Four more Leamington Spa-based recruitment companies have been ordered into liquidation in the UK’s High Court on grounds of public interest.
This makes a total of 10 companies involved in recruitment advertising from the same town that have been shut down for the same reason since the first case in October, as reported by recruiter.co.uk.
Yesterday evening (18 May), the Insolvency Service announced that Financial Times Accounts, Online Recruiter, First Star Recruitment and Working Solutions Websites Direct were liquidated following an investigation by the service.
Online Recruiter operated a website on which it placed advertisements from companies, typically in the education or healthcare field. These adverts were replicated versions of those placed by these companies in legitimate recruitment publications.
The company then sent a copy of this advert to the company in question and asked them to return an order form urgently and then an invoice requesting payment to Financial Times Accounts – a company unrelated to the Financial Times newspaper.
These four companies were connected as part of the scam.
This follows the shutting down in recent months of six other recruitment firms, or companies involved in a similar web recruitment-based firms of the last few months, all based in Leamington Spa.
The others are: Alderleys, Internet Recruitment, Online Staffing, Recruitment Web Solutions, Rightstepinternetrecruitment and Working Solutions Direct.
Ade Daramy of the Insolvency Service tells Recruiter that no link between the four companies shut down yesterday and those previously closed has been thus far found.
He says: “They’re not connected companies, there’s no link other than Leamington Spa as far as we can see at the moment.” Although he added that investigations are continuing.
