Fraud Squad (UK): INVESTING in stocks and shares is risky enough these days without putting your money into companies that don’t even exist. But the first in this new ­documentary series shows how organised crime has muscled into the financial markets. In anonymous offices in Spain, known as boiler rooms, fraudsters posing as “brokers” cold call vulnerable people and using hard-sell, bully boy tactics, persuade them to part with their life savings in return for worthless share certificates. We hear from one woman who lost hundreds of thousands of pounds and another frail, 91-year-old tells how he was fleeced of £142,000 set aside for the care of his disabled wife. The fraud squad’s hunt for Costa Del Crime ringleader George Abrue has been compared to Jerry ­Bruckheimer’s Chase. This pursuit is less action-packed but just as rewarding.

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Crime, Documentary