fuerte who have been affected in this way.
Can I suggest the people who have been (alledgedly) "stung" by this get together and form some kind of group to, firstly, track down as many others so affected and then to take advice as to how to "extricate" their properties from the shelters, and finally to seek some recompense for losses incurred.

Good idea Mike. Believe me the accusations that i have made are completely true and i have a lot of documentation to back it up including lawyers correspondence. Add to this the fact that i still do not have my 3000 euros back which Quill are holding onto illegaly and do not seem bothered at all to do anything about it then you are right to talk about some serious fraud being committed.

I am quite willing to help organise a meeting where anyone else has been 'stung' by Quill can come along and discuss the points Mike has made. I think it will be a good idea to contact Buzz magazine about this as they are now the principal source of Quill advertising with the hope that they will be present and they can then decide if they believe that they are serving the best interests of their readers. An invite should also be extended to Mr Harris himself to keep everything fair.

we would be up for this but unfortuately live in the uk.I have made a quick calculation what quills have had from us a stagering 8000 euro's plus and to date we have nothing for it ,mr Harris does not even acknowledge emails I have had one reply in the last year which read 'a reply is on it's way'I might add the reply never got to me I make a point of replying to this email on a daily basis saying 'still waiting'

It looks like you give Simon the same hassle as me Cazza. At one stage i sent emails and made phone calls on a daily basis, the only response i got was on the other forum stating that i was 'harassing' his poor staff who he had a difficult job in keeping - i wonder why?!!!!!

I live near Geneva myself though do come over on a regular basis, the next time will be 20th April for three weeks, if you are over then it would be great to meet up.

Yesterday i sent an email to the people at Buzz asking them to come along to any meeting we might hold, hopefully when they see what has happened to us they will stop his one remaining source of advertising.

Would it be legal to to hold a sit-in in his office. It may give a lot more publicity to our plight and might give a bit of impetus to the authorities which are meant to be currently looking into the dealings of the Quill Group.

Why not take out a full page advert in the gazette asking for disgruntled clients of the mentioned company to come forward to form a pressure group?

Jeez - I'd chuck in £50 towards that and I'm not even involved - just can't stand con men who prey on the vulnerable and people who don't understand the relevant legislation but trust them to do so.

[www.theyworkforyou.com]

Paragraph three is interesting.

Wow. If anybody had any doubts then they surely will not have now. I am pleased that my thoughts regarding Simon Harris have been confirmed though still unhappy with myself for being stung by an alleged 'serial fraudster' who has allegedly served a prison sentence.

I have just received a reply back from Buzz who said, 'We are of course extremely concerned that all that we print is legal.

However, we do not currently run any advertising, mag or radio for them at this time.'





Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 03/28/2008 12:53PM by Conned.

Yes but not for all the people they hold wills for.

I use the word "hold" in the losest possible terms.

One thing being called a crook by someone on an internet forum, completely different ball game being called a serial fraudster by an MP.

So who wants the pleasure of plastering this all over the gazette or should we all just do it?!

While I was messing around trying to come up with an suitable alias for us all to post it on the other site......someone else did it!

......I'd got as far as "La con est......."

Do quill still have those awful - all other accountants and lawyers are crooks so use us - adverts in the gazette?

Give that thread a day max before they shut it down?! Or will the harris family come out of the woodwork like last time to defend him?

No Gazette are not running any Quill ads now, Freedom 4 Sale have stopped carrying them, and it sounds like Buzz too.