News First FCA action against unlicensed lender The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has, for the first time, taken criminal action in a case related to its consumer credit powers. The FCA took over responsibility for the regulation of all firms and individuals conducting consumer credit business from the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) on 1 April 2014. Ithas since carried out an investigation into Dharam Prakash Gopee and the companies he controls,including Reddy Corporation, Speedy Bridging Finance and Barons Finance. It is alleged that Mr Gopee operated as an unlicensed consumer credit lender, and is believed to have lent in excess of 1m over the past four years, but did not have a consumer credit licence from the OFT, orequivalent authorisation by the FCA. He is accused of conducting regulated activity without authorisation over a number of years by entering into, and administrating, regulated credit agreements as a lender. Mr Gopee acted as a lender of last resort and is alleged to have engaged with consumers who were often in difficult circumstances, regularly registering charges over the homes of borrowers to enable him to take possession of a property if the borrower failed to pay thedebt. He appeared at Westminster Magistrates Court on 17 January 2017, charged with offences under the Consumer Credit Act 1974 and the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000. The case was sent to Southwark Crown Court for trial, and a plea and trial preparation hearing is provisionally listed to be heard on 14February 2017. Trader given suspended prison sentence for selling dangerous vehicle regulation offences and one product-safety regulation offence at an earlier hearing. In February 2015, he sold a Nissan Navara through Auto Trader that was found to have major structural defects and severe corrosion. Khan who traded as UK Motors from his home had described the vehicle as being in excellent condition throughout when he sold it for 5,050. Staffordshire Trading Standards, which brought the prosecution, secured a report that stated the vehicle was dangerous and unroadworthy. Khan was also ordered by the court to pay 3,500 costs and an 80 victim surcharge. PETErPHOTO123 / SHuTTErSTOCk A car trader from Burton who sold a dangerously defective vehicle has been given a five-month prison sentence, suspended for 12 months, fined 150 and ordered to pay 2,000 compensation to the purchaser. Umar Khan, 40, of Burton, was sentenced at Stafford Crown Court after pleading guilty to two trading- Nuisance calls reach 31 million in one week More than 31 million nuisance calls were recorded in a single week before Christmas, according to figures released by BT. The telecoms company, which supplies 40 per cent of the UKs landlines, has published the figures for 13-19 December 2016 to illustrate the top five worst nuisance callers by category. More than 12million of those were about accident claims. BT has declared war on the companies that regularly pester its customers by launching a new, free service that will identify nuisance callers and divert them to a junk voicemail box. Called BT Call Protect, the service analyses large amounts of live data to identify rogue numbers typically those that make enormous amounts of calls and add them to a blacklist. The system will continue to block such callers even if they change their number a common tactic used by spammers. Consumers can also compile their own personal blacklist by dialling 1572 after receiving the call, or by going online. The latest research carried out for BT shows that, on average, people receive four nuisance calls a week and that 60 per cent find nuisance calls stressful. More than a quarter of people are concerned about their parents or grandparents getting such calls in case they areconned. Minister of state for digital and culture Matt Hancock said: Nuisance callers are a terrible blight on society, and government and industry are working together to crack down on them. Weve forced companies to display their numbers when they call you, made it easier to prosecute those involved in making the calls, and increased the maximum fines up to 500,000. We welcome BTs new service, which offers customers an additionallevel of protection, helping them to fight back against this ongoing harassment. Plastic rice in the spotlight as Derby tackles food problems Sampling for plastic rice is one project that Derby Trading Standards has undertaken with the Food Standards Agency in a bid to tackle food problems that could be damaging to consumers. The rice is formed by mixing potatoes and sweet potatoes into the shape of rice grains, and then adding industrial synthetic resins. It does not behave like normal rice and remains very hard even after it has been cooked so could be a choking hazard, especially for young children. Tests on fake rice have also confirmed that the synthetic resins and plastics used in making the product are harmful. Of the eight samples tested by Derby Trading Standards, none contained plastic rice. A spokesperson for the FSA said: Plastic rice was a potential emerging risk that was on the radar early last year, so we included it as one of the priorities for 2016/17 sampling. However, we are not aware of any plastic rice incidences on the UK market.