Back to newsletter listGreetings,
I am John Williams, staff of Coutts & Co Private Bank London UK . I am contacting you concerning a deceased customer and an investment he placed under our banks management three years ago. I would respectfully request that you keep the contents of this mail confidential and respect the integrity of the information you come by as a result of this mail. I am contacting you independently of our investigation and no one is informed of this communication. I would like to intimate you with certain facts that I believe would be of interest to you. In the year 2004, the subject matter; came to our bank to engage in business discussions with our private banking division. He informed us that he had a financial portfolio of Twelve Million Five Hundred Thousand United States dollars, which he wished to have us turn over (invest) on his behalf.
I was the officer assigned to his case; I made numerous suggestions in line with my duties as the de-facto chief operations officer of the private banking sector then, especially given the volume of funds he wished to put into our bank. We met on numerous occasions prior to any investments being placed. I encouraged him to consider various growth funds with prime ratings. The favored route in my advice to customers is to start by assessing data on 6000 traditional stocks and bond managers and 2000 managers of alternative investments. Based on my advice, we spun the money around various opportunities and made attractive margins for our first months of operation, the accrued profit and interest stood at this point at over Two million United States Dollars, this margin was not the full potential of the fund but he desired low risk guaranteed returns on investments.
In mid 2005, he asked that the money be liquidated because he needed to make an urgent investment requiring cash payments in Helsinki- Finland . He directed that I liquidate the funds and deposit it in his account in Helsinki-Finland. I informed him that my Bank would have to make special arrangements to have this done and in order not to circumvent due process, the bank would have to make a 9.5 % deduction from the funds to Coutts for banking and statutory charges. He accepted my proposal that the money should be transferred to his nominated banking account and only complained about the charges and promised to visit the bank for the signing of all documents towards the transfer of the funds to his account on his way back from Norway later that week. This was the last communication we had, this transpired around 25th of November 2006.
In June last year 2007, I got a call from my bank here about the inactivity of that particular portfolio. This was an astounding position as far as I was concerned, given the fact that I managed the account with private banking sector I was the only one who knew about the transfer of the funds to his account in Helsinki-Finland, and I could not understand why the deceased had not come forward to sign the necessary documents for the transfer to be effected. I made futile efforts to locate the deceased. I immediately passed the task of locating him to the internal investigations department of Coutts & Co Private Bank. Four days later, information started to trickle in, apparently our client was dead. A person who suited his description was declared dead of a heart attack in Canne, in Southern part of France . We were soon enough to identify the body and cause of death was confirmed.
The bank immediately launched an investigation into possible surviving next of kin to alert about the situation and also to come forward to claim his estate. If you are familiar with private banking affairs, those who patronize our services usually prefer anonymity, but also some levels of detachment from conventional processes. In his bio-data form, he listed no next of kin. In the field of private banking, opening an account with us means no one will know of its existence, accounts are rarely held under a name; depositors use numbers and codes to make the accounts anonymous. This bank also gives the choice to depositors of having their mail sent to them or held at the bank itself, ensuring that there are no traces of the account and as I said, rarely do they nominate next of kin.
My present official capacity as the Head of Finance dictates that I am the only party to supervise the investigation and the only party to receive the results of the investigation. What this means, is that our dear late fellow died with no known or identifiable family member. This leaves me as the only person with the full picture of what the prevailing situation is in relation to the deposit and the late beneficiary of the deposit. According to practice, the bank will by the end of this financial year broadcast a request for statements of claim to the appropriate authority, failing to receive viable claims they will most probably revert the deposit back to the bank. This will result in the money entering the Coutts & Co Private Bank accounting system and the portfolio will be out of my hands and out of the private banking division.
This will not happen if I have my way. What I wish to relate to you will smack of unethical practice but I want you to understand something. It is only an outsider to the banking world who finds the internal politics of the banking world aberrational. The world of private banking especially is fraught with huge rewards for those that occupy certain offices and oversee certain portfolios. You should have begun by now to put together the general direction of what I propose. There is Twelve Million five hundred thousand dollars lying low with my bank; I alone have the transfer documents prepared already before his death. This is the situation. This bank has spent great amounts of money trying to track this man’s family; they have investigated for months and have found no family. The investigation has come to an end.
My proposal: I now seek your permission to present you as a next of kin to the deceased, as all documentations will be carefully worked to make you the beneficiary to the funds $12.5m (Twelve Million Five Hundred Thousand United States Dollars.) ; I am prepared to place you in a position to the bank to release the funds to you as the closest surviving relation. I am prepared to share the money with you. That is: I will simply nominate you as the next of kin and have them release the funds to your nominated banking account. We share the proceeds 60/40.I would have gone ahead to ask that the funds be released to me, but that would have drawn a straight line to me and my involvement in claiming the funds. I assure you that I could have the funds released to you within a few days.
I will simply inform Coutts & Co Private Bank of the final closing of the file relating to the deceased. I will then officially communicate with the Bank instruct them to release the deposit to you. The alternative would be for us to have my bank direct the funds to another bank with you as account holder. This way there will be no need for you to think of receiving the money from my bank. We can fine-tune this based on our interactions am aware of the consequences of this proposal.. I ask that if you find no interest in this project that you should discard this mail. I ask that you do not be vindictive and destructive. If my offer is of no appeal to you, delete this message and forget I ever contacted you.
Do not destroy my career because you do not approve of my proposal. You may not know this but people like me who have made tidy sums out of comparable situations run the whole private banking sector. I am not a criminal and what I do, I do not find against good conscience, this may be hard for you to understand, but the dynamics of my industry dictates that I make this move. Such opportunities only come ones' way once in a lifetime. I cannot let this chance pass me by, for once I find myself in total control of my destiny.
I wish to inform you that should you contact me via official channels; I will deny knowing you and about this project. I repeat, I do not want you contacting me through my official phone lines nor do I want you contacting me through my official email account. Contact me only through the numbers I will provide for you and also through this email address. I do not want any direct link between you and myself. My official lines are not secured lines as they are periodically monitored to assess our level of customer care in line with our Total Quality Management Policy. Please observe this instruction religiously.
Send your response to my private email:johnwilliamss_221@hotmail.com
I await your response.
John Williams.
