City of London police have recently successfully uncovered sophisticated boiler room investment frauds being operated from prestigious addresses in the city at Tower 42 and the Ledenhall Building or 'Cheesegrater', where the fraudsters had taken serviced office space which they were not in fact occupying but simply using as a postal address to seek to convince investors that their business was legitimate.

With the evolution of land banking fraud and more sophisticated investment scams, boiler rooms have started to relocate from overseas to smart London addresses, which bring with them an air of authenticity and legitimacy.

In an attempt to clamp down on these types of activity the police have successfully prosecuted the two serviced office companies involved, Servcorp UK and Regus Management UK Ltd, for failures to provide client records for inspection and for falsely reassuring a victim that the company in question was physically present on site when the office was in fact empty.

It would seem that serviced office providers and commercial landlords are coming under increasing pressure to carry out checks to ensure that businesses taking short term lets of office space are legitimate and to be increasingly vigilant as to the activities being conducted from their premises so as to ensure that these types of boiler room operations do not develop, as they themselves run the risk of prosecution.