I was Scammed and Lost over £2,000

The rise of the financial scam is growing into a monster. Lockdown has given people more time and more ways to apply the scam. I can certainly confirm the number of dodgy emails, phonecalls and text messages I get has grown hugely.

It has also been reported that people who have been scammed feel shame in talking about the said scam. I am here to share my story where I was scammed and lost £2,500. The more we talk and share these stories the greater the awareness and the less these scams should happen.

Taking my Business to the Next Stage

The year was 2018, Mrs Mummypenny has been going for five years and had reached a decent point of financial success. I had spent many years building up the business and was now able to draw enough from the business to not only pay the bills and maintain my lifestyle but also to pay off big chunks of debt.

I was always searching for new ways to monetise my content and that elusive solution that would make tens of thousands and send my turnover shooting up.

How I met the Scammer

I was introduced to an ‘online sales expert & coach’ by a friend. The said friend had also been sucked in and was at the early stages of working with the said person, without any results to prove success as yet. I made the first mistake of booking that first free introduction session to understand more about what she could offer.

She hooked me in totally, there was the sob story of her difficult life that she was able to dramatically flip into huge success. She was clever to cherry pick similarities between our lives, making me like her, picking confirmation bias in the book.

Apparently she could turn already existing content into a product that could be highly monetised and sold to my audience and a huge audience that should supply. And she WOULD NOT STOP working with me until I had generated 10k in sales. Big red flag here.

I was Sucked in by the Promises

I was totally sucked in, as was another friend who had the same introduction call on the same day. Yet another tactic from the scammer to ensure that we both encouraged each other to sign up!

My decision was made and I committed to paying £2,500, a huge amount of money over to the scammer. But it was fine, right? She was going to do everything in her power to get me to £10k turnover so I was £7,500 in profit. Those were EXACTLY my thoughts. Scammers are so clever with the psychology and use of language to suck you in.

My Product that would make me a fortune!

My product was to be a course to teach other other bloggers how to monetise their blogs and make serious money. I already had the content as I had written a book the previous year called Blogging Your Way to Riches. First red flag should have raised there, why release a course when people could already consume the content by buying a book for £15!

The course was to last eight weeks with content released each week, along with a private Facebook group and live webinars every week to talk through the content and answer any questions from the community of people who signed up to the course.

The scammer set up the course, as in a very simple process of creating some password protection pages on my website to release the content each week. Content that I had already written.

The price of the course was set at beta price of, wait for it, 50% off, £250. I want to hang my head in shame. She had convinced me that my content was worth this huge amount of money and that I could sell it my community easily. I have always been so against expensive online courses and I ignored my gut feeling and agreed to do it.

SO Much work to Generate very few sales

I then had to put in SOOOO much work to generate leads and sales. I did everything I could, freebie webinars, private DMs, emails, Facebook Lives, YouTube promotion, Facebook ads. (Basically annoying the f@@@ out of many people)

The balance of work here was out. I was doing all of the work to generate sales, yet I had paid her £2,500.

The Beta Course Launched

I managed to sell 2 courses, after I estimate around 20 hours worth of promotional work. The beta course happened with a small group of bloggers, including a few freebie members, and I hated every minute of it.

The most uncomfortable thing about it was that my gut was always telling me it was wrong. I was talking advantage of people by charging them a large amount of money to access my information. But she convinced me to ignore my gut and that it was totally acceptable to charge £250 to access my commercial information (or £500 full price!).

And then she disappeared

The beta course ended and I had made around £350 in sales (after fees and a subsequent part refund). I was still at a loss of £2,150. And then she disappeared. Literally no messages were replied to, no phone call answered, no emails. She disappeared off the face of the earth. So much for the 10k ‘guarantee’.

A big lesson learnt

I learnt a huge lesson here. Listen to the sales patter and really think about it. Is the sales person playing to your insecurities, to your weaknesses? Are they trying their hardest to make you like them.

Do they have proven results with people you know and who you can talk to? Google them, are there any negative reviews/stories about them online. (I didn’t check for either of these).

If they promise the world, and it feels too good to be true, it probably is. And if they are making significant claims, get it written into a contract with refund dates if agreed targets are not met.

And most importantly listen to your gut, if that is telling you NO, then don’t do it! And the name of the scammer, Kerrie Rycroft. DO NOT GO NEAR HER.

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Lynn Beattie

Aka Mrs MummyPenny

Personal Finance Expert

I write about personal finance made simple, lifestyle choices that will save you time and money, as well as products and services that offer great value.

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21 Responses

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  4. Hi. Thank you for all this information. Is this woman operating in the Lincolnshire/Peterborough area please? Dark hair, single mum with kids and horses?

    1. Yes, I was also scammed. Same process. She had blonde hair then. She now goes by the name of KERRIE RICHARDS. I’ve just found her again pedalling the same crap.

      Be AWARE.

  5. Kerrie Rycroft scammed me about £3000 also. Used my companies business development service and never paid her bills. She really is a “scumbag” and I would never usually use that term. She had spent her whole working life not paying bills, taking money and providing inferior services or no service at all. She isn’t a qualified coach, however she is a professional con artist if you Google her you will see how many hard working people she has scammed.for well over a decade. Don’t employ her, her online courses are terrible and don’t work, don’t provide her with any services ( she never pays her bills ) . If you are unlucky enough to come across her , don’t believe a word she says and get as far away as quick as you can before she scams you!

  6. I was wondering is she was still scamming people. I know her from her knitting days when she had a yarn business and multiple magazines. Lots of unhappy people left behind when everything went bellyup.

  7. She scammed me also! Lost about £2000 her courses are useless!So up setI got suckered in and she took all my savings. She couldn’t care less – disappeared once she got my money! Please don’t make the same mistake. She is now Kerrie Richard’s – the fact she has changed her name say it all. DO NOT GiVE HER YOUR MONEY!

  8. Gosh! So i’m not the only one. Kerrie promised the earth ( or £5000 a month extra income in 3 months). Of course once she had received her money in full it unravelled quickly. She would not come back to e-mails / calls. I cannot believe I got scammed, I thought I was smarter then that. She really is an awful human being – only thing worse are her useless courses. Why didn’t i ask myself this question ? If they are so good, why is she selling them and not doing them herself? Well the answer is clear, if it sounds to good to be true……..

  9. Ashamed to say I also lost thousands to the awful awful women. Now I look back on it, it felt wrong at the time wish I listened to my gut. Kerrie Rycroft ( or Kerrie Richards now) is a Fraudster – also the courses and advice was beyond amautaur and will never make any money. She has no social media / Tik-Tok knowledge – ashamed I fell for it – KERRIE RYCOFT or KERRIE RICHARDS – don’t get fooled by her deceitful lies and sham of online courses.

  10. I can’t believe she’s still getting away with this – I was aware of her vack in the mid noughties with her appalling knitting/crafting scams.

  11. She is now Kerrie Richards I see – just looked and selling the same rubbish under a different name. I lost thousands to her . Lots of empty promises then disappeared once she had the money. She talked about all these amazing results she has – but could show anything to prove this – was a huge red flag. I was so stupide. A few years on and I’m still so up set by losing so much money.

  12. I’m another victim! I knew she was dreadful but reading all these comments she is way worse the I could have imagined. What a totally untrustworthy and deceitful person she is. £1500 she took from me same story as above.

  13. I was scammed by this women to – same as above – beware of Kerrie Rycroft – Now Kerrie Richards – just checked and still selling the same useless dream of online course, that are a load of rubbish – she is one only one who makes money – your money !!!

  14. I read this and its almost exactly the same that has happen to me – But she is Kerrie Richards. Same process. cannot believe she has got away doing the same to so many people. SCUM !

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