Being scammed out of a big chunk of your pension once is bad enough. But TWICE is awful. Double pension scam victim Jessica M.J. talks about her experience and gives other victims advice about how to cope with the stress that results from being a pension scam victim.
Jessica was scammed by Continental Wealth Management – one of Pension Life’s top-ten worst scammers – into the Evergreen QROPS scheme. Continental Wealth Management was acting as the cold callers and lead generators to Stephen Ward’s firm Premier Pension Solutions. Evergreen was a New Zealand pension scheme which was being used for pension liberation fraud using Ward’s pension loan company, Marazion. Jessica did not get (and was not offered) a loan.
Jessica was brave and generous enough to share her own story – which, sadly, was so typical of hundreds of other cases. However, she was one of the few who were actually scammed twice by Continental Wealth Management. She spoke of her own feelings: “I was very angry. I felt betrayed, cheated.”
After losing a third of her pension, Jessica was then moved by Continental Wealth Management to a Malta QROPS and put into an Old Mutual International insurance bond (which she didn’t need and couldn’t afford – and only served to earn the scammers a hefty commission). By investing what was left of the fund in high-risk, professional-investor-only structured notes, half of what was left of Jessica’s pension was then destroyed. So she ended up losing two thirds of her hard-earned retirement savings.
Continental Wealth Management collapsed at the end of September 2017, leaving hundreds of victims with their pension funds in ruins and facing poverty in retirement. Old Mutual International, Generali and SEB – the life offices who allowed this devastation to happen and stood idly by while the structured notes destroyed the victims’ funds – have done nothing to compensate the victims for their losses.
Jessica has advised the public:
“There’s a lot of scammers out there – check ’em out!”
Sadly, if Jessica had known the questions to ask, the warning signs were there from the start. Continental Wealth Management was not licensed for investment advice. Few of the so-called advisers had any qualifications relevant to financial advice. The investments were professional-investor-only structured notes provided by RBC, Commerzbank, Nomura and Leonteq – among others. Continental Wealth Management used life bonds provided by Old Mutual International, Generali and SEB. These bonds served absolutely no purpose except to pay the scammers huge commissions. Dealing instructions had forged client signatures and the advisers lied about the losses when they were first reported claiming they were “only paper losses, and would recover”.
Quilter – Old Mutual International – new name to try to hide past crimes
QUILTER – A NEW HOBBY FOR OMI? OMI – Old Mutual International – needs to compensate thousands of victims of financial crime which they facilitated. I can’t make up my mind whether they are adopting the brand “Quilter” to attempt to shake off their sordid and toxic past, or whether they are actually taking up quilting.
If OMI really is going to become a quilter, it needs to make a quilt depicting all the criminals whose crimes it has facilitated for so many years. And all the victims who have lost part of or all of their life savings.
What OMI really needs to do is to get firmly behind the prosecution of the criminals – from whom they profited for many years. OMI must contribute to the cost of denouncing these criminals and ensuring they are given maximum prison sentences.
Also, OMI – Old Mutual – must stop allowing toxic, professional-investor-0nly structured notes in their bonds. Typically, these were provided by Commerzbank, Nomura, Leonteq and RBC. If Old Mutual International wants to gamble away its own money on these crap products, then be my guest. But don’t expose retail pension savers to these sordid, high-risk instruments – used by the scammers as mere tiles in a game of Scrabble.
Al Rush championing the British Steelworkers who have been scammed
Al Rush has suggested the wording which victims can use to report those who scammed – or attempted to scam – them. And all of what Al and his colleagues have done has been done at their own expense and out of a sense of decency.
Hard to tell the difference between OMI and Quilter and Jabba The Hut
This is in stark and stinky contrast to OMI – Old Mutual International. Since 2011, OMI has sat and watched – like a cross between Jabba The Hut and a Black Widow Spider – while thousands of victims have seen their life savings dwindle away to very little or even nothing. And all the while, taking extortionate fees and paying commissions to the very scammers who ruined the victims in the first place.
So does OMI really think that adopting the name “Quilter” will make future victims fail to make the connection – that this is the same firm that took business from dozens of unregulated scammers such as Continental Wealth Management, Abbey Financial Solutions, Holborn Assets, Guardian Wealth Management, and other “chiringuitos”?
Perhaps the worst crime committed by OMI is not that they took business from unlicensed scammers; not that they allowed 100% of victims’ pension funds to be invested in professional-investor-only, high-risk structured notes; not that they sat there idly and negligently while the clients’ pensions and investments shrank inexorably……
Old Mutual International – the rubbish end of financial services
the worst of OMI’s crimes has been that when there are only a few crumbs left of a life-time’s retirement savings, they will still charge crippling early-exit penalties. OMI, or Skandia, or Quilter or Jabba The Hut or whatever the hell this toxic, evil shower call themselves, have no place in financial services. They have facilitated and profited from financial crime for years and benefited from the misery and ruin of thousands of victims.
In an attempt to emulate Al Rush’s suggested police report for British Steel victims at the hands of the various scammers who targeted, stalked and scammed them, here is my suggested report for OMI victims to make to the police and the regulators. Naturally, this will work equally well for victims of Generali, SEB, RL360, Friends Provident, Hansard, Investors Trust etc.
OMI must be sanctioned for facilitating financial crime
‘I was advised to transfer out of my personal/occupational (delete as appropriate) pension scheme and was lied to when I asked about how much money would be taken from me. I think, over time especially, I will lose/have already lost many tens of thousands of pounds (probably, hundreds of thousands of pounds) in fees which were hidden from me.
This will bleed my pot dry, leave me exposed to poverty in old age and create a burden on the local council.
I was specifically told there would be no penalties or lock-in periods.
Can you help me please, I would like to make a formal statement and help you bring charges against those who did this, and those who helped them’.
Continental Wealth Management (CWM) was a financial advisory firm based on the Costa Blanca in Spain. Headed up by Darren Kirby, there were – until earlier in 2017 – 35 people working at the firm. The firm claimed to have £50 million worth of assets under management and around 500 clients. The firm closed down on 29.9.2017.
It is feared that up to 40% of CWM’s clients may have been affected by this situation.
BACKGROUND TO CWM
CWM “advisers” acted as sharks
In mid-2011, Stephen Ward’s Premier Pension Solutions (PPS) lost the lucrative Ark pension liberation scam when the Pensions Regulator placed the scheme in the hands of Dalriada Trustees. Ward had advised 160 victims to transfer £10m worth of secure pensions into this scheme on the promise of having 50% of their pensions paid to them in cash. He also assured them these payments would not be repayable or taxable and that the pensions would be invested in “high-end London residential properties”.
In the event, neither of these assurances turned out to be true. Dalriada is now making claims to recover the 50% liberations and HMRC has issued tax demands at 55% of the cash received (and the tax will still be payable even if the liberations are repaid). The High Court called the Ark scheme a “fraud on the power of investment”.
Having ruined 160 lives, and made up to £1 million profit out of the Ark victims, Ward immediately turned his attention to his next scam: Evergreen New Zealand QROPS and his Marazion “loans”. Having seen how easily victims could be duped into transferring their safe pensions with the promise of 50% liberation, Ward appointed CWM as “introducers” to the scam.
Here is an actual account by one of the Evergreen/PPS/CWM victims of what happened to her:
Mrs. A: “I was first cold called by CWM in 2011. I first met Phil Kelman of CWM in January 2012. I was told only positive things about transferring my pensions and to be able to take 100% of my pension funds.
This, however, changed after the first meeting and I was then told that due to the government closing loopholes I would only be able to get 50% of my pension fund and that the other 50% would be in the Evergreen QROPS earning enough interest over the 5 years to cover the 50% that I could withdraw (before the age of 55) – a win win situation!
There was no mention of the 50% being given as a loan until much further down the line. This was supposed to have taken 6 weeks at the most, but it actually took nearly 10 months. I was told that the “loan application” was a paper exercise just to cover things – I obviously have no proof of these conversations! Due to the fact that in the beginning it was not a “loan” there was no talk of a 55% tax charge, also as it was QROPS I was told it wouldn’t have incurred a tax bill.
I was not given any opportunity to say what the consequences of losing my pension or gaining an extortionate tax bill would be – either in the short or long term. If I had known of the huge risk of losing everything then obviously I would not have gone ahead. I did not state that I was willing to risk everything to get the “loan”.
I was told that Evergreen was a safe place for my pension to be as Evergreen was “approved”. I was given a graph to show how my pension would not only make the 50% back up but make more on top of it.”
Marco Floreale – former CWM “adviser” – now MD of Carrick Wealth
Mrs. A’s case was handled by CWM’s Marco Floreale (now Managing Director of Carrick Wealth) who claimed to be the managing director of CWM. Her secure, final salary, £100k Royal Mail pension was transferred to Evergreen and she was forced to sign a five-year “lock in” before receiving her “loan”. The loan agreement issued by Stephen Ward included annual interest at 8.5% compound which would mean that her £50k loan would have increased to £75k at the end of the five-year term. She was also charged more than £10k in fees.
There are now around 300 victims trapped in Evergreen as they are not allowed to transfer out. Ever. Between them they have lost £10m worth of pensions. The CWM personnel involved in this scam claimed that PPS was their “sister” company and have offered no help or compensation for the victims’ losses and terrible distress. One victim died of cancer in February 2017 and her husband is convinced that the stress of the Evergreen situation brought on the disease.
Phil Kelman, Jon Meek, Robert Pearl, Gemma Broad and Anthony Downs were among the CWM personnel who assured the victims that the transfers were in their interests as well as safe and prudent. It was, of course, later discovered that the Evergreen fund was invested in illiquid, high-risk, toxic funds – including personal, unsecured loans. Evergreen was removed from the QROPS list in November 2012 and the victims have now been told they can never transfer out.
It is not known how many other Stephen Ward/Premier Pension Solutions scams CWM was involved in, but when Evergreen got shut down CWM started acting as “advisers” to British expats in Spain and France. They were still working with Stephen Ward of PPS who provided the transfer advice. It is now thought they advised more than 500 people and that around 40% of these have suffered crippling losses to their investments.
I do not know whether CWM ever disclosed their previous involvement with Stephen Ward’s scams to the clients – although it is doubtful that any people would have felt comfortable using CWM had they known they had been responsible for the 300 Evergreen victims. Certainly, CWM did not disclose their past activities to either Trafalgar International or Momentum Pensions – had they done so they would never have been given terms of business by either firm.
From 2013 onwards, CWM invested hundreds of low to medium risk clients’ investments in high-risk, illiquid assets. CWM completely ignored the suitability issue and paid no heed to the clients’ preference for safe, low-risk investments. Clients’ signatures were repeatedly copied and once the losses started to appear, CWM assured them that there was nothing to worry about and they were “only paper losses”.
When asked why so many clients were put into professional-investor-only investments, CWM replied that the investors themselves were not the clients; but the insurance companies were the clients. When I showed CWM evidence of forged signatures on dealing instructions several months ago, there was no response then and no further communication from them subsequently.
The most important thing now is the restitution of the victims’ funds. OMI, Trafalgar and Momentum Pensions, have come to the table to try to find a solution and restore of the victims’ pensions and investments. If we can achieve an equitable settlement, this will be a first in European financial services. However, the parties who have not come to the table are life offices Generali and SEB, as well as other pension trustees including Concept, Sovereign, Pantheon, Elmo and STM. It is no surprise that STM have not come to the table, because they pulled up the drawbridge in the Trafalgar Multi Asset Fund scam, run by XXXX XXXX – now under investigation by the Serious Fraud Office.
I would like to thank all the victims for their patience so far. But it has now finally run out – unsurprisingly. The mood has darkened and victims want action. A valuable information and commentary resource is the Repdigger forum. One interesting post recently reminded contributors that it was Stephen Ward of Premier Pension Solutions who provided the initial transfer advice. Nothing changes.
After losing a third of her pension, Jessica was then moved by Continental Wealth Management to a Malta QROPS and put into an Old Mutual International insurance bond (which she didn’t need and couldn’t afford – and only served to earn the scammers a hefty commission). By investing what was left of the fund in high-risk, professional-investor-only structured notes, half of what was left of Jessica’s pension was then destroyed. So she ended up losing two thirds of her hard-earned retirement savings.
Mrs. A: “I was first cold called by CWM in 2011. I first met Phil Kelman of CWM in January 2012. I was told only positive things about transferring my pensions and to be able to take 100% of my pension funds.