Keith Fryer, a sole trader trading as Capital Funding, has given undertakings to the High Court that he will not make misleading representations to home sellers.
He has undertaken not to mislead home sellers that he is making an unconditional offer to buy their homes when in fact his offer is conditional on his being able to find a third party to purchase the property from him (see below for a full list of undertakings).

Sellers have been asked to provide Mr Fryer with a ‘processing fee’ (normally about £392) in advance which he promised would be returned upon completion of the purchase. However, whenever he failed to identify a third party purchaser, completion would not take place and the processing fee would not be returned to the seller even though he had failed to provide the service he promised.

On 5 January 2006, the OFT announced that it had issued a claim in the High Court for an injunction against Mr Fryer under the Enterprise Act 2002 and the Control of Misleading Advertisements Regulations 1988, because it believed that he had been misleading consumers about his ability to purchase their properties.

If a person who gives an undertaking to the court subsequently breaches any of the terms in it, he may be held in contempt of court and may be imprisoned, fined or have his assets seized.

Mr Fryer operated two similar businesses, Unity Investments Ltd and Equity Options Ltd, both of which were wound up by the DTI on 7 April 2004 and 17 November 2004 respectively following investigations carried out by the DTI’s Companies Investigation Branch under section 447 of the Companies Act 1985.

Christine Wade, OFT Director of Consumer Regulation Enforcement said:
‘Consumers should be able to rely on any business offering to buy their properties to give accurate information about refunding fees and not to mislead them about having interested buyers available. We have and will use our powers under the Enterprise Act to protect consumers.’