A High Court Order to wind up a magazine publisher that has made millions after making false claims to advertisers has been obtained by the Insolvency Service.
Liverpoool-based Abingdon House published a magazine called SafeGuard which has been published quarterly since 2006. It says that it “aims to raise public awareness in local communities touch on broad contemporary issues such as crime reduction, drink driving, bullying and health issues”.
Safeguard, a magazine published by Abingdon House, has been a quarterly publication since 2006 and says 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 ironically it seems that its own telesales staff have been sailing close to the wind legally.
The insolvency service has discovered that telesales operatives at the Liverpool based organisation had been misleading advertisers by claiming they were serving police officers and that a percentage of the advertising costs would be donated to the emergency services.
It is also found that the title was “distributed in such a way as to be of little or no commercial value to the advertisers” and “used aggressive, misleading and inappropriate debt collection methods to persuade businesses to pay up”.
The company’s turnover during the last three years of trading was said to be £4m with dividends of £600,000 paid to shareholders.
