A BBC investigation has found that a Ventnor man was tricked into buying a football club, a high street retailer and a discredited celebrity by an unscrupulous estate agent.
He expected to use his life savings as a deposit on a two bed roomed former council house in Ventnor, but got more than he bargained for.
Colin Stale, 57, says that he was taken advantage of. ‘The estate agent was keen to sell me the house. And a mortgage. And home insurance. And a full survey. And rentcharge indemnity insurance. And a timeshare in Nigeria. And Chancel Repair Insurance. And a leasehold staircase in Grenfell Tower. He was very persuasive.
‘At the completion stage I signed all the papers like the estate agent said. It was only later that I discovered that I’d bought Oldham Athletic on hire-purchase, four branches of WH Smith, and a twelve percent interest in Gregg Wallace. It also turned out that I’d signed a non-disclosure agreement and that I’d admitted to kidnapping and eating Shergar.
‘That estate agent is a cheeky wotsit. He contacted me later and asked if I had any money left over to buy Waterloo Bridge and a collection of Jeffrey Epstein memorabilia. I was tempted, but I said no. The payments on Oldham Athletic are using up most of my pension already.’
The estate agent is not giving any interviews, but has provided a written statement saying that all his business dealings are regulated by the Imaginary Finance Council and the Financial Standards Board of Narnia, and that it was caveat emptor, it wasn’t him, and he wasn’t there. He did say that, if we were interested, he could offer a really nice one-time-only deal on a two-up, two-down slightly used nuclear power station in Cumbria – a fixer-upper, apparently.
Image: Maikiua - Pixabay
