I don’t often disagree with highly-regarded pensions expert Henry Tapper. Too much respect and awe. But his recent blog: “The Balls of Old Bailey” (about Andrew Bailey) merits a polite argument. It has made me cross – not cross with Henry, per se. But cross with the failure of Britain’s culture, government, regulation and legal system to address justice justly (or at all).
Henry has questioned the point of revisiting the balls-up made by former FCA CEO Andrew Bailey and has suggested that “we need to move on”.
The point of examining Bailey’s sickening catalogue of balls-ups is that we must make sure it never happens again. Part of that mission is to follow the example of the criminal justice system: we don’t give convicted criminals a jolly good talking to – or even a good bollocking. We take away their liberty and put them in prison. This is called a “deterrent”.
What did Old Bailey do that was so bad? The answer is, indeed, a long list – starting with British Steel, Toby Whittaker’s Park First and Neil Woodford’s Fund, and moving on to London Capital & Finance and a long list of other mini-bond scams – including the Blackmore Bond. Bailey should have stopped that entire horrific catalogue of investment fraud if he’d been doing his job properly. He could – and should – have prevented hundreds of thousands of victims from losing their life savings and pensions in all of those investment scams.
The advantage to be had from putting the bollocks – and preferably the head – of Bailey on the block is to send out a warning to future FCA bosses. They all need to understand that they are public servants, and that with huge salaries come huge responsibilities. Current overpaid bosses Nikhil Rathi, Christopher Woolard and Charles Randall must be reminded that running the FCA is a serious public duty – and not just an easy stepping stone to an even bigger and better job (however badly they fail consumers).
Bailey’s numerous failures were rewarded with an eye-watering salary followed by promotion to governor of the Bank of England.
But Bailey’s balls-up is by no means unique. He’s in good company with a whole raft of over-paid public servants who have betrayed the public:
Post Office boss Paula Vennells was awarded a CBE for falsely prosecuting hundreds of innocent Post Office subpostmasters for fraud – even though she knew full well they were innocent. In arguably the biggest scandal of corruption and injustice in British history, Vennells oversaw the wrongful conviction and sometimes imprisonment of 700 victims. Many of these people were financially ruined, lost their homes and committed suicide. One pregnant woman was sent to jail, and many marriages and families were destroyed.
Former HMRC boss Lin Homer was rewarded for her vast catalogue of disasters and failures with another huge salary and a £2.2m pension
Paula Vennells (left), Dave Hartnett (middle), Lin Homer (right)
But to revert to the failings of Andrew Bailey, Henry has suggested that we need to “move on”. However, those who have lost their life savings and pensions because of the FCA’s defects will have great difficulty putting their losses and harrowing ordeals behind them. Living in abject poverty won’t help them forget. They will certainly never forgive the fact that Andrew Bailey could have prevented them becoming victims of investment scams such as mini bonds, Store First, Park First, the Woodford Fund and Blackmore Global etc.
Henry’s blog concludes that Andrew Bailey, as Governor of the Bank of England, has a great deal on his plate: cost of living crisis, looming recession and Brexit. But does anybody seriously think that such a negligent, lazy, incompetent person is capable of dealing with that lot – when he couldn’t even listen to frantic whistleblowers such as Paul Carlier, Mark Taber and Brev at Bond Review who were offering to do his job for him?
This silly twerp got caught looking at lewd images on his mobile in the House of Commons. His excuse was that he thought porn was spelled “tractor”. Parish has now resigned and his political career is almost certainly over. His wife might also be quite cross. He probably won’t be rewarded with a promotion, a CBE or any kind of public “moving on”.
What Parish did was foolish. But he didn’t cost thousands of people their pensions and life savings; he didn’t ruin hundreds of subpostmasters’ lives and send some of them to prison or to their deaths; he didn’t aid and abet hundreds of millions of pounds’ worth of tax evasion; he didn’t overcharge millions of taxpayers or lose their records.
Parish embarrassed himself and was caught doing something unbelievably silly – that hurt nobody except himself (and his own family). But the price he will pay for this will be crippling and may have ruined his life. Meanwhile, Bailey, Vennells, Hartnet and Homer have evaded any kind of sanction and gone on to glittering success, awards and eye-watering pensions.
The following blog was written by Stephen Sefton: a Blackmore Global Victim who cares about pension scams.
Stephen was scammed by David Vilka of Square Mile International Financial Services around six or seven years ago. Vilka, who had neither qualifications nor a license to provide pension or investment advice, arranged the transfer of Mr. Sefton’s substantial final salary pension.
Stephen’s pension was transferred to the Optimus QROPS in Malta.It was placed in an Investors Trust offshore bond in the Cayman Islands. Then it was invested in high-risk, high-commission, unregulated funds. One of these was Blackmore Global.
A determined fight on the part of the tenacious Mr. Sefton did eventually result in the recovery of a large part of his funds. But his case was a rare exception. He was, indeed, very fortunate that he didn’t lose the whole lot. Most victims suffer total loss in such circumstances.
It is now looking very likely that Phillip Nunn and Patrick McCreesh’s Blackmore Global Fund is going to be as worthless as their other investment scam: Blackmore Bond (now in administration).
Pension Scam victim Stephen Sefton writes:
Finally, after two months of radio silence, Angie Brooks once again pens an article. It’s about time!
I care. I don’t know why I should but I do. Maybe because I am seeing a media frenzy over the recent collapse of mini bonds in the UK. Especially LC&F and Blackmore Bonds plc to name just two. Meanwhile, victims of pension scams from the last decade are being forgotten and swept under the carpet. Much to the delight of many of those that oiled the wheels of the scams and helped them to happen – especially the QROPS and SIPPS!
There are many (especially the scammers) that really don’t like me. This is why they tried to offer me a paltry £6000 to silence me. Seriously?
There are many that don’t like my rhetoric and I regularly get blocked on Twitter, or thrown off Facebook. Here, I get to tell it like it is, however unpalatable the truth may be.
What I have learned over the years is that there’s an intricate web, woven around these scams. This interconnects a number of players whose names just keep on cropping up.
Malta was clearly the jurisdiction of choice for many pension scams. It seems to have hundreds, if not thousands, of victims. Many of these are not yet even aware that they face financial ruin in their retirement.
In my opinion, Malta has much to answer for and really should clean up its act. Journalists rarely focus their gaze on the real facilitators of pension scams: the Mickey Mouse jurisdictions that turn a blind eye and allow them on their patch.
Why are they not aware? QROPS Scheme Administrators are sending out fictitious statements implying members’ pensions are still intact. One member of STM Pensions Malta was sent a statement in Sep 2020 showing his pension still intact just one month after STM wrote to members invested in Blackmore Global – Nunn & McCreesh’s offshore unregulated collective – that in fact they (STM) have no idea what the value is!
As it happens, STM did manage to get Nunn & McCreesh to publish the underlying assets for Blackmore Global, in May 2020 (over 6 years since the fund was launched). Even with this list, there is little idea what the fund is worth because the underlying assets are themselves useless, opaque, private ventures in yet more Mickey Mouse jurisdictions. One offshore fund is already being pursued by Dalriada as part of other failed pension schemes from early in the last decade – but Dalriada are getting nowhere with it.
I am not convinced that “The Adams v Carey case is likely to herald a flood of similar claims …”.
Courageous Manita Khuller in front of the Guernsey courthouse
The Ombudsman case that went in favour of Mr. N against the Northumbria Police Authority (PO-12763) in July 2018, was also a landmark case against a negligent UK pension provider that had a tick box culture. The ceding provider transferred Mr. N’s pension without due regard for the Pensions Regulator’s requirements of 2013 for extra due diligence when handling transfers.
That decision doesn’t appear to have “herald[ed] a [likewise] flood of similar claims” three years on.
Firstly, the victims were targeted by scammers because they were “ignorant”. That’s not meant to be derogatory.
They knew diddly squat about pensions, regulations, investments – nothing! They trusted the “adviser” – the con man persuading them to transfer their pension. For a con to be successful you need the essential skill of gaining people’s trust. Scammers have this skill in abundance. The ignorant fall for it every time.
Victims not only knew nothing about pensions and investments, they didn’t even know how to spot they were being conned. They were the perfect mark for scammers. They didn’t know what they didn’t know. Like taking candy from a baby – although a baby knows it is being robbed and often screams quite loudly (so maybe not the best analogy).
Secondly, even if victims have now discovered they have lost their pension, they have absolutely no idea what next to do about it. The ones I have come across are like fish out of water. Completely at a loss of where to go.
On Angie’s facebook group, one person recently told of their father’s loss of pension to Nunn & McCreesh’s Blackmore Global. In an attempt to do “something” the person went to the FCA on behalf of their father only to be told that investing in unregulated funds on the advice of unregulated advisers bars them from the compensation scheme and Ombudsman service. The FCA suggested looking into the Malta compensation scheme – which is a joke! That was the extent of help from the FCA. As useful as a chocolate teapot.
It hadn’t occurred to this person that either the ceding provider is guilty of maladministration for the transfer in the first place, AND/OR the receiving scheme in Malta is in “breach of trust” because it too is bound by legislation controlling its activities.
So the best next step is to pursue one or other side of the transfer – or both.
Manita Khuller went after the receiving trustee through the courts and eventually won. However, such legal action isn’t for the faint hearted. It cost her huge sums of money, which she took out loans to fund. Losing was not an option. On top of already losing her pension. It was a nightmare for her. I know – I was with her every step of the way since 2018 when we were introduced by a journalist. This was her only option because the Mickey Mouse jurisdiction, Guernsey, had no “Ombudsman” service. Moreover, the incestuous nature in Guernsey meant law firms declined to represent her. She had to go it alone for the first trial, adding a layer of stress no person should be subjected to. There are few victims with this determination or courage willing to take this course of action – so they don’t, even though she has paved the way.
We in the UK, at least, have the Ombudsman and now – relatively recently – Malta also has one (the Office of the Arbiter for Financial Services (“OAFS”)).
Guernsey is a backward, biased, Mickey Mouse, incestuous jurisdiction – which is why scammers love it.
The Scheme administrators on both sides of the transfer will fight tooth and nail and argue the victim is wholly to blame for their losses. Many victims just have no idea how to go about presenting their case.
There is no “free” professional service available to help victims navigate this minefield. Mr. N (referenced earlier) paid lawyers £25k to make his case. But the Ombudsman did not award costs – saying that it is not necessary to engage lawyers. However, it is not easy to fight a pension scheme that will employ a top notch law firm to present its defence. So by and large, the victims I have come across are at a serious disadvantage because they have no idea how to seek justice and have nowhere to go and don’t know how to present their case. That’s why they were targeted by scammers in the first place. They were (and still are) easy pickings.
In the article above, Ms. Brooks quoted from the appeal. I will do same. A more appropriate section, §115(i),
“… while consumers can to an extent be expected to bear responsibility for their own decisions, there is a need for regulation, among other things to safeguard consumers from their own folly.”
Members of Staff (in shorts!) from Carey Olsen
These victims are indeed victims of their own folly, but they never realised what they were doing. On both sides of the equation (ceding providers and the receiving schemes) there were duties of care designed to protect these victims “from their own folly”. In all cases I have come across, neither side fulfilled those duties of care. On the UK side there was contempt for the Pensions Regulator’s requirements of 2013, despite growing industry concerns for pension scams. On the receiving side, the QROPS didn’t (and still don’t) care about their members – period. And neither did the authorities in these Mickey Mouse jurisdictions. It was the perfect match and thousands of vulnerable victims are paying the price.
Carey Pensions was started in 2009 by the Carey Group. The Group is controlled in Guernsey by ten partners and ex-partners of the Law Firm Carey Olsen. This is an amusing coincidence in my opinion. Carey Olsen, perhaps the top law firm in Guernsey, represented FNBIT against Manita Khuller – and LOST at appeal by the way.
Justin Caffery floating in the sea while preaching stress relief
Harbour Pensions was started by Justin Caffrey, in 2013 and says in the STM announcement, “Harbour was always a five year plan…”. Justin made his money and now runs meditation classes (seriously?). He should meditate on the misery, caused by Nunn & McCreesh, of hundreds – if not thousands – of vulnerable victims of Blackmore Global that he allowed into his pension scheme, in my opinion, willingly and knowing the consequences of such an unsuitable investment. He permitted 100% allocation of one member’s pension into a fund that has never published audited accounts. At the material time, knowing the fund was opaque and unregulated, Harbour (and other QROPS) were happily permitting transfers and 100% allocations.
The fund’s offer document, which Harbour had, says the investment has a ten year lock-in. That condition, which the QROPS knew and willingly accepted, effectively locked Harbour (and subsequently STM) into an asset they knew nothing about – and still don’t – for ten years, with absolutely no knowledge or control of what Nunn & McCreesh were doing with the money.
The Scheme administrators in these QROPS in Malta were, and still are, completely at the whim of Nunn & McCreesh – who could misappropriate the pensions as they wish and the administrators could do absolutely nothing about it. The QROPS effectively abdicated all powers they had to run the scheme and mitigate risks in the interest of members, to Nunn & McCreesh. They have been passive bystanders to the destruction of their members’ pensions ever since. This is, in my opinion, in breach of the Malta Trust and Trustees Act. They are also willingly and knowingly in breach of trust.
All this really begs the question whether STM go looking for dodgy pension schemes or are they just plain stupid? What on earth is going on and why hasn’t the MFSA taken them to task? They seem to attract scams like flies to a pile of dung.
Blackmore Global Victim who cares about pension scams – says victims are being forgotten
Victims are being forgotten by the media and authorities. Victims had no idea what they were doing or how to seek restitution. They are guilty of nothing but ignorance and ALL the actors in these scams have gotten away with it. They have ALL dipped their hand in the pension pots and kept the spoils – and now moved on, leaving the pension pots empty.
This is frustrating in the extreme because I see no evidence of any “flood of similar claims”. The victims are, for the most part, still ignorant and there is no one “helping” them. This site (Pension Life) once purported to “help” victims but I am not at all convinced it has done much and now has long periods of radio silence. The newbies in this scam space, the journalists claiming to be the heroes that “blew the whistle” or warned the FCA, are just chasing big headlines for their editor on today’s flavour of the month: mini bonds. Soon the mini bond victims will be forgotten just like the victims of Defined Benefit Pension transfers. The blood sucking journalists will move on to the next headline. I have no time for these insincere upstarts because they don’t stay in it for the long haul.
Victims are on their own by and large and still ignorant. No one seems to care and there is no help from any quarter. They face a retirement with a significantly reduced standard of living and that’s the hard truth of the matter. There will be no “flood of similar cases”.
On July 18th 2017, Slater and Gordon Lawyers wrote me the below email. Lawyer Steve Kuncewicz clearly stated that Slater and Gordon acted for their client: Blackmore Global PCC Limited; Phillip Nunn and Patrick McCreesh. The full transcript is below – complete with my comments in bold. This is a 25-page document, so I don’t expect most people (except the most tenacious and determined) to read all of it. So I have put the basic highlights below.
It is clear that Slater and Gordon was a poacher back in July 2017 when the firm represented clients Blackmore, Nunn and McCreesh. And now in 2020, Slater and Gordon, is an even bigger poacher as it attempts to profit from the losses suffered by Blackmore Bond victims.
As Bond Review reported yesterday that the FCA knew all about the doomed Blackmore Bond three years ago, it is clear that Blackmore’s own lawyers – Slater and Gordon – also knew what Nunn and McCreesh were up to at the same time, but did not report their clients to the authorities as they should have done (not that it would have done any good). But both the FCA and Slater and Gordon could have prevented the Blackmore Bond tragedy and saved hundreds of victims from losing their life savings.
Meanwhile, Slater and Gordon is now advertising all over social media:
We’re investigating how to protect bondholders interests following the administration of Blackmore Bonds Plc.
Slater and Gordon is also denying that Blackmore, Nunn and McCreesh were ever their clients. Slater and Gordon is now trying to attract clients by promising:
“We’re keen to assist investors and help them understand their position. We’re investigating if any steps can be taken to protect their interest in the funds within Blackmore’s mini-bond schemes, following the administration of Blackmore Bonds Plc. These schemes promised a high rate of return to investors but continually failed to pay-out. If you invested in mini-bonds or an ISA through Blackmore, we’re keen to speak with you. “
Although the communication with Slater and Gordon is more about the Blackmore Global Fund scam than the mini-bond, it does cover a number of crucial issues including:
Slater and Gordon confirmed that they acted for their clients: Blackmore, Nunn and McCreesh in both a ” business and personal capacity “
Slater and Gordon was trying to shut me up so that their clients could keep scamming hundreds of victims out of their pensions and life savings
Slater and Gordon was falsely portraying their client as: “a prestigious, multi-asset investment house with over £60 million in assets under management, offering institutional and high net-worth clients access to a wide variety of investment products in order to maximise their returns”. This was completely false as Blackmore only targeted retail investors with small pension pots or personal savings – with their entirely unsuitable, illiquid, high-risk investments
Slater and Gordon claimed: “The Blackmore Group was founded on the core belief of putting the needs of its clients first, developing diverse portfolios backed by real assets containing a blend of capital growth and fixed income”. This is nonsense: Blackmore worked closely with known, serial scammers to promote their products and target naive, vulnerable victims. They locked pension savers into their fund scam for ten years without their knowledge and they spent the bondholders’ money on huge amounts of promotion fees (e.g. Surge Group) and commissions for the scammers who helped distribute their toxic wares.
But most serious of all is this next point:
5. Your only intention can be to divert business from them and to cause serious financial harm as a result.
I replied: “I have no interest in causing your clients financial harm – why would I? But I do think that vulnerable pension savers have a right to know the background of the people behind a fund which is being promoted to retail, UK-resident investors.”
A lot of the Blackmore Bond victims invested AFTER this letter. Slater and Gordon did NOTHING to warn the public about their client. All they did was to try to shut me up and prevent me from warning the public.
And now they want to make money out of the Blackmore Bond victims? Seriously?
Slater
Gordon
Lawyers
18 July 2017
URGENT
— IF YOU DO NOT RESPOND TO THIS CORRESPONDENCE, COURT
PROCEEDINGS MAY BE ISSUED AGAINST YOU WITHOUT FURTHER NOTICE
Ms Brooks t/a
Pension-Life.com
24 Calle Cuatro
Esquinas
Lanjaron
18420,
Granada
SPAIN
58 Mosley Street
Manchester
M2 3HZ
DX 14340
Manchester 1
Tel: 0161 383
3500 Fax: 0161 383 3636
wwwslatergordon.co.uk
Your Contact:
Steve Kuncewicz Assistant: Rebecca Young
Direct Tel:
01613833708
Email:
Steve.Kuncewicz@slatergordon.co.uk
Your Ref:
Our
Ref: RZY03/UM1389098
Our Clients: Blackmore Global PCC Limited, Philip Nunn and Patrick McCreesh Proposed Claim for Defamation and Malicious Falsehood
We act for the aforementioned clients in their business and personal capacity and have been instructed to contact you in relation to various untrue, defamatory and wholly unjustifiable allegations published on your website at httq://pension-life.com (the Website) relating to our clients, their products and services which are designed to (and in fact already have, as set out below) damage their respective reputations and financial interests.
Our client, Blackmore Global PCC Limited, is part of the Blackmore Group which is a prestigious, multi-asset investment house with over £60 million in assets under management, offering institutional and high net-worth clients access to a wide variety of investment products in order to maximise their returns.
If it is indeed true that Blackmore Group is a prestigious organisation, then I have no doubt the directors will be keen to ensure that the damage done to victims’ pensions is put right and that Blackmore’s purported “good name” is protected. However, when you Google Blackmore Group PCC nothing comes up about it being “prestigious” – but what does come up is a link to one of Offshore Alert’s warnings regarding Brian Weal – – and as you know at least one of the underlying assets was run by Weal.
Further, there are cautionary warnings on the Money Saving Expert forum which mentions that investors were given a “pension review” by Aspinal Chase (run by your clients) and promised 10% returns p.a.There is absolutely nothing available on Google which describes Blackmore Global as “prestigious”.
Further, the clients are not high
net-worth, under the FCA definition. Are you aware of the FCA
definition of “High net-worth”? Your clients, with 25 years’
experience, will know this. Just to remind you, a high net-worth
client, according to the FCA has-
an
annual income to
the value of £100,000
or more.
Annual income for these purposes does not include money withdrawn
from pension savings (except where the withdrawals are used directly
for income in retirement).
net assets to
the value of £250,000
or more.
The definition specifically excludes
pension savings. Yet, your clients are involved in the marketing,
processing and investing of retail pensions of those that are not
high net-worth clients. I would be interested to see if ANY
sophisticated or institutional investors are in the Blackmore Global
Funds. Surely, such experienced investors would demand audited
accounts.
“The Blackmore Group was founded on the core belief of putting the needs of its clients first, developing diverse portfolios backed by real assets containing a blend of capital growth and fixed income.” (Steve Kuncewicz of Slater and Gordon – 18.7.2017)
If the assets
are “real” – tell us what they are. Do you even know what they
are? Have you seen an independent audit or are you relying solely on
what your client is telling you?
Blackmore Global
PCC Limited offers a medium to long-term investment vehicle for its
clients with a diversified investment portfolio under one structure
which allocates investment between four distinct protected cells
which diversify assets between property, sustainable energy, private
equity and lifestyle. In order to take advantage of as wide a range
of investments as possible, it invests in a number of vehicles
including funds, companies, joint venture projects and equities.
I know all about
the cells as they are described in the factsheet and brochure.
However, based on the fact that we know some of the information
contained therein is untrue, I am not sure the cell information can
necessarily be relied on. What we really need to know is exactly
what the assets are. Steve, I mean no disrespect but your letter
contains 21,290 words – and not one word about what the assets
really are. You seem to be trying to claim your clients have done
nothing wrong – but you are providing no evidence.
Further, among
those many words, you refer to loss suffered by your clients multiple
times, but you never once refer to the considerable loss and distress
suffered by the Blackmore Global investors (or indeed the Capita Oak
and Henley ones).
Patrick McCreesh
and Philip Nunn founded the Blackmore Group (of which Blackmore
Global PCC forms part) in 2013,
That would be
just after the Capita Oak and Henley scams, which Nunn and McCreesh
were promoting, collapsed.
and jointly have
more than 25 years’ experience in the financial services sector,
growing their business to the extent of it having over £17m of
assets under management across multiple asset classes.
With
respect, if they have jointly more than 25 years’ experience in the
financial services sector, they should know that their fund is not
suitable for pension schemes – just as they should have known that
empty boxes (store pods) were not suitable investments for the Capita
Oak and Henley victims. And
I sincerely hope that (apart from the victims of which I am aware)
none of the remaining £17m represents pension investments.
By contrast, the
Website describes your activities as follows:
“Depending
on the type of pension or investment scam a victim has been involved
in, there are various things we can do to help. We charge annual
membership fees so that members know exactly what they will have to
pay and there will be no legal or accountancy fees on top.
Deal with
trustees, advisers and fund managers
Complain to
regulators and ombudsmen
Appeal tax
liabilities with HMRC and the Tax Tribunals
Analyse and
quantify investments, losses and fees/commissions
Instruct
solicitors to
make
a claim against negligent parties to obtain redress for losses and
liabilities (paid for by litigation funding)”
Am not sure what
the point is that you are trying to make here. You have used the
phrase “by contrast” which to me suggests you are trying to
ascertain that, unlike your clients, I have never been involved in
running or promoting a pension or investment scam. Which, of course,
I haven’t. Indeed, I vigorously oppose such crimes and am working
with the regulators, police and ombudsmen to help stamp out such
activities and bring those responsible to justice.
Notably, you refer
to yourself as “one
of the leading experts on pension liberation scams”.
Indeed, I am
widely acknowledged as such. Further, in your above statements, you
have now correctly identified the following problems associated with
Blackmore Global:
Problem no. 1: the victims were
neither “institutional” nor “high net-worth”. They should
never have had their pensions invested in the Blackmore Global fund
at all.
Problem no.2: you have said Blackmore
develops “diverse portfolios backed by real assets”. So what
are these “real” assets? Do you even know? Has Blackmore ever
told you or shown you proof? Because they won’t tell the victims
what the assets are. Nor will they tell the pension trustees.
Problem no. 3: Blackmore Global
offers a “medium to long-term investment vehicle”. So, not
suitable for pensions then. Members of a pension scheme have a
statutory right to a transfer as well as to be able to reach the age
of 55, or retire or die, so there must be liquidity. Also, at least
one victim was close to retirement age when he entered the scheme so
he should never have been put into long-term investments.
Problem no. 4: Blackmore Global has
£17m worth of assets – if these are all members of pension
schemes such as the victims who are members of the Pension Life
Group Action, then there is a very serious problem indeed for your
clients.
You
refer to my activities and expertise on pension liberation scams –
if you need any clarification or corroboration of this I am sure your
colleague Craig will be happy to fill you in.
The Website
contains a number of posts which refer, either directly or
indirectly, to our clients, specifically:
“Action Fraud
are nobody and have no authority”: John Ferguson, Square Mile
Financial Services: November 30, 2016;
Government
Consultation on Pension and Investment Scams (The Square Mile):
December 5, 2016;
“Scammers Are
Criminals” : April 11, 2017;
“Gambling
With Your Pension”: May 14, 2017;
“Serious
Fraud Office Requests Pension And Investment Scam Reports” :
May 24, 2017; and
“Blackmore
Global Fund — Asset Or Black Hole?”: July 7, 2017
Copies of these
posts are attached to this letter marked Annex 1.
The content of
these various posts (and the content of various other social media
posts and other direct communications with third-party professional
intermediaries who refer work and clients to our clients, which will
be adduced in evidence in due course), led our clients to write to
you on January 17 this year to put you on notice of their objection
to your various claims.
Forgive me, but
I am not sure what point
you are making. Ferguson did indeed write to a victim and state that
“Action Fraud are nobody and have no authority”. He even copied
in his lawyer to this. There was indeed a government consultation on
pension and investment scams. Scammers are indeed criminals (as
confirmed by
the Pensions Regulator). Gambling with your pension is not
advisable. The Serious Fraud Office has indeed requested reports on
a number of pension scams – some of which your clients were
involved with. Finally, we don’t know whether Blackmore Global is
an asset or a black hole because there is no independent audit.
Until and unless the long-awaited audit is forthcoming, the jury will
have to remain out on that.
As our clients
summarised, borne out by the contents of the Website, you purport to
act in a professional capacity for individuals who are beneficiaries
of trusts or pension schemes, who have been advised by independent
financial advisers (including, without limitation, Square Mile, who
are also referred to at various points in the posts referred to
above) to transfer some or all of their existing pension funds to the
Optimus Pension Scheme using an Investor Trust Wrapper.
As I am sure you
will realise, Slater and Gordon already did comprehensive due
diligence on me and the Group Actions several years ago, so there is
no need to “purport” – just ask Craig McAdam.
As our clients
stated, they understand that some of these individuals may have
invested certain of their pension fund assets into underlying
investments which may
include investments managed by our client. As you will be well aware
our client as an investment house has never, nor would they, ever
deal directly with any of your “clients”
as
beneficiaries.
I have never
said Blackmore Global (of which Messrs Nunn and McCreesh are
directors) did deal direct with the investors. However, they do run
a cold calling/lead generation business called Aspinal Chase which
dealt direct with the clients. See below the details of the Aspinal
Chase website:
I am not sure you understand how this
unpleasant, calculated and deliberate targeting of unsophisticated
retail pensions operated. Let me spell it out for you.
Your clients (again I refer to the
individuals – as I they cannot hide behind the corporate entity)
had websites offering pension reviews and cold-called members of the
public. Those that agreed to a review were introduced to what they
believed was an IFA (and IFA has a duty to look at the whole market
and act in the clients’ best interests). The “IFA” then
assessed the client’s needs and objectives and recommended
Blackmore Global. Then, your clients dealt with the processing of the
transfer from the ceding trustees into a pension and their own funds.
At no time was the client ever informed of the conflict of interest.
There was never an intention to provide the client with a pension
review, it was just a calculated ruse by your clients to get their
hands on the pension funds of gullible members of the public.
So effectively,
your clients were generating leads and introducing people to their
own fund via Aspinal Chase.
It is further evidenced that Messrs
Nunn and McCreesh’s firm Pension & Life were acting as pension
transfer administrators for the victims who were subsequently
invested in the Blackmore Global fund:
“Subject – Transfer from: Unisys
Pension Scheme Member name: Mr A B C Driver: Our reference: Transfer
Out – 9999999 Your reference: B00047 We have been advised by Pension
& Life UK Ltd to proceed with the transfer of this member’s
benefits from Unisys Pension Scheme to Optimus Retirement Benefit
Scheme No 1. We can confirm that the member has received appropriate
independent advice in respect of the transfer to the receiving
arrangement. The total transfer value amounts to £4xx,xxx.xx and has
been paid direct to your bank account.”
Please note, that your clients – in
their role as transfer administrators Pension & Life –
confirmed to the ceding provider that Mr. Driver had “received
appropriate independent advice”. However, with their 25 years’
experience Messrs Nunn and McCreesh should have known full well that
the advice had come from a firm which was not regulated for pension
and investment advice.
We now direct our
and your attention (to the extent that you were not fully aware of
their content, which we doubt), to the specific posts on your
Website, and how the same are both untrue and seriously defamatory of
our clients.
I am not sure
what you mean by this statement – how could I not be aware of the
content of the blogs on my website? I wrote them all personally.
Not a single one is untrue.
Below, in
accordance with the Pre-Action Protocol, we set out what we consider
to be the defamatory comments (Defamatory Comments)
“Action Fraud
are nobody and have no authority”: John Ferguson, Square Mile
Financial Services
And what is your
point? John Ferguson wrote this statement. I didn’t write it –
I only quoted it. There is nothing defamatory about repeating this –
it is a clearly evidenced fact.
The above post
contains the following statements:
“Mr.
Ferguson has invested a number of victims’ pensions in the Blackmore
Global and Symphony funds and was asked to provide a copy of the
audit for Blackmore Global which his firm has been promoting and
which appears to have some questionable assets — described as
“esoteric” and “alternative”. He was also asked
to provide evidence of his firm’s regulation to provide pension and
investment advice.”
Again, I am not
sure what your problem is with this – it is perfectly true and
clearly evidenced that Ferguson (and other unregulated advisers) have
indeed invested victims’ pensions in Blackmore Global. The assets
of the fund are indeed questionable – and will remain so until the
audit is produced. The fund is invested in esoteric and alternative
assets. Ferguson has been asked to provide evidence of his firm’s
regulation to provide pension and investment advice on several
occasions but he has never done so.
“One victim
had threatened to report the matter to Action Fraud when he
discovered multiple irregularities with his pension scheme”
Again, this is
perfectly true – and evidenced.
“The
factsheet for the Blackmore Global fund had falsely claimed a firm in
Barcelona was the Investment Manager for the fund — robustly denied
by the furious firm in question.”
And? Both the
factsheet and the brochure stated this – falsely.
Meaning
On any
consideration of the above two paragraphs, this post is intended to
cause damage to Blackmore Global PCC Ltd’s reputation and its
business by suggesting that our client’s underlying assets into which
funds are invested are “questionable”.
The questions
are “where is the audit” and “what are the assets”? There
was no intention to cause damage to anyone’s reputation and
business – but every intention to discover what the assets are.
There is compelling evidence that the assets are linked to very
suspicious investments and people with a track record of dealing in
investment scams. In fact, if you were genuinely interested in
protecting your clients’ reputation and good name, you would simply
send me a statement confirming what the assets are. The very fact
that you haven’t suggests you don’t know and your clients haven’t
told you. So how can you refute that the assets are questionable?
The natural and
ordinary meaning attached to the suggestion that an investment is
“questionable”
is
that it is disreputable, uncertain as to its credibility or validity,
and generally morally suspect. You seek to further compound the
damage to our client’s reputation by describing the assets as
“alternative”
and
“esoteric”.
For a pension
saver, the investment is indeed questionable. And the evidence is
that the assets are alternative and esoteric – and there is nothing
to prove otherwise. If you can prove that the fund is not
disreputable, I will happily apologise. But even if it turns out
that the underlying assets are low-risk, prudent, diverse and
suitable for pensions, the fact that there is a ten-year lock-in
precludes the fund from being suitable for pensions.
Even more
seriously, however, this post makes the most serious of defamatory
allegations in that it alleges that our client is involved in
investments which should be (reported?)
to the police, via Action Fraud, and that our client is therefore
engaged in unlawful, criminal activity.
Your client was
indeed engaged in unlawful, criminal activity in the Capita Oak and
Henley schemes as well as various SIPPS invested in Store First. I
cannot comment further on this because the matter is now in the hands
of the Serious Fraud Office.
Please
be clear that my motive and intention was not to cause damage to
Blackmore Global’s reputation, but to get the victims disinvested
as quickly as possible and further to warn the public that they too
might be in danger of being similarly invested in this fund by
unregulated “Chiringuitos”. The distress caused to the victims
who are invested in Blackmore Global has already been appalling and
as a solicitor you too have a duty to help protect the public.
You
have claimed I intended to cause damage by stating that the fund’s
underlying assets are “questionable”. So what are they? Prove
they are not questionable – of course you can’t, because there is
no audit. The audit was promised last summer, then xmas, then
Easter. Either Grant Thornton can’t find the assets or somebody
doesn’t want the audit made public because of what it will reveal.
You go on to state
that our client has produced Factsheets containing “false
information”. This
is strongly rejected by our client. Our client’s investments, and
their underlying asset classes, are wholly reputable and completely
transparent to investors.
I am sorry but
this is absolute nonsense. The factsheet did contain false
information. The investments and underlying assets are not at all
transparent – there has been no audit and your clients won’t tell
anybody what they are. And to be fair, you keep going on about the
assets, but you won’t say what they are – so you are being just
as opaque as your clients. We know what the asset classes are –
and the explanation of the sub classes are horrendous as they contain
all the usual asset types so beloved by investment scammers (gaming,
spread betting, wine, waste to energy etc.). One victim has written:
“All
I can offer, is to reiterate, that I have no recollection of any
correspondence with an IFA prior to signing up with Harbour Pensions
and Blackmore Global. It was always, Aspinal Chase and in particular
Marc Rees. He told me what a great move it all was, how it made sense
to have all my individual pension funds in one place, that having a
fund of over £250k, I’d get a personal manager that would work
specifically on my fund and keep me regularly updated. Needless to
say this never happened. In addition, Marc told me that investing in
Malta, with Harbour, would give me better returns and be tax
efficient. I took this all as “advice”. Only after a
few years, when I wasn’t getting updates and I had to ask for them,
and I asked him some questions about surrendering, did he say that
was bordering on advice which he wasn’t qualified to answer, and my
IFA, David Vilka, would contact me. He never did. I badgered Harbour
Pensions and got fobbed off. Then Vilka emailed me to say he
understood I was in discussion with Harbour Pension and he couldn’t
do anything more than what I was doing myself.”
Marc Rees- a name familiar to your
clients as he worked for them.
Go
to individuals and click on Previous Involvement…
It is correct to
describe the underlying asset classes as “alternative”
in
that they are not what would otherwise be classified as “mainstream”
investments
such as gilts or shares in publicly listed companies. Investments
into property or renewable energy sources are considered
“alternative”.
However,
the manner in which you seek to adopt this term is to the detriment
of our client by implying that the asset classes themselves are
irregular. An investment is “alternative”
where
it departs from the norm. Therefore, the threshold by which an
investment could be determined as “alternative”
is
low.
You are mixing
apples and oranges: asset classes
are one thing; actual assets are another thing. But again, I come
back to the simple resolution to this debate: provide me with a list
of the underlying assets and then we can put this issue to bed once
and for all. In fact, it is interesting to note that you have never
once stated what the assets are and I have to assume you simply don’t
know as your clients have not disclosed them to you.
I think we should get comment from
professional qualified advisers and actuaries to see if they think
the funds are irregular for retail pensions. I will happily be guided
by them on this matter. Remind me, what qualifications do your
clients hold that would prove they are competent to run such a fund?
We already know one of their colleagues, Brian Weal, was found to be
incompetent.
It is further
correct to describe the investments as being “esoteric,”
that
is, out of the ordinary and traditional model of investments. It is
common for investment portfolios to have an element of “esoteric”
asset
classes, as part of a wider diversification of assets and potentially
offering the higher returns that investors require to achieve their
objectives, based upon the input of independent financial advisers.
However, you seek to adopt this term, which you will be well placed
to understand as being regularly used within the media in a negative
sense, whilst referring to alleged “victims”
of
our client’s allegedly unlawful behaviour, as referred to above. It
is used frequently in a negative sense by the media and other
professionals within the context of financial services, hence why you
have chosen to do so.
I am afraid I
would have to correct you on the assertion that it is common for an
element of esoteric asset classes to be used as part of an investment
portfolio for
pensions.
Perhaps for sophisticated investors or HNW individuals who like a
bit of risk – but not pensions. The term “esoteric” is indeed
frequently used by the media in a negative sense – and there is a
good reason for that: many of the failed funds which have destroyed
victims’ life savings have been invested in esoteric assets.
You cannot possibly believe or claim
that alternative and esoteric assets are suitable for pensions. Why
not provide me with a definitive list of the assets and then we can
debate this properly. You must surely know that funds for pensions
must, by definition, be low-risk, liquid, prudent and diverse –
which Blackmore Global clearly is not.
To clarify the
position in regards to our client’s Factsheet, our client’s
investment manager in relation to the background to which this post
refers was one Gerald Rodriguez, who formerly operated the firm IIG
Financial Services before moving under the banner of Meriden Capital.
Mr. Rodriguez is no longer responsible for the management of this
fund.
I
did indeed state that your client has produced Factsheets containing
“false information”. This is true and clearly evidenced by both
the Blackmore Global factsheet and brochure. Both documents claim
that the Investment Manager for the fund is Meriden Capital Partners
in Barcelona. But the directors of Meriden state they have never
heard of Nunn, McCreesh, Ferguson or Vilka – or indeed Blackmore
Global. However, when I jogged their memory that they had actually
completed an application form to become the Investment Manager, their
English suddenly got worse. But they still insisted they had never
been the Investment Manager to the fund as they were not regulated to
carry out such a task.
Your
explanation about Gerald Rodriguez of IIG Financial Services being
the Investment Manager is, I am afraid, mistaken. I called Mr.
Rodriguez (19th
July) who now works for the Gibraltar International Bank. He
confirmed that he did once work for IIG but that it was many years
ago. He also confirmed that he had never been the investment manager
for Blackmore Global – indeed he had never even heard of it – and
that he had never worked for Meriden Capital Partners. Perhaps you
should ask your clients to conjure up another answer to that one.
2. Government
Consultation on Pension and Investment Scams (The Square Mile)
We direct your
attention to the entire blog posting at Annex 1, and below we set out
the extracts which are most concerning, and defamatory, to our
client.
“Blackmore
Global was full of toxic, illiquid, high-risk assets, had no audit
and as a UCIS (unregulated collective investment scheme) was illegal
to promote to a retail UK investor. The brochure made a fraudulent
claim as to who the investment manager was.”
“The
trouble is, while Mr Driver has fought hard to get some of his money
back, there are around 1,100 other victims stuck in this fund who may
yet have no idea their pensions are invested in —how shall I say
this- worthless crap”
Meaning
This post purports
to discuss alleged pension and/or investment “scams”.
By
including a
reference to our
client within this blog, the clear inference is that our client is
such a
“scammer”, that
is, behaving dishonestly and not in accordance with clear ethical and
regulatory guidelines, and in breach of its obligations (both express
and implied) to its stakeholders. Again, this is a most serious
allegation to make, and is repeated across the post, through repeated
and unjustified allegations that our client is involved in criminal
activity.
Our client,
Blackmore Global PCC Ltd, is an investment company based in the Isle
of Man. It was set up as an unregulated investment company under the
Companies Act 2006, to operate in that jurisdiction.
I am not at all sure what you mean by “unjustified allegations”. It is evidenced on the FCA website that it is illegal to promote UCIS funds to UK retail investors.
You
have kindly confirmed that your client is an unregulated investment
company – and there is no argument about the fact that it has been
promoted by, among others, associates of Nunn and McCreesh: Ferguson
and Vilka, (not regulated to provide investment or pension advice) to
retail, low-risk pension savers. And further, Nunn and McCreesh were
involved in the promotion of a number of pension scams which are now
under investigation by the Serious Fraud Office. What do you have a
problem with?
Your reference to
our client’s investment company being “toxic,
illiquid, (and containing) high risk assets” has
a natural and ordinary meaning that the product is harmful to an
individual’s pension, worthless and of little value as there is no
market within which it can be re-sold. You cannot have underestimated
the significance of calling the product in question “toxic”
to
our client and its reputation. You go on to describe it as being
“worthless
crap”, the
meaning of which we trust we need not set out in correspondence save
to confirm that the use of vulgar abuse does not offset or place into
favourable context your other allegations, as referred to above.
I see no merit
in further debating this point: you are aware of my position on the
assets of the fund but you repeatedly fail to provide any evidence to
prove me wrong. You cannot object to my references, descriptions and
allegations unless you disprove them. Tell me what the assets are,
provide independent
and credible valuations, and disprove what I have written. Your
repeated failure to disclose what the assets are merely serves to
reinforce the point that the fund is opaque and your clients are
failing to be transparent with the victims or the trustees – or,
indeed, you.
We understand that the value of Blackmore
Global PCC Ltd has increased some 11% since its inception.
Exactly how do you “understand”
this? Have you seen an audit? Have you seen the accounts? Have you
got evidence of 11% growth since inception? If you are right, then
11% since 1.5.14 isn’t actually that much at all – a simple
tracker fund would have done just as well, been cheaper, much lower
risk and not had the ten-year lock in. And further, if the fund has
grown, why did Mr Driver get less back than the scammers invested in
the fund in the first place?
We again note that you fail to make any
mention of this fact, which ultimately would not further your evident
intention to damage our client’s reputation and blatant attempt to
self-promote your own “business”.
What fact? Provide the facts.
I genuinely do not understand why
you think my intention is to damage your client’s reputation. What
benefit would that produce for anyone? Nunn and McCreesh do indeed
have a chequered history because of their involvement with Capita
Oak, Henley and multiple SIPPS invested 100% in Store First, but I
wouldn’t have a motive to take the slightest interest in their
reputation. But I would most definitely want to prevent more victims
from having their pensions invested in Blackmore Global – and I am
sure the existing victims would attest to that intention because of
the profound distress they have gone through. But I am not sure how
or why you think commenting on the unsuitability of your clients’
fund does anything to “self-promote” my business.
It is correct that
the product referred to in this post as “illiquid”.
Our
client offers a ten-year close- ended product that is not designed to
be liquid. It is entirely normal for illiquid products to be offered
for investment, where the investment opportunity is designed to be
long-term. In itself, the term illiquid is correct, however the
manner and context in which it is adopted by you, alongside the terms
“toxic”
and
“scam”
is
clearly designed to be harmful to our client’s reputation.
I am beginning
to realise you know little or nothing about investments in general or
investments for pensions in particular. It is also clear you are
relying entirely on what you “understand” from your clients –
and it has been evidenced that some of this is not true. Investors
who specifically want an illiquid investment into which they are
locked for ten years, would have no problem with Blackmore Global.
Or at least, they would have no problem if they knew what the assets
were (which clearly you don’t). Provided the assets were not toxic
or associated with known investment scammers, then a sophisticated,
HNW investor could do his own due diligence and decide for himself.
But illiquid funds are not suitable for pensions.
I would contend
that no one would lock up their funds for 10 years. I have spoken to
a number of Chartered advisers who all have this opinion.
One raised an
extremely good point. Among the spurious reasons that were used to
entice people out of perfectly sound pensions was the promise of
access from the age of 55. Yet, all the people that I have spoken to,
invested in Blackmore, are over 45 years of age. The sales pitch of
55 is meaningless. Of even greater concern is that their whole
pension fund is locked up to 10 years in some cases and this is an
outrage!
What if an
investor were to die within 10 years, how would the family get the
much needed funds? If you have any conscience at all, think about
that.
It is incorrect to
describe the product as “solely
high risk”. As
with any balanced investment portfolio, there will and should be
asset classes within it which fall within the definition of “high
risk”. Overall,
however, the overall apportionment of such “high
risk” assets
is low and, the portfolio in question is balanced.
Without knowing
what the assets are, neither you nor anyone else could make that
statement with any confidence. How can you state that the overall
apportionment of high risk assets is low and the portfolio in
question is balanced if you don’t know what the assets are and have
never seen an audit?
If it is so good, I am sure you have
invested all your own pension savings into the Blackmore Fund. I look
forward to seeing your investment statement.
The sweeping statements you make
regarding suitability, or any purported lack thereof, of our
corporate client’s close ended investment are of serious concern,
especially when made without any objective attempt at justification.
There can be no justification for your assertion that the products in
issue are wholly unsuitable for any pension fund or that its nature
as a 10-year, closed-ended product renders it “worthless
crap”.
If
you are so sure that I am wrong about Blackmore Global, give me the
evidence – and also provide me with evidence that confirms you
yourself have seen and know what the assets are. You cannot argue
that the Blackmore Global fund is not harmful to individuals’
pensions, because one has suffered loss upon redemption already
(£1,663.17)
and others are being
denied their statutory right to transfer out of their schemes because
no reputable pension trustee would accept an in specie transfer in
something so illiquid and with no audit.
I
will be able to get a considerable number of high profile, well-known
and respected advisers to assert that the product is wholly
unsuitable for retail pensions. And, since they were sold in the UK,
why was the commission filched from the funds not disclosed?
You
state that you “understand that the value of Blackmore Global has
increased 11% since inception”. How did you come to that
conclusion? Did you see an audit – or are you taking your clients’
word for it? If your client’s word on the value of the fund is
anything like their word on who the Investment Manager was, I would
think you are making a somewhat shaky assumption.
Blackmore Global
PCC Ltd is not a UCIS.
Yes it is.
Again, the
suggestion that our client “promotes”
itself
to consumers/customers and that such activity is illegal is a most
serious of allegations to make.
Your client
promotes itself to consumers through Aspinal Chase.
The product in
issue is a closed-ended investment and not a UCIS.
It is a UCIS
Furthermore, our
client’s customers are not “retail’
clients.
Instead, they are investment managers, professional pension trustees
or the like rather than investors in their own right.
This is a common
ruse employed by scammers to deflect attention from their negligent
or fraudulent advice or investments – and I am disappointed to see
you using it. You know very well that we are talking about ordinary
people with pensions so please don’t be obscure and opaque.
The trustees I have spoken to have
made it clear that they are not the clients. The investor is the
client and the recommendations for the investment was made to the
individual client. All the money going into the fund is from retail
clients’ pension funds. Of course the customer is a retail client,
it is the retail clients’ money that is invested.
We addressed above the position in
regards to the identity of the investment manager in question,
Yes you did – falsely. Can you
please tell me the truth now?
and again we are
gravely concerned as to your use of the word “fraudulent”
within
your blog.
It was indeed
fraudulent to state that Meriden Capital Partners was the Investment
Manager when it clearly was not. Then, the subsequent “explanation”
about Mr. Rodriguez of IIG being the Investment Manager was also
wholly untrue.
Your
conclusion that this implies “criminal, deceitful and dishonest
conduct seeking to scam people” is perfectly natural. Indeed, if
you would like to call Mr. Gerald Rodriguez at the Gibraltar
International Bank – +350 200 13900 I am sure he will confirm to you
himself that your client is lying. https://www.gibintbank.gi/contact
The natural and
ordinary meaning which our client attributes to it is that it is
involved in criminal, deceitful and dishonest conduct, through which
it seeks to “scam” people of their pensions.
Your client is
indeed involved; has clearly exhibited deceitful and dishonest
conduct, and people have been scammed out of their pensions.
I have explained how the deceit was organized, all verifiable.
Such a description of our client can only
seek to lower its reputation in the eyes of the reasonable reader,
without any exercise in strained construction.
If your client
helps the victims to redeem their Blackmore Global investments
without further delay, there is no reason why their reputation should
not recover. Your clients need to acknowledge that the fund should
never have been used for pensions and put right any loss or damage
suffered by the victims.
Our client is not
involved in the provision of financial advice to consumers/customers.
Its ultimate clients are pension trustees, and it has no direct
communication with underlying beneficiaries. Our client is not in any
way involved in the provision of advice to consumers who go on to
invest. There is no obligation upon our client to have their company
“audited”.
Despite
such, our corporate client has voluntarily sought an audit of its
business by Grant Thornton,
The
fund was indeed promoted to numerous UK residents – illegally. I
have their details and documentary evidence. The clients are not the
investment managers or the trustees – but the investors themselves.
This is a ruse frequently used by scammers to justify investing
clients’ pensions in high-risk, toxic, illiquid – sometimes
professional-investor-only – funds and instruments. Please be
clear, the “advice” was given to the clients – not investment
managers or trustees. This is clearly evidenced and confirmed by the
trustees.
Your
client was involved from the targeting of prospects, through to the
advice process and investment into their own funds.
which remains
underway and to which you refer. The product is administered through
registered regulated custodians and agents, who control all relevant
bank accounts.
And who are
these custodians and agents? The factsheet and brochure state they
are Corporate Options Ltd and OrmCo Ltd. Corporate Options (IoM)
claims to provide the following: company management and
administration; offshore company formation and management; ship and
yacht registration; e-gaming; bookkeeping and accountancy;
intellectual property rights; IoM relocation; services for IoM
businesses and individuals.
Based on these
claims, I see no reason why Corporate Options should not simply
provide a print out of the investments – if indeed they do the
bookkeeping and accountancy for Blackmore Global. How difficult
would it have been for them to simply provide a transaction report to
the victims, trustees, you and me? Instead of making vague,
unsubstantiated claims about the quality of the assets, and refuting
my fears about the toxicity of the fund, you could have simply
provided the evidence instead of demonstrating you have no idea what
the assets are.
OrmCo PLC is
staffed by qualified chartered accountants. So, again, there is no
reason why the accounts for Blackmore Global could not have been
easily produced. In fact, it is becoming more and more ludicrous
(and suspicious) that neither Corporate Options nor OrmCo nor Grant
Thornton nor Blackmore Global has produced a transaction history of
the investments.
We understand from
our clients that your references to Mr Driver are also factually
incorrect. Optimus was the entity who recommended Blackmore Global
PCC Limited, and who contracted with our corporate client, rather
than Mr Driver. Blackmore Global is, once again, a 10-year investment
and contractually there is no right to redeem before the end of that
10-year period. Any early redemption fee that would have applied to
that investment was in fact waived in full by our clients as a
gesture of goodwill, which would usually amount to 7% of the funds
invested.
Optimus was the
trustee, not the adviser. The adviser was Square Mile – a firm in
the Czech Republic which was not regulated for pension or investment
advice. I hope your
clients have made you aware that Mr Driver has this confirmed in
writing by the FCA. Mr.
Driver was not aware that his pension had been invested in a fund
with a 10-year lock in. The early redemption fee was not waived but
eventually refunded retrospectively.
There was no
financial detriment to Mr Driver. Yes
there was. The loss was only relatively small, but there should not
have been any loss – since according to you the fund has grown 11%
since inception. So Mr. Driver not only suffered an actual loss but
also lack of growth for the period his pension was invested in
Blackmore Global.
Additionally, he was advised to
transfer out of a final salary pension with no proper analysis.
Something that would result in a UK FCA registered adviser being
closed down. No doubt the poorly qualified and unregulated adviser
from Square Mile will say that there was no obligation for a non-UK
firm to provide this analysis at the time. However, the movement from
a final salary scheme will have resulted in substantial and, as yet,
unquantifiable detriment. How many others suffered the same fate? On
that note, does your client ensure that the advisers are all properly
qualified to undertake pension transfer activities?
The structures into
which his funds were invested are registered in a variety of
commonly-used and well-regulated financial jurisdictions subject to
appropriate trust and segregation arrangements, and far from the
“scam”,
“toxic fund’ or
“swamp”
to
which you refer. The allegation that our clients’ products are
“toxic”
is
simply the worst description which can be applied to a product in the
investment market, and cannot be justified on any basis, objective or
otherwise.
Given the recent spate of fund
failures in the Isle of Man, I would question the well-regulated
jurisdiction comment.
I absolutely
stand by the terms I used to describe the fund. Indeed, this is
borne out by the description of the cells in the Blackmore Global
documentation:
“Lifestyle
Cell”:
gaming, spread betting, sports events, construction of facilities,
travel solutions, fine wines, art and antiques.
These
are all categories of investments which are typical of the classic
investment scams and are certainly not suitable for pensions.
“Private
Equity Cell”:
venture capital, growth capital and leveraged buyouts.
Very
high risk and entirely unsuitable for pension investments.
“Property
Cell”:
commercial and residential property developments.
Illiquid,
speculative and high risk. Entirely unsuitable for pension
investments.
“Sustainable
Cell”:
renewable energy including biomass, solar, wind, hydro and waste to
energy projects.
Again,
illiquid, speculative and high risk. Entirely unsuitable for pension
investments.
3. Scammers are
Criminals
As the title to
this post suggests, herein you discuss the alleged lack of regulation
and activity taken by regulators and the police to prevent “scams”
and
to sanction those involved in the same. By including our client
within this post, the clear inference is that our client is involved
in fraudulent, criminal and deceptive conduct. You go to list a
number of “failed”
investments
including Capita Oak and Ark, and the implication of such is that our
corporate client is or was involved in those investments or seeking
to promote a similar product.
You need to be
clear about which clients you are referring to. You have three
clients (according to your own letter): 1. Blackmore Global 2.
Phillip Nunn 3. Patrick McCreesh. Blackmore Global is a corporate
entity so cannot of itself “do” or “say” anything – except
those in control of the entity, i.e. Messrs Nunn and McCreesh, can.
Messrs Nunn and McCreesh were involved in the promotion of Capita Oak
and Henley and numerous SIPPS – all of which were 100% invested in
Store First store pods. Store First is subject to a winding up
petition and the entire schemes and all parties involved in the
promotion, distribution and administration of the schemes are subject
to a Serious Fraud Office investigation.
The deceitful conduct of your clients
is clear and detailed above.
“This
so-called Malta-based pension trustee is running the Optimus
Retirement Benefit Scam No. 1 QROPS. it is illegally promoting UCIS
funds to UK residents and these include toxic, illiquid funds such as
Blackmore Global and Richard Reinert’s Symphony.”
A QROPS on its
own is merely a wrapper and on its own is relatively harmless –
except for the fact that should HMRC decide at some point it does not
meet the requirements, it can be removed from the QROPS list without
notice to the members of the scheme. However, it should not have
been promoted to UK residents at all, should not have accepted
transfers from advisers (Square Mile) who were not licensed for
pension advice, should not have allowed investments in entirely
unsuitable UCIS funds such as Blackmore Global – a high risk,
opaque fund with no tradable assets.
QROPS are sold to UK residents, in
these cases, for one reason. To get the funds away from the regulated
jurisdiction of the FCA where UCIS and undisclosed fees are rife. A
real IFA would recommend regulated funds in a UK pension at a
fraction of the cost, with no commissions being taken.
“Optimus
permitted UK residents to be put into a QROPS and then be invested in
Blackmore Global and Symphony UCIS funds: toxic, high risk, illiquid
and volatile. Blackmore Global is run by Nunn McCreesh: one of the
cold calling scammers behind Capita Oak, Henley and other scams
invested 100% in Store First — the promoters are now under
investigation by the Serious Fraud Office and Store First is subject
to five winding-up petitions.”
Correct.
Meaning
Again, you describe
our corporate client’s products as being “toxic,
illiquid funds”. Correct.
We address above
that, whilst it is correct to describe the product as “illiquid”
the
manner and context in which that term is used is designed to be
harmful to our client. My
intention is to warn the public against having their pensions
invested in the fund as it is indeed entirely unsuitable for pension
investments.
The funds are not liquid, hence the
term illiquid.
The product offered
is not worthless or “toxic”
as
you repeatedly seek to describe it as. So
prove it. You keep claiming it is not worthless and toxic, but you
provide no evidence and you clearly don’t even know what the assets
are.
The value of the
product has in fact increased since its inception and, again, is
designed as a long-term investment of 10 years. As
above: prove it.
For the sake of
clarity, Nunn McCreesh was a financial advisory firm established in
around 2008 to 2009 by our clients, Phillip Nunn and Patrick
McCreesh. Nunn McCreesh has been dormant since 2013, and is now wound
up. Both our clients Messrs Nunn and McCreesh were directors of this
firm. It was never involved in “cold
calling”.
Nunn McCreesh
was involved in cold calling and I have several witnesses prepared to
testify to this, and
are looking forward to their chance to do so.
For the sake of
clarity, I will also refer you to the Insolvency Service’s witness
statement dated 27.5.2015:
Documents and information received
from four members of CAPITA OAK indicated they were initially
contacted by Craig Mason or Patrick McCreesh of Nunn McCreesh of Its
Your Pension Ltd and offered pension review services prior to them
being referred to JACKSON FRANCIS or Sycamore for the transfer of
their pension to CAPITA OAK.
On 3.3.15 I received an undated
letter in which it was stated that Its Your Pension had not traded
and was a dormant company and that Nunn McCreesh had traded as an
insurance brokerage between 2009 and 2012 when they entered into a
verbal arrangement with TRANSEURO where in return for providing
pension leads to JACKSON FRANCIS they received a commission from
TRANSEURO.
Nunn McCreesh provided JACKSON
FRANCIS with 100-200 leads per month which were provided by email
and/or telephone for which they received £899,829.86 from TRANSEURO
during the period 26.3.12 to 14.5.14.
As your clients
clearly received a substantial sum of money from the Transeuro scam,
perhaps you would like to suggest they return this money to the
victims to help them with their profound distress, loss of their life
savings and tax liabilities? I am sure this would be much
appreciated and would mitigate some of their inevitably poor
reputation.
Rather, it
generated business through the purchase of leads through reputable
providers such as moneysupermarket.com.
This is a well-known and established practice that many businesses
engage in, and this business was largely an insurance brokerage, also
dealing in wealth management.
This
is also an established practiced used widely by scammers. Nunn
McCreesh only had a license for selling insurance so if it was also
dealing in wealth management, then it was doing so illegally. Also,
Nunn McCreesh was an appointed representative of Sage Financial
Services which had gone into administration by July 2012 – just
before the Capita Oak et al scams were launched.
As
part of that business’ operations, it inevitably generated leads for
mortgages or investments in respect of which it would give
customers/consumers the option to refer to another firm that may be
able to assist them. As
clearly evidenced by the Insolvency Service’s witness statement,
Nunn McCreesh and Its Your Pension were supplying up to 200 leads per
month to Jackson Francis – one of the cold calling scammers
involved in these schemes.
Our clients had no
control over what financial investment advice may have subsequently
been given to customers/consumers, and whether those
customers/consumers then acted upon that advice. Nonsense.
Your clients had already entered into an agreement with Transeuro
regarding the 100% investment of all 1,000+ victims’ pensions into
Store First store pods and would have shared some of the 46%
commission (of £120 million) – 16% of which had been
stolen/defrauded from the victims.
I have already proved your clients
gave the advice (Remember Marc Rees for example?) and they dealt with
the UK trustees to move the funds into Blackmore. I would call that
control, what would you call it?
It is wholly false
to state that our clients are “behind”
Capita
Oak or Henley. Read
what the Insolvency Service wrote: it was clear the Messrs Nunn and
McCreesh were central to the promotion and distribution of Capita Oak
and Henley. Given their purported “25 years’ experience in
financial services”, had they possessed any ethics or conscience
they would have tried to stop this scam rather than becoming part of
it.
Furthermore, it is
utterly untrue and wholly insupportable to suggest that our client is
now under investigation by the Serious Fraud Office. Again,
I can only refer you to what the Insolvency Service has stated, and
also what the Serious Fraud Office has put in the public domain.
Numerous victims
have made their statements to the SFO personally and under oath –
as indeed have I.
The implication of
your reference to “promoters”
is
that you are referring to Messrs McCreesh and Nunn. By seeking to
associate our clients with funds such as Capita Oak and Henley, the
clear inference is that our clients are unskilled, dishonest and
deceptive so as to mislead their clients and stakeholders. That could
not be further from the truth. As
above: Again, I can only refer you to what the Insolvency Service has
stated, and also what the Serious Fraud Office has put in the public
domain. Numerous victims have made their statements – as indeed
have I.
“Gambling
with your Pension”
We direct you to
the above post on the Website, and are gravely concerned as to its
content.
“So, make
sure you only use an advisory firm which is licensed to provide
pension and investment advice….I have no idea who the jolly pair of
gamblers are in the photo on this blog, but I am sure no informed
person would entrust them with a pension and I reckon Kipling would
have had a thing or two to say about them. Away from the fun fun fun
of Vegas, these two amiable-looking scallywags could probably scrub
up and look like respectable independent financial advisers with a
business-like suit and a leather portfolio full of impressive
documentation about funds with imaginative names such as “Symphony”
and “Blackmore Global”. But if they did so without a
license, they would be criminals.”
Do you have permission to use the Las
Vegas picture? Investors Trust are very worried that people are
using this photograph as it is their property.
Meaning
Our client is not
an “advisory
firm”. Our
corporate client is in no way involved in the provision of advice to
consumers/customers, as we make clear above. Again,
you need to be clear which client you are talking about. Blackmore
Global the corporate entity or Messrs Nunn and McCreesh. Nunn and
McCreesh was indeed involved in introducing/promoting investment into
Blackmore Global.
If a
customer/consumer considers that they were inappropriately advised
upon the risks associated with an investment, or the fact that they
would be locked into an investment for a period of 10 years, their
first and only recourse is to seek redress from the relevant
financial advisor. Had
your clients not been actively promoting the Blackmore Global fund
themselves to unlicensed firms purporting to be financial advisers, I
might have agreed with you to a limited extent.
The clear inference
from your blog is that our corporate client is deceptive, deceitful
and dishonest in the promotion of its products, and in its
literature, that is distributed to customers/consumers by any
financial advisor. We
have already established that the inclusion of Meriden Capital
Partners as Investment Manager was deceitful and dishonest – as was
the subsequent claim made
by you
that Gerald Rodriguez of IIG was the Investment Manager.
The blog is clearly
intended to harm our client’s reputation by dissuading any investment
in its products. You
stated earlier in your letter that the fund was for High Net Worth
individuals – and I seriously doubt that my blog would dissuade
them from investing in Blackmore Global if they were enthusiastic
about investing blindly in high risk, illiquid funds with no audit.
The intention was to warn cautious, low-risk, pension savers against
the dangers of having their entire life savings invested in such a
fund.
Reference to
“imaginative
names” suggests
that the product themselves are imaginary and do not exist, or are
presented in a manner to infer respectability or credibility where
none exists or could exist. This again could not be further from the
truth. Blackmore Global is a well-established investment house, with
clear documentary evidence demonstrating its existence and into what
products monies are invested. We
have already established that the documentary evidence (factsheet and
brochure) contained false statements. Further, there is no audit so
there is no evidence as to where the monies are invested – and even
you don’t know.
“Serious
Fraud Office Requests Pension and Investment Scam Reports”
Again, this post
begins with reference to an “investigation”
by
the Serious Fraud Office into Capita Oak and other funds, where it is
well reported within the media that retirees have lost the entirety
or significant portions of pensions as a result of investments into
them. By deliberately linking our client to these entities, Your
clients are linked to these entities – as clearly evidenced by the
Insolvency Service’s witness statement
your only intention
can be to divert business from them and to cause serious financial
harm as a result. We quote below the salient paragraphs within the
post, which refer to our clients. I
have no interest in causing your clients financial harm – why would
I? But I do think that vulnerable pension savers have a right to
know the background of the people behind a fund which is being
promoted to retail, UK-resident investors.
“Of course
the blooming obvious happened — all the scammers went on to operate
further scams and ruin thousands more victims’ lives. The cold
calling firm, Nunn McCreesh, went on to operate the toxic UCIS fund,
Blackmore Global; many of the cold callers upgraded their operations
to “introducers” and the Ginger Scammer promoted himself to
fund investment manager in the Trafalgar Multi Asset Fund (£21
million now suspended).”
And all of that
paragraph is 100% true.
Meaning:
On any ordinary
consideration, a reference to “all
the scammers went on to operate further scams and ruin thousand more
victims’ lives” is
intended to create the impression that our clients are criminals, and
have engaged in fraudulent and deceitful practices, which they are
seeking to replicate through Blackmore Global PCC Ltd. You adopt
highly emotive language in describing those that invested in funds
that have “failed”,
but
what you neglect to accurately describe is our clients’ (limited)
involvement. Your
clients’ involvement was far from “limited” as you put it.
Nunn McCreesh earned £900k providing up to 200 leads a month to a
cold-calling scam outfit (Jackson Francis) over a two year period.
They had entered into an agreement with Transeuro, so they were in on
the plan from the start.
A reference to our
clients’ former business, Nunn McCreesh, as being a
“cold calling firm” is
clearly intended to discredit our clients. The reality is that at no
point was Nunn McCreesh a cold calling firm, as set out above. Nunn
McCreesh had indeed been cold calling directly, as well as working
closely with cold calling scammers – feeding them thousands of
leads.
Referring to our
client, Blackmore Global PCC Ltd, as a toxic, UCIS fund is an attempt
to describe its business as worthless. It is not, as you will be
aware, a fund. Rather, it is, as set out above, a closed-ended
investment company. The underlying asset classes are not “worthless”,
but
rather have increased in value since establishment. Again,
you are confusing the asset classes with the assets themselves. The
classes may not be worthless – because they are generic and loosely
refer to a type of asset. But the assets themselves may or may not
be worthless – we won’t know until the mysterious, long-promised
audit makes an appearance. My worry is that the sustainable cell
which states it invests in “waste to energy projects”, might
contain some Premier New Earth Recycling – which is indeed now
worthless.
6. Blackmore
Global Fund — Asset or Black Hole?
Of serious concern
to our clients is your most recent post entitled “Blackmore
Global Fund —Asset or Black Hole”. By
reference to the title alone, the clear inference is that our
corporate client’s product is worthless and that any monies invested
have been forever lost. So,
provide the accounts and the audit and prove what the fund is worth.
It is simply not credible that a firm like Grant Thornton could take
almost a year to produce an audit.
I think we can agree the lack of information about the fund could be
referred to as a black hole.
We set out below the salient paragraphs
of the post:
“A fund like Blackmore Global
really ought to be audited as soon as possible — to make sure it
isn’t simply a “black
hole” into which victims’ hard-earned pensions have sunk.
Numerous worried pension savers are stuck in the Blackmore Global
Fund and finding it difficult — if not impossible — to get out.
They are seemingly “locked in” for ten years.”
“Nunn and
McCreesh generated up to 200 leads a month to pension scammers in
relation to a series of pension/investment scams which are now under
investigation by the Serious Fraud Office. This entailed £120
million worth of pensions being invested in Store First store pods
which are now the subject of a winding up petition — and arguably
worthless.”
“The
Blackmore Global NAV Factsheet also states that there is a ten-year
lock-in to the fund. So why would anyone invest a pension in such a
fund? A pension saver has a statutory right to a transfer and might
want to take his PCLS — 25% tax free withdrawal at age 55 — or
retire, or even die. What on earth is the point in using Blackmore
Global for a pension at all? Ever.”
“Most of
the victims of the Blackmore Global fund were initially cold-called
by a firm called Aspinal Chase. And all the victims were advised by
unregulated investment advisers such as
Forth
Capital and Square Mile Financial Services (an insurance license does
not cover regulated investment advice). But more worryingly, all of
them were put into a QROPS in Malta or the Isle of Man. So why were
UK residents transferred to an offshore pension at all, and why were
most or all of their pension funds invested in a UCIS which is
illegal to be promoted to UK residents?”
“And here,
we get back to whether the unscrambling of these pension and
investment scams is more about who you know rather than what you
know. One victim had his pension invested 75% in Blackmore Global and
25% in Symphony. Symphony was a fund invested in derivatives and
highly leveraged.”
“Now we
have gone round in a complete circle. A catalogue of lies, deception,
fraud, mis-selling, negligence and incompetence.”
“I don’t
envy Grant Thornton (if indeed they are the auditors) because they
have got to unscramble this unholy mess. And I strongly suspect that,
behind the scenes, there are certain parties who are busting a gut to
ensure the audit is never published. Two of these may well be John
Ferguson and David Vilka of Square Mile in the Czech Republic who
seem to have a strong vested interest in promoting this black hole of
a fund.”
“Meanwhile,
the longer the victims are held back from transferring out of this
toxic swamp of a fund, the more serious the complaints against the
various parties involved will be. These will include the cold-calling
scammers; introducers; advisers; pension trustees and insurance
companies such as Investors Trust who allowed this investment and the
pensions transfers from unlicensed advisers.” And?
All of the above is true.
Meaning
You describe
investors in our client’s products as being “stuck”
and
“locked
in”, with
numerous “worried
pension savers”. The
natural and ordinary meaning of this statement is that investors
cannot exit the fund and that their investment potentially forever
lost in a
“black hole”. This
highly emotive paragraph can only be intended to create fear and
misstates the fact that the product in question is, as set out
elsewhere, intended to be fixed for a period of 10 years. The purpose
of fixing the product for a 10-year period is to ultimately increase
returns for investors and to enable the underlying asset classes to
embed, generating the highest return whilst allowing a period where
investors do not call upon the company to extract monies invested.
So
tell your clients to let the retail
investors out of the fund – and give them a copy of the audit. I am
sure there will be enough sophisticated and institutional investors
that wish to remain. Have you asked your clients what percentage of
the funds come from UK retail pensions and from sophisticated
investors/institutions? This will be a question raised in court.
The suggestion that our clients
Messrs Nunn and McCreesh, generated up to 200 leads to advisors now
under investigation by the Serious Fraud Office, as it led to
investment into assets that are now worthless, is obviously designed
to impact our clients’ credibility and reputation. It
doesn’t matter what the “design” was – it is true and clearly
evidenced.There
is quite enough smoke and mirrors already without trying to hide your
clients’ background.
The natural and
ordinary meaning of such a statement, to any ordinary reader, is that
our clients facilitated or engaged in conduct that is criminal, and
in fact the most serious of conduct that deceived retirees and led to
the loss of their pension funds. Capita
Oak and Henley were repeatedly determined by the Pensions Ombudsman
as being scams. And scammers are criminals (as confirmed by the
Pensions Regulator). Your clients, Messrs Nunn and McCreesh did
facilitate and were engaged in the promotion and distribution of
Capita Oak and Henley and had entered into an agreement with
Transeuro – so they would have known the pensions were going to be
invested in store pods. You claimed several thousands of words ago
that your clients had 25 years’ experience in the financial
services sector – therefore they should have known better than to
get involved in such an obvious scam which would inevitably ruin
thousands of people’s lives. They would have known that the object
of the exercise was to earn substantial amounts of investment
introduction commission from Store First at the expense of the
victims.
This statement is
wholly untrue. As
above, your clients had an agreement with Transeuro and knew what the
whole scheme was about.
In fact, the
correct position is that through Nunn McCreesh they purchased leads
through reputable companies, such as moneysupermarket.com.
Where that lead potentially also generated opportunities which were
not serviced by Nunn McCreesh, on the consent of the
customer/consumer how
did the consumer “consent”?,
this was referred to several other firms. Yes,
the cold-calling scammers who were also involved in the whole scheme.
Our clients had no
control whatsoever over the advice subsequently given, as set out
above, and whether that advice was acted upon. But
they knew that every lead which was successfully converted would end
up with the investor losing his or her entire pension as it was due
to be 100% invested in store pods.
Our clients were
not involved the process of giving that advice. They
were a part of the conduit which harvested the leads and passed them
over for conversion to the scammers. They
were the
process.
Our clients are, in
reality, no more responsible than the company from which they first
purchased the relevant lead. Your
clients were an integral part of the whole process and were fully
aware that every lead they passed on was in danger of facing
financial ruin.
However, you seek
to present our clients as dishonest and deceptive, and imply that
their conduct/involvement is also under investigation by the Serious
Fraud Office. This is an extremely serious allegation to make and one
without any factual basis or truth. How
would you describe a firm that passes on 200 leads a month for two
years knowing that if converted, each individual’s entire pension
would be invested in store pods, and that the value of the assets
would immediately drop by at least 46% due to the investment
introduction commissions (in which they shared to the tune of £900k)?
DEFAMATORY MEANING
Your comments
appear to be based on a number of fundamental misconceptions and
errors:
As we refer to
above, our corporate client’s product Blackmore Global is not a UCIS.
Yes
it is.
It is, again as set
out elsewhere and above, a 10-year closed-ended product and as
promoted by an unregulated investment company. Your statements that
Blackmore Global is a UCIS fund at all, and also that it is a UCIS
fund that is being illegally promoted to retail investors are simply
wrong. This
has already been dealt with several times above.
In any event, and
again as stated above, our corporate client does not and has never
contracted directly with retail investors (ie. individual personal
investors) in respect of the Blackmore Global product. Your
corporate client is a corporate entity which cannot of itself “do”
anything. But the directors can and do. Messrs Nunn and McCreesh
ran Aspinal Chase which was a cold calling, lead generating
introducer, which was contacting members of the public so that they
could have their pensions invested in Blackmore Global. Mr. Driver
mainly dealt with Aspinal Chase, and the pension transfer
administration was handled by Pensions & Life – another company
run by Messrs Nunn and McCreesh.
It only contracts
with professional and institutional investment entities. The
individual investors (who you are wrongly describing as “victims”)
are
in fact (and again, as set out above) direct clients of those
professional investment entities who make investment recommendations
to their personal clients. Already
dealt with above.
Once again, our
corporate client provides no advice or recommendation as to the
suitability (or otherwise) of the relevant product to the
professional
investment advisers. Any complaints about the unsuitability of an
investment choice for a particular individual are a matter for that
individual to take up with their own professional investment adviser.
Our client has no relationship with those individuals, and only with
professional and institutional investors who undertake their own
extensive due diligence on all of its investment products. Your
client has no relationship with anybody – there is no communication
with the trustees or the investors.
If this gets to court, I will be
demanding to see evidence of the extensive due diligence. Since
there are no accounts, no valuations, a banned fund manager involved
in other scams (Weal), evidence of collaboration with the Capita Oak
scam (subject to an SFO investigation) and no evidence of your
clients’ qualifications to run a fund- I would question the word
“extensive”.
Accordingly,
whether a fund is “wholly
unsuitable for a pension fund” is a
matter to be taken up with the relevant independent financial adviser
involved and assessed on each individual case. So
why were your clients Messrs Nunn and McCreesh, acting as Aspinal
Chase, contacting retail members of the public in the UK in order to
persuade them to move their pensions to a QROPS so that they could be
invested in their own fund, Blackmore Global? Why
was the adviser they introduced, after an assessment, recommending
their funds?
There can be no
justification for your assertion that our clients’ products are,
without exception, unsuitable for any
pension funds when in fact they will in many cases be wholly,
suitable. There
is, indeed, every justification – because until and unless the
mythical audit appears, we won’t know for certain what the
underlying assets are. There is very compelling evidence that the
assets have clear links to other investment scams, but let us wait
and see when the audit comes out.
Furthermore, your
various inferences of conflicts of interests are made without any
semblance of objective foundation or justification. It
is a clear conflict of interest for your clients to be promoting the
fund as well as running the fund to the general public – i.e.
ordinary, retail pension savers.
Blackmore Global is
not a toxic investment. Based
on the clear evidence we already have which is published on your
clients’ own documentation, it most certainly is a toxic
investment. This can be further reinforced or refuted once the audit
is available. But to be honest Steve, to keep on repeating
statements about the fund without having a clue what the investments
are is pointless.
Despite the length
and content of your various posts, without carrying out your own
detailed due diligence (no evidence of which is present in any of
them), you simply cannot be in a position to make the Defamatory
Statements, either as statements of opinion or fact. This being the
case, and based upon the serious financial harm already done to our
clients’ interests as a result of their content, your various claims
are seriously defamatory and allow our client to seek redress from
the Queen’s Bench Division of the High Court. This
begs the question whether you yourself have carried out any detailed
due diligence. You keep denying that Blackmore Global is toxic, but
you haven’t a clue what the assets are.
You also state that
our corporate client is directly
involved in “pension
scams”, that
their investments are “esoteric”
in
nature (and so less of a “mainstream”
and
viable option than others). Similarly, your reference to our client
being “unregulated’
against
a context of their not needing to be in the Isle of Man is clearly
intended to damage its reputation in the minds of readers of the
Website and the posts — our client has, for the avoidance of doubt,
the requisite “Regulated Custodian”, of which you should be
aware and have failed to clarify in an attempt to strike a more
justifiable and balanced tone in the relevant post. This
has all been dealt with above.
Again, any
individuals would have received professional advice in that regard
before the relevant investments were made and our client was under no
obligation (nor could be, nor could any of its market comparators) to
investigate the nature of the advice provided by independent
and
professional financial advisers which they can only expect to have
been supported by detailed suitability assessments on the type of
investments into which relevant funds were placed to achieve the
relevant client’s stated investment aims. This
has all been dealt with above.
Our clients run
their businesses to the highest professional standards So
where are the audit and the accounts?
in conjunction with
a carefully-selected external advisory team. Carefully
selected like Meriden Capital?
Their reputation is
unblemished and hard-won, and your attacks upon them should not, and
will not, be tolerated. If
your clients have a hard-won, unblemished reputation, why haven’t
they come forward to help the Capita Oak and Henley victims? They
now know that over 1,000 victims have lost their pensions due to them
being 100% invested in store pods and that many of them are facing
crippling tax charges. So, how many times have they come forward and
offered to help the victims which they helped put in this position in
the first place? Have they offered to put up the £900k they earned
out of ruining these people to help them?
After Capita Oak
and Henley imploded, did they devote their lives to help save and
rescue the victims? No, they set up a toxic, illiquid, speculative
fund and then promoted it to more retail pension savers.
DEFAMATION AND
MALICIOUS FALSEHOOD
The content of the
Defamatory Statements can lead, and in this case have in fact already
led, to our clients suffering serious financial loss, and as such
serious harm to their reputation as a business. All
they had to do was to offer to help the Capita Oak and Henley victims
and their reputation would have been fine. Another thing that would
have helped would have been to publish a clear disclaimer on the
Blackmore Global: “for professional, institutional, high-net-worth
investors only”.
Messrs Nunn and
McCreesh have also seen their personal and professional reputations
tarnished as a result of your allegations. Because of your posts, at
least one lender has refused to deal with our client, Was
that by any chance in respect of a loan application to secure funds
to help the Capita Oak and Henley victims?Your
clients are without question mistaken because lenders would not
refuse a loan on the basis of a blog – they would refuse a loan on
the basis of lack of security or bad credit history. No lenders have
come to me asking for confirmation or evidence of information
contained in my blogs.
various
intermediaries have refused to deal and introduce clients and
opportunities to them, Can
you blame them when your clients were involved in the promotion of
Capita Oak and Henley and far from stopping to help the victims they
are working on creating more victims?
and at least one
financial services provider with whom they have enjoyed a
longstanding association has indicated that they no longer intend to
deal with our client. Can
you blame them when your clients were involved in the promotion of
Capita Oak and Henley and far from stopping to help the victims they
are working on creating more victims?
Dependent upon your
response and the extent of the financial damage which you have sought
and have been able to do to date (which we will quantify in due
course), our client reserves the right to seek relief from the Court
by way of an award in damages for inducement to breach contract over
and above or in conjunction with the damages which it may seek to
recover from you in defamation (again, to which we refer below). I
don’t think the financial damage your clients have caused can be
finally quantified until we see the audit for Blackmore Global. I
was speaking to one of the trustees yesterday, and he said he still
can’t get a sensible answer as to where the audit is or what is
taking so long. He has tried speaking to both Grant Thornton and
Blackmore Global – but there is no conclusive news. I can tell you
quite accurately what the financial damage suffered by the Capita Oak
and Henley victims has been.
The statements set
out above have caused and are likely to cause our client serious
financial damage, thereby constituting “serious
harm” pursuant
to section 1 of the Defamation Act 2013. In particular, our clients
are extremely concerned that, were they to be further repeated to
recipients over and above the content of, our corporate client is
likely to incur further losses by way of other clients looking to
terminate their contracts with them. If
these clients are retail, UK-resident pension savers, then they
should all be released from Blackmore Global immediately. To refuse
to allow them to redeem would now be entirely irresponsible and
negligent now.
Regardless of the
serious harm already cause to our clients by the publication of the
Defamatory Statements, and given what we believe to be the wide level
of dissemination to an audience likely to (at least initially) place
some trust in their contents as a result of your intent to “rescue
and prevent pension and investment scam victims”, the
sheer gravity of your allegations, namely that our clients have
behaved dishonestly, looked to mislead clients and effectively
defraud them of very substantial sums of money largely makes any
discussion around the harm caused as a result of their publication
academic, and the Court would in our view have no difficulty in
inferring serious harm having been caused even where it is borne out
by the evidence already available to our clients. It
is beginning to become somewhat tedious reading the many repetitions
of “your clients having suffered serious harm”. What about the
1,000+ victims who have lost their pensions? What about those who
have had heart attacks, strokes, nervous breakdowns? What about
those who have died – some of whom committed suicide because of the
unbearable stress of their predicament: i.e. losing their entire life
savings and never being able to retire. You have already said that
the Blackmore Global fund is aimed at high net worth individuals,
institutional and professional investors. So let them get on with
promoting the fund to them. The reality is, of course, that those
types of investors would carry out their own due diligence and would
never touch a fund without an audit with a very long barge pole.
In the
circumstances and given their substance, there can be no real doubt
as to the meanings of the Defamatory Statements, as we set out above,
in the eyes of right-thinking members of society (including our
clients’ students and other stakeholders). Students?
I sincerely hope your clients are not teaching others the same
methods and approaches to pensions and investments.
The Defamatory
Statements are wholly unsupportable and indefensible on the basis of
being substantially true, statements of honest opinion or made in any
manner or circumstance which could conceivably be protected by
statutory or qualified privilege. 100%
of what I have written is clearly evidenced and absolutely true.
Given their
audience (insofar as we are aware of the extent of publication
without further disclosure from you) and the niche nature of our
clients’ products and services, our clients’ concerns are
well-founded and in the circumstances are further monitoring their
impact whilst being entirely justified in looking to issue
proceedings against you in defamation for an award in damages to
vindicate the damage done to its reputation, in addition to an
appropriate and prominent apology to be published to each and every
recipient of them. How
many apologies have your clients made to the Capita Oak and Henley
victims? And how many apologies have they made to Mr Driver?
In the alternative
and in the very unlikely event that the Court were not to agree that
our clients are entitled to recover damages from you in defamation,
given that the statements above were made despite the fact that you
knew them to be entirely untrue, I
did not know them to be entirely untrue. I never say anything unless
I know it to be true and have clear evidence.
with the malicious
intent of causing damage to our clients’ business and financial
interests and have already cause our clients actual financial loss,
our clients would in any event be well-advised to issue proceedings
against you for an award of damages in malicious falsehood. I
have no interest in causing damage to your clients’ business and
financial interests. But I do want to stop the Blackmore Global fund
from being promoting (by your clients) to retail investors.
Your acts of
defamation and/or malicious falsehood I
have neither defamed nor written falsehoods – malicious or
otherwise.
are wholly
unacceptable to our clients and, in the circumstances, it intends, if
this matter cannot be resolved on a more informal basis, to pursue a
claim in defamation and/or malicious falsehood against you, in
addition to a potential claim for inducement to breach contract. I
think many of the various victims of Capita Oak, Henley and Blackmore
Global would be absolutely delighted if this were to come to court.
They would all be queuing up to provide witness statements and
testimonies. Indeed, I also think it would be a good thing if this
were all put in the public domain – as long as it does nothing to
compromise the Serious Fraud Office investigations and prosecutions.
REMEDIES
In the
circumstances, we urgently seek the following remedies from you:
Publication of an
immediate suitable apology to any and all recipients of the
Defamatory Statements and any and all other similar messages; I
am afraid I cannot do that as I have made no defamatory statements
Your undertaking
not to repeat the allegations complained of above; I
have made no allegations – I have made factual statements which
are clearly evidenced
Compensation for
the damage to our clients’ reputation and for any financial loss it
has suffered; Your
clients can make up for their own poor reputation by offering to
compensate the Capita Oak and Henley victims and by allowing all the
Blackmore Global investors who are in pensions to redeem immediately
and pay them compensation for their losses (and obvious charge no
early redemption fees)
Reimbursement of
our clients’ legal costs. What
legal costs? Slater and Gordon is a no-win-no-fee firm and you
personally are a mate of Phillip Nunn so I would have thought you
are doing this as a favour (especially as you have no expertise in
defamation).
If proceedings
prove necessary and unavoidable (which may, dependent upon your
Response or failure to respond as requested), the remedies which will
be granted to our client by the Court include:
An injunction,
Damages;
Publication of a
suitable apology,
Your further
assurance that the statements referred to above (or any similar
statements) will not be made or repeated;
Legal costs and
interest.
What I will
propose:
Your clients
pay £900k into an escrow account for the benefit of the Capita Oak
and Henley victims
Your clients
agree to release all pension savers out of the Blackmore Global fund
and make a clear undertaking not to allow any further retail
investors/pension savers to become invested in it
Your clients to
pay compensation to all retail investors/pension savers in Blackmore
Global for financial loss and distress caused due to the refusal to
redeem out of the fund
You and your
client will immediately provide a complete transaction history of
all asset purchases from inception, quarterly NAVs and a definitive
date for publication of the audit
You and your
clients to confirm that the following are among the assets of the
Blackmore Global fund:
Please reply to
this letter as a matter of urgency, in the most complete manner
possible and in any case by 4:00 PM on 1 August 2017. Should you
delete the Defamatory Statements from your Website pending resolution
of this matter, our clients would (subject to the provision of
appropriate reassurances as to your current and further conduct)
consider taking no further action against you. I
cannot delete the “defamatory statements” you refer to, because
there are none.
Pending your
response, our clients reserve all rights against you, including in
relation to an application for urgent injunctive relief, in the event
that the undertakings requested above are not provided and the
remedial action requested above and therein not taken. We strongly
recommend that you seek legal advice in relation to the contents of
this letter from a solicitor specialising in the law of defamation.
You should not underestimate our clients’ determination to seek
redress as a result of your wholly unfounded, profoundly damaging and
completely unjustifiable allegations. And
you should not underestimate my determination to obtain redress for
your clients’ victims – and to prevent further victims.
Blackmore is two scams for the price of one: Blackmore Bond and Blackmore Global Fund. Both run by Phillip Nunn and Patrick McCreesh of Blackmore Group. Blackmore Bond is a “loan” scheme (bond) which has conned £25 million out of hundreds of victims and is now in default. Blackmore Global is an “investment” scam which has never provided any evidence as to where the money has gone and what it is invested in. It is thought that more than £40 million is invested in the fund. Both scams have left hundreds of investors worried sick that they may never see their money again.
Blackmore Scam by Nunn & McCreesh
Much has been written about both scams – by interested observers, bloggers, journalists, distressed investors/lenders and by me.
Investors of Blackmore is a closed Facebook group run by Mat Noakes. Mat created the group for Blackmore Bond victims, and makes sure that those who apply to join are genuine investors. He has strict rules about conduct on the group (as he is entitled to). Mat is raising funds to take legal action against Blackmore and has provided a substantial amount of information and evidence on this scam. Most revealing of all is that the so-called property development projects which victims have funded are incomplete and bound to be difficult (or impossible) to sell. Blackmore has run out of cash and is in default. Nunn and McCreesh are using a series of lame delaying tactics to try to assuage the victims’ fears. As with most Ponzi-style scams, once new money dries up, existing lenders/investors don’t get their promised returns and can’t get their money out.
Blackmore Bond and Global Fund is an open group run by me. I created it for both Blackmore Bond and Blackmore Global victims. Anyone can join – even the scammers if they want to (although I doubt they’d have the balls – scammers are almost always spineless cowards). There are no rules – anyone can say whatever they want. Especially me. I say openly and publicly that both Blackmore Bond and Blackmore Global are scams run by Phillip Nunn and Patrick McCreesh who have used a series of other known scammers to promote and distribute these two scams.
Blackmore Bond was promoted by Surge Group run by Paul Careless. He has been arrested and is under investigation by the Serious Fraud Office. Surge earned £6 million out of promoting this high-risk, illiquid, unregulated bond to low-risk investors. Surge also earned £60 million out of promoting the London Capital & Finance bond scam which is now being wound up by Finbarr O’Connell of Smith & Williamson.
Blackmore Global was promoted by two spivs: David Vilka and John (Gus) Ferguson of Square Mile Financial Services. Another spiv – Charlie Goldsmith – lurks in the background and appears to make even more money out of promoting Blackmore than Vilka and Ferguson.
Behind the lies, deception and undoubted fraud perpetrated by Nunn and McCreesh, let’s look at their history in some depth. In 2012/13, they were running a firm called Nunn McCreesh which was an appointed agent of Sage Financial Services. Their legal permission was to sell (mediate) insurance. But clearly they didn’t earn enough out of doing legitimate business, so they turned to financial crime.
Joining the string of scammers behind the Capita Oak, Henley, SIPPS scam led by XXXX XXXX, Nunn McCreesh set out to help scam hundreds of victims into bogus occupational pension schemes and have their life savings invested in store pods (out of which the scammers earned 46% in commission).
The scam was investigated by the Insolvency Service in 2014 (and later by the Serious Fraud Office). Here’s what the Insolvency Service’s witness had to say about Nunn McCreesh on 27.5.2015:
Documents received from members of CAPITA OAK indicated they were initially contacted by Patrick McCreesh of Nunn McCreesh and Its Your Pension Ltd and offered pension review services.
Its Your Pension had not traded and was a dormant company.
Nunn McCreesh had traded as an insurance brokerage between 2009 and 2012 when they entered into a verbal arrangement where in return for providing pension leads they received a commission.
Nunn McCreesh provided 100-200 leads per month which were provided by email and/or telephone for which they received £899,829.86 during the period 26.3.12 to 14.5.14.
It is important to understand the pedigree and psychology of Phillip Nunn and Patrick McCreesh to understand why they should never have been allowed to handle anybody’s money. And why they would have been better off in prison rather than being left free to put what looks like over £65 million worth of victims’ money at risk.
The Insolvency Service’s own research established that the pair had been masquerading as trading legitimately from a non-trading company. This establishes their dishonesty.
“Pension reviews” have been a classic feature of many pension scams in the past ten years. They are a way of conning victims into handing over their pensions to bogus schemes such as Capita Oak and Henley – and placing them into the hands of serial scammers such as XXXX XXXX and Stephen Ward.
Nunn McCreesh was mainly interested in the lucrative business of commissions. This in itself is a dishonest and toxic practice since it is deliberately hidden from the investors – who have no idea that large portions of their hard-earned life savings are being handed over to the scammers.
Over a period of more than two years, Nunn McCreesh provided around 5,000 “leads” to the other firm of scammers involved: Jackson Francis. These leads would, inevitably, have been obtained illegally. As a result of this industrial-scale scamming, Nunn McCreesh gave potential victims’ contact details to Jackson Francis. It is known that at least 1,200 of these resulted in the contacts losing their entire pensions.
During this two-year period, Nunn and McCreesh obviously learned a great deal from the other scammers. They also saw XXXX XXXX making a fortune out of this particular scam – and then watched him go on to make an even bigger fortune out of the Trafalgar Multi Asset Fund scam. Seeing XXXX XXXX boasting a magnificent country house, Ferrari and champagne lifestyle, they obviously realised they were only in the “little league” and needed to move up a gear. And thus Blackmore was born.
Nunn and McCreesh then teamed up with the scammers behind Aspinall Chase and Aktiva Wealth Management, later renamed Square Mile International, then Michalska Holding and now called Planet Pensions. The firm has just been wound up.
These scammers – Gus Ferguson, David Vilka and Charlie Goldsmith – then proceeded to scam many hundreds of victims into the Blackmore Global Fund. They duped UK residents into transferring their pensions into QROPS in the IoM, Malta and Hong Kong: Kreston, Optimus, Harbour and GFS. After all the scammers shared out the huge commissions, there would have been very little actual cash left – and what there was would have been invested in worthless rubbish which paid more commissions. These sub funds would have included Swan and GRRE – also run by known scammers.
Nunn and McCreesh claim on their website that they invest part of the Blackmore Global fund in commercial property. My worry is that some of this may be the same or similar commercial property to the worthless rubbish held in the Blackmore Bond. Of course, there have never been any audited accounts – despite many repeated assurances for the past four years they they are “working on it”.
My biggest worry is: why was this allowed to happen? Why weren’t Phillip Nunn and Patrick McCreesh prosecuted back in the days when they were under investigation by both the Insolvency Service and the Serious Fraud Office? Why weren’t they put safely behind bars so they couldn’t scam any more victims? And where was the FCA? Nunn and McCreesh were clearly running an unregulated collective investment scheme without permission. We know the FCA has the power to take action against firms they suspect of running such schemes because they’ve done so with Park First doggedly for the past three years.
The Blackmore Group website claims to be: “a Real Estate Investment House, built to be an institutional yet dynamic company capable of maximising market opportunities by combining a blend of investment management experience and real estate expertise”. Yet Nunn and McCreesh only have a track record of miserable failure and scams. Their company, Nunn McCreesh, only operated for one year from 2012 to 2013. During this twelve month period it somehow managed to chalk up £351,000 worth of debts and loans. Neither Nunn nor McCreesh has ever demonstrated any investment management experience – other than what they may have gleaned about investment scams from XXXX XXXX. The Companies House accounts paint a bleak picture. The last published accounts – 2017 – show the company being barely solvent and with debts of over one million pounds. And no sign of the 2018 accounts.
The Blackmore Global website spouts similar disingenuous nonsense claiming: “expertise of specialists and regulated Investment Managers, along with a robust due diligence process”. This is clearly downright lies. The Blackmore Global brochure claimed that a company in Barcelona – Meridan Capital – was the Investment Manager. And yet, when I spoke to Meridan Capital they said they most certainly were not. Had there been any due diligence done, the underlying assets would most certainly not have been accepted into the fund. These included Swan and GRRE – run by known scammers.
The Blackmore Bond website is full of similar lies and rubbish. It claims Blackmore is a property development company. It isn’t. It claims to have: “a wealth of property insight and a proven track record in delivering quality developments”. But according to the published accounts for 2017, it has £1.1 million worth of assets and £1.1 million worth of debts. And to have made £6,000 profit. I would say that is anything but a proven track record – and in fact shows that they have no experience or success in property development since they set the company up in 2016.
This whole episode shows the dangers of known scammers such as Phillip Nunn and Patrick McCreesh being left free to set up unregulated investment companies, bonds and funds with no professional qualifications or expertise. The only track record this pair has is a well-documented track record of success in selling illegally-obtained contact databases and of promoting bogus pension schemes which are under investigation by the Serious Fraud Office.
Meghan and Harry – the Duke and Duchess of Sussex – are having a tough time (and are running away from home). Their sadness and confusion is because they have no purpose or passion in life. So I am offering them an interesting and satisfying challenge: taking on and championing the cause of pension scam victims. Harry’s Mum knew a thing or too about adopting worthy causes and had no problem jumping on a plane to far away, war-torn places full of the most appalling human suffering and landmines. Meghan and Harry don’t even have to travel as far as the airport to find victims whose cause desperately needs championing.
Poor Duke and Duchess of Sussex – what an awful time they’re having: posh clothes; flash cars; sumptuous “cottage” in Windsor Park. They needn’t be bored and aimless any longer. They can become patrons of the plight of the thousands of British citizens who have lost £ billions to pension and investment scams.
Just as the Late Princess Diana confronted the horrific dangers of land mines, Meghan and Harry can confront the huge tide of appalling human misery caused by scammers Stephen Ward of Premier Pension Solutions; Paul Clarke of Roebuck Wealth; Dennis Radford of Spectrum IFA Group; Darren Kirby of CWM; Gus Ferguson and David Vilka of Square Mile; XXXX XXXX of Nationwide Benefit Consultants; Phill Pennick of Pennick Blackwell; Peter and Sara Moat of Fast Pensions; Paul Baxendale-Walker; Patrick McCreesh and Phillip Nunn of Blackmore Group; Paul Careless of Surge Group.
This is now becoming a very high-profile topic – especially in the light of the multiple, dismal failings of the FCA and a recent series of hard-hitting articles published by Tom Kelly of the Daily Mail. Kelly, an engaging and open-minded young man (who I am sure the Sussexes will like) has written about a wide array of pension and investment disasters which have befallen thousands of victims since 2010. I would urge Meghan and Harry to contact him: Tom’s email address is: Tom.Kelly@dailymail.co.uk and his editor’s address is: Geordie.greg@dailymail.co.uk
As the disillusioned Royals are bound to ask whether pension scam victims have anything to do with them (or whether they should even care about people who have lost their life savings or pensions), they might like to consider the following:
If Frogmore Cottage catches fire, Meghan and Harry will have to call the Fire Brigade. The sumptuous property cost £2.4 million to refurbish to the highest possible standard, but even the best sparks do sometimes make the odd mistake. The Royals’ home – and even their lives – will be in the hands of the firemen. These brave firefighters will risk their own lives running into the burning building; then will rescue the people and (hopefully) save the building.
If Meghan and Harry’s baby son Archie is unwell after inhaling smoke, they will rush him to hospital – where he will be tended to by nurses and doctors.
If a therapeutic trip to Canada is required (to get over the upset of their home being damaged by fire), the plane will be flown by two pilots.
Pension and investment scammers target people from all works of life – including firemen, doctors, nurses and airline pilots. Next time the Sussexes place their hands into the lives of any of these professionals, they might like to consider whether these people are victims of scams and are worried sick about their financial losses.
Scammers don’t care what their victims do for a living: sparks, chippies, builders, gardeners, taxi and bus drivers, soldiers, care workers, architects, scientists, accountants, artists, police officers…the list is endless – and includes airline pilots.
Meghan and Harry need not think that going to Canada will get them far away from the world of pension and investment scams. These criminals have long arms and can easily reach as far as North America – and well beyond. The long list of highly-organised scams includes schemes in the UK and all expat jurisdictions across the globe – including Canada.
Coming from a privileged background where Harry’s Mum gets paid more than £8 million a year (and Meghan and Harry are reportedly worth around £30 million), it is going to be hard to get their heads round the poverty thousands of victims are facing. Perhaps cutting the purse and apron strings will teach Meghan and Harry just how hard it is to earn a crust – and save for a retirement that isn’t handed to them on a plate.
While the Duke and Duchess of Sussex fly backwards and forwards between the UK and Canada, perhaps they might like to ponder a few things:
How to keep the plight of pension and investment scam victims in the headlines
How to encourage the government to make financial regulation effective
How to provide a law-enforcement system that ensures all scammers are jailed
How to get the law changed to ensure HMRC pursues the perps rather than the victims
Whether the pilot of their plane has lost his pension and hasn’t got his mind entirely on the job
If Meghan and Harry do accept this challenge, they will have to accept that it won’t be easy. The scammers are determined, hard-nosed and hard-hearted criminals; the regulators are lazy and mostly asleep at the wheel; the police are over-stretched and under-resourced; the government hasn’t got a Scooby – and anyway can’t think beyond Brexit. This is evidenced by the fact that the moronic Chancellor Sajid Javid appointed arch FCA failure Andrew Bailey to govern the Bank of England. Boris Johnson was just as bonkers to endorse this ridiculous decision. When he told the Queen of the appointment, she should have given him a good slap round the earhole. (Mind you – she was probably a bit preoccupied about the company Uncle Andrew was keeping at the time, and she probably thought “oh well, at least Bailey isn’t a paedophile”).
The biggest challenge in fighting pension and investment scams is how to help prevent further victims. The best way to do this is to keep the topic firmly in the public eye – and that means encouraging the press to keep the subject in the headlines (and not let it get shoved out of sight by trivia). The other important role that Meghan and Harry could play would be to ensure that politicians keep their promises. A couple of years ago Boris Johnson promised a group of his constituents that he would tackle pension scams. But nothing happened and now he is ignoring them. We all know he’s been a little busy recently, but leaving his own constituents hanging after promising he would help them is not acceptable.
I remember being with two Ark victims at least five years ago and begging journalists at The Sunday Times and The Sun to run an article on the Ark scam. They all said it wasn’t “sexy enough”. Mark Atherton of The Times wrote a very good piece in The Times in 2014, but he was severely threatened and never wrote about pension scams again. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/pension-scam-leaves-victims-in-debt-k33rlcs25wc
Just think how many victims could have been prevented had the media done their duty and fully exposed the parties who caused and facilitated these scams since 2010. Then think how many suicides and stress-related deaths could have been prevented. Consider how much money could have been saved from destruction – and how many people could have been looking forward to a well-earned and comfortable retirement rather than abject poverty and misery.
In October 2019, The Mail’s Tom Kelly came to my office in Spain and spent several days with me. I went through the whole history of Stephen Ward and Ark (followed by Capita Oak and more than a dozen others), as well as James Lau and Salmon Enterprises, Paul Baxendale-Walker, Peter Moat and Darren Kirby’s Continental Wealth Management. I explained to Tom in detail how the flow of money works from the ceding pension providers: Aviva, Standard Life, Prudential, NHS, Police and Local Authorities etc., to the receiving schemes; what the difference between personal and DB pensions is and how the whole bogus occupational scheme fraud worked. Most important, we went through how hidden commissions and high-risk, toxic investments often destroy victims’ funds – as well as the life bonds such as OMI, SEB, Generali, Friends Provident, RL360 which lock investors in to entirely unnecessary, inflexible and expensive offshore bonds – AND PAY FAT COMMISSIONS TO THE UNQUALIFIED, UNREGULATED SCAMMERS.
In case Meghan and Harry are still unsure whether patronage of an initiative to outlaw pension and investment scams is their cup of tea, I will share, yet again, the video which features the death of CWM victim Mark Davison:
Laura Shannon of The Mail On Sunday attended Mark’s memorial service and interviewed dozens of further CWM victims in September 2019. While five months pregnant, Laura made the journey to Denia, Alicante, in fierce heat – putting all other so-called investigative journalists who write about financial services (or not, as the case may be) to shame. Not even stopping to recover from an arduous bus journey from the airport, she got stuck straight in and wrote an excellent piece: https://pension-life.com/continental-wealth-management-plunder-in-paradise/
Responsibility for reforming financial services and bringing culpable parties to justice may lie with governments, regulators, police and HMRC. But Royals could do their part too. Meghan and Harry: get stuck in to a worthy cause. Find out what the real world is really like for ordinary, decent, hard-working victims of pension and investment scams.
Finally, I am enormously grateful to Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell for calling out our idiot Chancellor Sajid Javid over the appalling appointment of Andrew Bailey as Governor of the Bank of England. Anyone who fancies dropping him a line can reach him here: mcdonnellj@parliament.uk or here: lowderh@parliament.uk
GFS QROPS LIQUIDATION: It is with a heavy heart that I have decided to ask the GFS Superannuation Scheme 2 (Hong Kong QROPS) members to support a petition for the winding up of the scheme and the liquidation of the underlying assets.
For two years, I have been waiting for due process through the courts of Hong Kong to produce the desired result: a clear determination as to who the trustee is and permission for that trustee to take the appropriate action to release the members. I have resisted taking any action which could have prejudiced these proceedings. However, in recent weeks, it has become clear that the court proceedings are not likely to produce the desired result – either any time soon or at all. Meanwhile, the GFS members are trapped in a nightmare of uncertainty – unable to access their rightful benefits. The GFS members need two things urgently:
1. Their funds back – either the cash held or the funds redeemed out of the high-risk, illiquid, unregulated investments into which their pension savings had been placed fraudulently
2. Justice for the scammers who conned the members into transferring their pensions to a Hong Kong QROPS in the first place; and then tricked them into investing the money into these inappropriate, high risk, illiquid funds. One of the scammers was David Vilka of Square Mile International in the Czech Republic. Vilka (pictured below with his partner in crime – Fatty Ferguson) has a long track record of conning victims into high-risk investments which pay him fat commissions.
It is now nearly two years since I first provided an affidavit to the court as to the unsuitable investments and the provenance of the “advisers” who cold called the members, and then – inevitably – made large commissions from the investment commissions.
A great deal of time, effort and money has gone into the court proceedings, but it must now be acknowledged that it has brought the members no nearer to getting their pensions back (with the possible exception of those members who escaped having their funds invested and are still sitting in cash).
I am, therefore, going to ask the court in Hong Kong to order the winding up of the scheme and a full investigation into the investments – including to whom investment introduction commissions were paid – to be carried out. This should also include an application for the winding up of the underlying funds: Blackmore Global, Swan, GRRE, Eco Vista and Granite if possible.
There is always a cost to liquidation proceedings, but I consider we have now reached the stage where the investors have got 100% of nothing, and we need to pursue (vigorously) the chance to at least get a lower percentage of something.
Let us look at the background to QROPS scams. There is nothing inherently wrong with a QROPS. It is nothing but a “wrapper” which is registered by HMRC and can accept transfers from UK, HMRC-recognised pension schemes. This is important, as any person who transfers a pension to a non-HMRC recognised scheme is liable to a 55% tax charge as the transaction would be an UNAUTHORISED PAYMENT.
But let us be clear: a scheme is given “recognised” status by HMRC because the administrator/trustee of the scheme says it complies with HMRC’s rules. HMRC does nothing to verify this – and if they decide some time later that the self-certification of the scheme was wrong (either deliberately or accidentally) then any members would get hit with a 55% unauthorised payment tax charge.
The “O” in QROPS stands for “Overseas”. This means that a QROPS is supposed to do what it says on the tin: “provide an overseas pension for people living overseas”. This is the spirit of the QROPS legislation. A QROPS should only rarely be used for UK residents with high-value pension funds. A QROPS should NEVER be used for UK residents with low-value pension funds.
However – for years – scammers have seized upon QROPS and abused them as a golden opportunity for scamming victims out of their retirement savings. As far back as 2009, Stephen Ward of Premier Pension Solutions was operating pension busting out of several New Zealand QROPS including Southern Star and Endeavour. Ward was, of course, earning huge commissions out of the transfers and the liberations.
In 2012, after the collapse of the Ark (occupational pension) scam (which destroyed nearly 500 victims’ pensions totalling £27 million), Ward turned his attention to the Evergreen New Zealand QROPS. This operated 50% liberation and destroyed 300 victims’ pensions totaling £10 million – earning Ward 10% on the transfer fee and further fat commissions on the underlying Penrich and Spectrum investments.
Since then, the use of QROPS for investment scams has become rife – replacing the previous weapon of preference: the bogus UK-based occupational scheme. Finally the Malta Regulator (MFSA) has introduced stiffer rules to try to prevent this. A prime example of a large-scale scam involving various QROPS in Malta, Gibraltar and Guernsey was the Continental Wealth fraud which involved 1,000 victims and £100 million worth of investments. Investors’ life savings were placed in pointless, commission-laden insurance bonds such as OMI, SEB and Generali, then invested in toxic structured notes which paid the scammers further hefty commissions.
In 2014, STM Fidecs in Gibraltar was operating a scam in partnership with known scammer XXXX XXXX (who had been behind the Capita Oak scam and is now under investigation by the Serious Fraud Office). STM accepted 400 transfers from XXXX XXXX – an unqualified and unregulated adviser – in respect of UK-resident victims who should never have been transferred to an offshore scheme. STM then accepted £21 million worth of investment instructions into XXXX XXXX’s own fund: Trafalgar Multi Asset. This fund – a UCIS fund which was illegal to promote to retail UK residents – is now being wound up and the investors could face a total loss.
In parallel, Harbour (another QROPS provider) in Malta (which had rejected XXXX XXXX’s Trafalgar scam) was accepting transfers and investment instructions from David Vilka into the Blackmore Global investment scam. Vilka was also using Integrated Capabilities and Investors Trust to earn even more eye-watering commissions from flogging Blackmore Global. Ironically, STM now owns Harbour Pensions – having bought the firm out and paid former owner Justin Caffrey £1 million.
Investigations into the Blackmore Global investment scam have been ongoing for several years. The fund falsely claims the Investment Manager to be a company in Spain called Meridan Capital Partners (who claimed they had never heard of Blackmore Global – or the scammers behind the fund: Patrick McCreesh and Phillip Nunn). There have never been any audited accounts for the Blackmore fund. However, it is known that the underlying assets include Swan and GRRE – funds into which the GFS members are also invested.
There are two camps of GFS members:
a. Those who were invested in Blackmore Global, Swan, GRRE, Eco Vista and SN Granite funds and, apparently, “locked in” for between five and ten years
b. Those who were not invested in any of these UCIS funds, but who are still in cash and appear to be trapped somewhere between the conflicted trustees in Hong Kong. Some of these members are in Hansard insurance bonds. Hansard will not release their money until the issue of the trustees is clarified or the trustees voluntarily reach agreement.
Part of the reason for my decision is that it is clear that one of the investments – the Blackmore Global fund – is part of a wider investment scam. This fund is also invested in the other funds: Swan and GRRE etc., and is run by Phillip Nunn and Patrick McCreesh who were running the lead generation and cold calling operation for the Capita Oak/Henley pension scam. All those involved in Capita Oak are now under investigation by the Serious Fraud Office.
Blackmore Global is part of the Blackmore Group which also operates a bond called Blackmore Bond. This bond was promoted by Surge Group (Paul Careless) which was also responsible for the promotion of another failed bond: London Capital & Finance. It is public knowledge that Surge was paid over £100 million to promote these two bonds. LC&F is now being wound up by Finbarr O’Connell (below) of Smith & Williamson. Careless is now under investigation by the Serious Fraud Office following his arrest in June 2019.
I will be sending members a letter of authority to sign which I will submit to the court in Hong Kong in support of the petition. I am instructing solicitors immediately. Please be advised that this decision has been taken with the greatest of regret. I have watched and waited quietly while the different parties have spent a fortune on legal fees – but members are still in limbo. I cannot allow this to continue: wasting members’ precious remaining years.
I know that members have been frustrated by the lack of news, and I am deeply sorry. However, it was not prudent to give out information while there was a possibility that the matter could have been resolved in court – or, preferably, amicably. It would have been irresponsible of me to disclose anything that could have prejudiced the proceedings or hindered a possible resolution to the deadlock in the litigation.
We are now way past that point. Against a backdrop of the legal stalemate in the Hong Kong court; multiple associated investigations by the Serious Fraud Office in similar cases; numerous winding-up orders against various funds and bonds with links and similarities to this case; the complete absence of any audited accounts by any of the funds in which the GFS members’ pensions are invested; evidence of pension liberation; absence of full disclosure or cooperation by the parties involved, I don’t believe there is any alternative.
I will now be taking legal action against the various parties who claim to be trustees in the Hong Kong court. These include: Connaught West; Michael John Foggo; Tribune Ltd.
The priority is firstly to protect the interests of the members and secondly to bring to justice those responsible for putting the members’ funds at risk.
If it was easy to stop pension scams, everyone would be doing it. Clearing up the mess left behind a pension scam is a huge challenge. This is why clear international standards need to be recognised and adopted. The scammers are like flocks of vultures. If people only used regulated firms, they could avoid a lot of scams.
Firm must be fully regulated – with licenses for insurance and investment advice
Advisers must be qualified to the right standard
Firm must have Professional Indemnity Insurance
Clients must have comprehensive fact finds and risk profiles
Firm must operate adequate compliance procedures
Advisers must not abuse insurance bonds
Clients must understand the investment policy
All fees, charges and commissions must be disclosed
Investors must know how their investments are performing
Firm must keep a log of all customer complaints
Why is regulation so important?:
If a firm sells insurance, it must have an insurance license.
If a firm gives investment advice, it must have an investment license.
Many advisers will claim that if they only have an insurance license, they can advise on investments if an insurance bond is used. This practice must be outlawed, because this is how so many scams happen.
Most countries have an insurance and an investment regulator. They provide licenses to firms. Some regulators are better than others. Most regulators do some research and only give licenses to decent firms.
History tells us that most pension scams start with unlicensed firms. Here are some examples:
Continental Wealth Management invested 1,000 clients’ funds in high-risk structured notes. Investors started with £100 million. Most have lost at least half. Some have lost everything. Continental Wealth Management had no license from any regulator in any country.
Serial scammers such as Peter Moat, Stephen Ward, Phillip Nunn, and XXXX XXXX all ran unlicensed firms. Peter Moat operated the Fast Pensions scam which cost victims over £21 million. Stephen Ward operated the Ark, Evergreen, Capita Oak, Westminster and London Quantum pension scams which cost victims over £50 million. XXXX XXXX operated the Trafalgar pension scam which cost victims over £21 million.
Phillip Nunn operates the Blackmore Global Fund which has cost victims over £40 million. Serial scammer David Vilka has been promoting this fund. Over 1,000 people may have lost their pensions.
Firms that give unlicensed advice are breaking the law. Unlicensed advisers often use insurance bonds. These bonds pay high commissions. The funds these advisers use also pay high commissions. The advisers get rich. The clients get fleeced. The funds get destroyed. Insurance bonds such as OMI, FPI, SEB and Generali are full of worthless unregulated funds, bonds and structured notes.
Unlicensed firms hide charges from their clients. Most victims say they would never have invested had they known how expensive it was going to be.
Hidden charges can destroy a fund – even without investment losses. Licensed advisers normally disclose all fees and commissions up front. This way, the client knows exactly how much the advice is going to cost.
People can avoid being victims of pension scammers. Using properly regulated firms is one way. An advisory firm should have both an insurance license and an investment license. Don’t fall for the line: “we don’t need an investment license if we use an insurance bond”. Bond providers such as OMI, FPI, SEB and Generali still offer high-risk investments. The insurance bond provides zero protection. And the bond charges will make investment losses much worse.
Blackmore Bond – yet another reason why only regulated advisers should be used for investment advice.
The clear link between the recently-failed LCF Bond and Blackmore Bond through Surge Group remind us how important regulated investment advisers are.
In the news again is the troubled Blackmore Group. This time we read that they have ‘temporarily’ closed their bond – the Blackmore Bond – to new business. Just a few weeks ago, Blackmore Bond changed the wording of the sales material on this product.
The Blackmore Bond transparency was not due to Blackmore Group having a yearning desire to be honest with their victims. It was all down to new FCA rules for being “clear, fair and not misleading” whenever an investment is promoted.
Recently, there has been a lot of media coverage on high-cost, high-risk bond investments failing. One of these is London Capital & Finance (LCF). This unregulated bond collapsed and went into administration earlier in 2019. £236 million had been invested into it. But investors had not been warned of the costs and risks involved. Of this £236 million, over £50 million was paid to Surge Group for promotional and marketing services.
1,200 victims duped into investing in the LCF bond
have lost at least 80% of their money
Fortunately for investors in the Blackmore Bond, it is still active. However, with such high promotional and marketing costs, the bond needs to be very successful indeed to overcome the initial 20% charges – most of which were paid to Surge.
In relation to the closure of their bond, Blackmore Group state on their website:
“We have achieved our fundraising goals for this tax year and are not currently taking in new investment. We will be introducing our next offering in the following tax year, so please watch this space for future announcements.“
Another questionable investment from the Blackmore Group is the Blackmore Global Fund.
The Blackmore Global Fund has been heavily criticised and also featured on BBC 4 You and Yours. The fund saw 1,000 victims conned into this expensive, illiquid and high-risk UCIS. It is illegal to promote UCIS funds to retail investors in the UK. They are certainly not suitable investments for a pension fund.
David Vilka of Square Mile International Financial Services was one of the promoters of the Blackmore Global Fund. Vilka invested many of his UK-resident clients into this unsuitable fund. Undoubtedly, he was paid fat commissions for these investments. Unregulated and unqualified, Vilka was no doubt lining his own pockets, instead of doing what was best for his clients.
Vilka lied to his clients, claiming to be fully regulated. He transferred his UK-based victims’ pensions into the Optimus Retirement Benefit Scheme No.1 QROPS. Much of this money was invested into the Blackmore Global fund.
The connection between Blackmore Group’s Bond and London Capital & Finance (LCF) is Surge – a marketing agent. The LCF bond was promoted by Surge until it collapsed in December 2018.
After LCF collapsed, Surge went on to promote the Blackmore Bond. This promotion was done using ISA-rating websites.
London Capital & Finance is not the only failed investment in recent years. Other failures include Axiom with £120m worth of investors’ funds (£30m of which was with life offices FPI and OMI); LM £456m (£90m with FPI and OMI); and Premier New Earth (NERR) £207m (£62m with FPI and OMI).
The new transparency demanded by the FCA is much needed.
Unfortunately, it won’t change the fact that well over one billion pounds have been lost between LCF, Axiom, LM and NERR. We are still left wondering why the regulators have not taken a tougher stance on restricting the promotion of such UCIS funds. The FCA’s limp stance is especially worrying when the promoters of these high-risk bonds and funds are targeting UK retail investors.
All these failures and losses should remind both regulators and consumers that only regulated firms should be used for investment advice.
The ceding providers have something significant in common with the scammers. When we expose some of the scammers, their lawyers swing into action. I once had letters from Carter Ruck, Mishcon de Reya and DWF land on my desk all in one day. The scammers’ lawyers bleat loudly about their “poor” clients’ reputations.
Every pension scam starts with a negligent transfer
But the ceding providers are just as bad: their lawyers think it is fine to facilitate financial crime. Here’s an extract from recent letter from one of them:
“You state you have “hard evidence” that our customers “have suffered serious loss because of our negligence”. You have not provided any such evidence. Please therefore produce such ‘hard evidence’ by return.”
This lawyer went on to request evidence that the provider ought to have known that the receiving scheme in
question was a scam. She went on to state that my allegations were “wholly unfounded” and to demand that I take down this blog:
But this pension provider has given me no reason to take the blog down – and no justification for the claim that the firm is “innocent” of handing over victims’ pensions to obvious scammers. Back in 2010, the Pensions Regulator warned providers about transferring pension funds to scams:
“Any administrator who simply ticks a box and allows a transfer post July 2010 is failing in their duty as a trustee and as such are liable to compensate the beneficiary.”
But the providers have studiously ignored the regulator’s warning for nine years. And thousands have lost their pensions as a result of this sickening negligence.
Transferring pensions to scammers
Here is an “A to Z” of the pensions industry’s negligence in handing over thousands of pensions in defiance of numerous warnings since 2010. Note: to my knowledge not a single administrator has voluntarily compensated their victims – and all have emphatically denied they did anything wrong.
Transferring pensions to scammers – the ABC of shame
Aviva: Second only to Aegon in our list of shame, Aviva transferred numerous pensions from October 2013 onwards. This was well after the Pensions Regulator’s “Scorpion” warning. The largest of these was £258,684.05 at the request of well-known scammer Stephen Ward of Premier Pension Solutions. Ward had been behind the £27 million Ark liberation scam in 2010. On 21st January 2015, Aviva’s Robert Palmer told me they needed no help or advice with avoiding negligent transfers to obvious scams. One month later, Aviva handed over £23,500 to the GFS scam.
British Steel: Long before the much-publicised handing over of multiple members to scammers in 2018, British Steel was handing over pensions to the Hong Kong GFS QROPS scam in 2014 . Mainly advised by serial scammer David Vilka of Square Mile International Financial Services in the Czech Republic, the GFS scam invested hundreds of victims’ funds in UCIS funds such as Blackmore Global.
Clerical Medical: Another disgraceful firm with a long history of handing over pensions to Ark, Capita Oak, Westminster and GFS in 2014.
This A to Z of shame goes on and on – and includes all the big names (who should have known better):
April 2019 sees the battle between Store First and the Insolvency Service. On April 15th, the High Court proceedings will kick off. As a result, the Store First v Insolvency Service will determine how many people will lose their pensions permanently. Two sets of very expensive lawyers – DWF and Eversheds Sutherland – will battle it out to see if Store First can continue trading. In the end, if the Insolvency Service wins the war, then both law firms and an insolvency practitioner will get rich.
As a result of the Insolvency Service winning, 1,200 pension scam victims will probably lose the majority of their investments in Store First. In most insolvencies, there is little left after the various snouts in the insolvency trough have had their fill. Investors will be lucky to get 10p in the pound. If there’s an “R” in the month. And if it is snowing. And if Brexit has a “happy ever after” ending.
The Insolvency Service says it is “in the public interest” to wind up Store First. But are they right? Isn’t winding up the company going to do even more unnecessary damage?
One very important issue is that the Insolvency Service’s witness statement dated 27.5.2015 (by Leonard Fenton) is so full of inaccuracies, misunderstandings, incomplete facts and an obvious failure to understand how the scam worked – as to be utterly laughable. The Insolvency Service and the High Court will rely heavily on this witness statement – and yet it has so many holes and errors that it is misleading, incomplete and meaningless. I asked the Insolvency Service questions about the incorrect and incomplete statements and made numerous comments on the failings contained within the statement. But the Insolvency Service did not even have the courtesy to reply or even acknowledge my contribution. In my view, this is arrogance and incompetence in the extreme.
This impending legal battle (which will cost the taxpayer £millions) is riddled with many more questions than answers. Here are a couple of my questions:
QUESTIONS RE STORE FIRST V INSOLVENCY SERVICE BATTLE
Why did HMRC and tPR register Capita Oak and Henley Retirement Benefits Scheme as pension schemes in the first place?
How many of the many scammers behind Capita Oak and Henley have been prosecuted?
The reason for my questions is that both HMRC and tPR were negligent in registering the two occupational pension schemes. This was because the schemes were obvious scams from the outset. They both had non-existent sponsoring employers which had never traded or employed anybody. And they weren’t even in the UK.
HMRC was blind, stupid and lazy at the start – when these two schemes were registered by known scammers. But several years later, HMRC woke up pretty smartly and sent out tax demands for the “loans” the victims received. The Store First v Insolvency Service Battle is probably doomed to ignore HMRC’s negligence in causing this disaster in the first place.
James Hay and Suffolk Life had been facilitating the Elysian Fuels investment scam at around the same time. And this was with the considerable “help” of serial scammer Stephen Ward. So, this was a prime time for scams and scammers. However, both HMRC and tPR failed the public back then and have continued to do so ever since.
In 2015, the Insolvency Service identified and interviewed most of the scammers behind the Store First pension scam. In their witness statement dated 27th May 2015, Insolvency Service Investigator Leonard Fenton cited statements and evidence from all the key players.
KEY PLAYERS IN THE STORE FIRST PENSION SCAM:
Ben Fox
Stuart Chapman-Clarke
Michael Talbot
Sarah Duffell
Bill Perkins
XXXX XXXX
Alan Fowler
Jason Holmes
Karl Dunlop
Christopher Payne
Keith Ryder
Craig Mason
Patrick McCreesh (of Nunn McCreesh – along with Phillip Nunn)
Tom Biggar
Paul Cooper (Metis Law Solicitors)
That is fifteen scammers who have never been prosecuted. They have not only never been brought to justice, but many of them went on to operate further scams and ruin thousands more lives – destroying more £ millions of hard-earned pension funds.
And what of Toby Whittaker’s Store First? There is no question that store pods are not suitable investments for pension fund investments. Car parking spaces are unsuitable for pensions as well. There are, in fact, a long list of inappropriate investments for pensions – including anything high-risk, illiquid and expensive or commission-laden.
All the above are routinely used and abused by pension scammers as “investments” for some dodgy scheme. Invariably, the above investments come with pension liberation fraud and/or huge introduction commissions and hidden charges. However, it is rarely the fault of the artist, wine maker, start-up entrepreneur, truffle farmer or property developer that the scammers profit so handsomely from abusing their products.
Store First v Insolvency Service Battle
I hope Store First defeats the Insolvency Service in the forthcoming battle in the High Court this month. And I hope that the public and British government will finally get to see what embarrassingly inept, corrupt, lazy regulators and government agencies we have. I will publish the Insolvency Service’s witness statement separately for anyone who wants to read the Full Monty.
Let us not forget that the solicitors acting for the Insolvency Service – DWF LLP – also act for serial scammer Stephen Ward. It was Ward who was responsible for the pension transfers which subsequently invested in Store First. Had it not been for him, 1,200 victims’ pensions totaling £120 million wouldn’t now be at risk. But, somehow, DWF LLP doesn’t think that is a conflict of interest?!?
Let us be clear: if the Insolvency Service wins the court case, the investors will get nothing. This will mean that, yet again, the victims will get punished. If Store First wins, the investors will get at the very least half their money back. If they are patient, they may even get it all back.
Much like a black hole in Space, the Blackmore Global Fund and Blackmore Bond will swallow up victims’ savings – and never spit them out again.
20% Black Hole in Blackmore Global
It is no secret that we have little confidence in the Blackmore Global Group run by Phillip Nunn and Patrick McCreesh – two of the scammers who promoted Capita Oak and earned nearly £1 million from providing “leads” for the cold callers. Capita Oak is now under investigation by the Serious Fraud Office, and Nunn McCreesh’s nefarious activities were investigated and reported on by the Insolvency Service.
To confirm our suspicions that Nunn and McCreesh’s Blackmore Global Fund and Bond are not just high-risk and illiquid crap (and – of course – totally unsuitable for pensions or anyone with less money than sense), they have announced that 20% of your money could go towards paying for the “costs of the investment”. To put that into plain English, any of the unregulated scammers who promote and distribute the Blackmore investments are earning 20% in commission.
This new-found “transparency” by Blackmore is neither a courtesy to their customers, nor evidence of voluntary honesty. Rather, it is a reaction to the FCA´s new rules for being “clear, fair and not misleading” .
“Capital Protection” and “Income Certainty”. Immediately below these phrases, in letters half the size, were the words:
“Capital at risk | Please read our risk section. Illiquid and non-transferable. Not FSCS”
This change is in connection with Nunn and McCreesh’s Blackmore Global Bond. Their Blackmore Global Fund has already featured heavily in the press with criticisms about its costs and unsuitability for pensions. BBC 4 You and Yours did a feature on the fund back in January 2018, finding that an unregulated adviser – David Vilka of Square Mile International Financial Services – invested many of his QROPS clients into this unsuitable fund – which undoubtedly will have paid him fat commissions.
THE BLACKMORE GLOBAL FUND IS A UCIS (UNREGULATED, COLLECTIVE, INVESTMENT SCHEME) WHICH IS ILLEGAL TO PROMOTE TO UK RESIDENTS. Yet, David Vilka – who had no investment license – promoted it and Nunn and McCreesh accepted the many investments into it from him.
What is similar in both the Blackmore Global Fund and Bond, is the lack of transparency from the start. With the fund, there was also a ten-year lock-in, which was in the small print and not mentioned to the pension investors at the time of signing over their pensions to the scammers. Some of the members were nearly 60, meaning that they were unable to access their money when they retired.
The Bond, up until now, has had no transparency on its charges – and the risk factors were most definitely hidden.
The confirmation of a 20% commission charge (to the scammers who promote and distribute this risky, expensive, opaque investment) comes as a welcome dribble of transparency. However, it is still unclear as to how – after this huge payment – Blackmore investors will ever be able to recoup the initial costs and then start to make some headway on their investment.
Bond Review explains this well:
“In slightly simplified terms, if Blackmore raises £10,000 from an investor in its 3 year bonds paying 7.9% per year, and pays out 20% in commission, it now needs to turn £8,000 into £12,370 to repay the investor in full, representing a 55% return over 3 years – or 15.6% per year.
For its 5 year bonds paying 9.9%, the return required to turn £8,000 into £14,950 is 87% over 5 years, or 13.3% a year.
Any investment targeting a return of 15.6% or 13.3% a year will inevitably be extremely high risk – and while Blackmore can diversify over many such projects, some of its projects will fail, which will lower the overall return.”
This is not an investment to enter into lightly (or at all). Blackmore Global showed net liabilities of £7 million on assets of £18 million in its last accounts – December 2017. Finances and accounts can dramatically shift in the short space of one year: a well-run, professional and ethical company could turn things around. But with Blackmore Global failing for three years to even produce audited accounts on their fund, and lying about who their Investment Manager is, this hardly inspires any confidence at all.
Another worrying thing about Blackmore Global is that they use Surge Financial to promote their toxic wares – and has paid this firm £5.1 million in one year for “marketing services”. Surge Financial is run by Paul Careless, and was promoting the failed London Capital & Finance fund, which paid out an eye-watering 25% to the scammers who promoted and distributed their toxic wares. Having conned thousands of victims into investing £236,000,000 into London Capital and Finance, the whole lot is now probably lost as the company has gone into liquidation. But Surge Financial pocketed £60,000,000 in marketing this toxic fund – and is still promoting Blackmore Global. The FCA declared that the marketing blurb was misleading, unfair and unclear – and it is obvious that the lies told in the glossy brochures duped thousands of people into losing their life savings.
So, with Blackmore Global also using Surge Financial to source victims, and succeeding at the rate of £1.5m a month, it is a serious worry that there will be thousands more victims when the Blackmore Global shit hits the fan.
Bond Review is quoted as saying:
“That Blackmore Bond paid out up to 20% in commission is already known from Blackmore’s December 2017 accounts, which disclosed that £25.4m had been raised in the period (July 2016 to December 2017) and that £5.1m had been paid to Surge Financial for “sourcing investors loans and front and back office operations” (almost exactly 20%).
Could Blackmore Global go the same way as London Capital Finance? We already know that the Blackmore Global fund has been used to scam hundreds of UK-resident victims out of their pensions using QROPS. We also know that few of these victims have had their money back – and that there is zero disclosure as to where the money has gone.
Just remember: there are perfectly-good, regulated funds out there – with extremely low charges, zero commissions to scammers, and excellent performance history (openly reported in the public domain). People don’t need to put their hard-earned savings in black holes such as Blackmore which don’t even disclose what the underlying assets are.
ALL PENSION SCAMS START WITH A TRANSFER BY A CEDING PENSION PROVIDER.
It is interesting that PSIG chose three particular providers to give their answers to the questionnaire sent out: XPS Pensions Group, Phoenix Life Assurance Company and Standard Life Assurance Company. I have no doubt they chose these three providers because of their extensive first-hand expertise at facilitating financial crime. In the Capita Oak and Westminster scams – distributed and administered by serial scammers XXXX and Stephen Ward – and now under investigation by the Serious Fraud Office – Phoenix Life and Standard Life handed over dozens of pensions to the scammers. In Phoenix Life’s case, the total came to nearly half a million pounds’ worth, and in Standard Life’s case it was well over one million.
While there is, of course, substantial hard evidence that both the Pensions Regulator (formerly OPRA) and HMRC had been giving the industry plenty of warnings about scams long before the Scorpion Campaign was published on Valentine’s Day in 2013, it is also true that providers such as Phoenix Life, Standard Life – and other favourite financial crime facilitators such as Aegon, Friends Life, Legal & General, Prudential, Royal London, Scottish Life and Scottish Widows – carried on handing over millions to the scammers well into 2014, 2015 and beyond. And, in fact, they are still at it today.
The “Key Findings” do throw up some interesting facts:
“Information on scams is not readily available at an organisational level”.
Seriously? Don’t these organisations know how to do research? Do they really not know what to look for? They’ve had enough experience over the years – and have had enough examples of spending vast amounts of time trying to cook up reasons to deny complaints against their incompetence for handing over pensions to scammers – to write a whole encyclopedia about scams.
Organisations (such as Phoenix Life and Standard Life) could try talking to TPAS, or tPR, or the FCA, or the SFO, or Dalriada Trustees, or regulators in Malta, the IoM, Gibraltar, Dubai or Hong Kong. Or some of the thousands of victims – who have lost their pensions due to the incompetence and callousness of the ceding providers – who would readily fill in the blanks. There really is no shortage of readily-available, free information. They just need to take the time and trouble to ask for it. It really isn’t difficult. They just have to put their box-ticking pencils down for a few minutes.
“The Scams Code is seen as a good basis for due diligence”
I agree – it is really great. But it is also 78 pages long. Few people have to the time to read, understand or remember such long documents (with too many long words and not enough pictures). What would be helpful would be to get a few of the worst offenders: Aegon, Aviva, Friends Life, Legal & General, Phoenix, Prudential, Royal London, Scottish Life, Scottish Widows, Standard Life and Zurich, in a room at the same time – and bang their heads together. And threaten them that if they don’t get their acts together and stop handing over pensions to the scammers, they will be made to read and memorise the 78-page Scams Code and recite it every morning before coffee break. Twice. Then snap all their box-ticking pencils in half, and JOB DONE! It really isn’t rocket science – there are usually some hints which are as subtle as a brick, such as: the sponsoring employer doesn’t exist; or the member lives in Scunthorpe and is transferring to a scheme whose sponsoring employer is based in Cyprus. Or Hong Kong. Now, I know there was a bit of a hiccup with the Royal London v Hughes case when Justice Morgan overturned the Ombudsman’s determination. But dear old Hughes had probably had a few Babychams too many – and it had slipped his mind that the law is supposed to be about justice and common sense. And that just because a particular piece of legislation has been written by an ass, it doesn’t have to be interpreted with stupidity.
“Significant time and effort goes into protecting members from scams”
This, of course, may be true. I only get to see the cases where the negligent ceding providers dohand over the pensions to the scammers. I rarely get to see the ones that have a narrow escape. But what worries me is that I am in the process of making complaints to the ceding providers who have handed over pensions to the scammers, and not a single one of them thinks they have done anything wrong. So, if they do spend “significant time and effort” doing the protecting bit, how come so many of them still fail so badly? And then try to deny they failed. These providers spend very significant amounts of time and effort writing long, boring letters about how they did nothing wrong – letters which must have taken them at least an hour to write. And yet they won’t spent two minutes checking – and stopping – transfers to obvious scams.
“The more detailed the due diligence, the more suspicious traits are identified”
I am a bit suspicious that this indicates a touch of porky pies here. I’ve never seen any evidence of ANY due diligence by the ceding providers. A bloke at Aviva once told me that they spent thousands on research and due diligence – but I see no evidence of it. The problem is, the ceding providers don’t know what they don’t know. And, to coin one of my favourite phrases: “they don’t know the questions to ask, and even if they did then they wouldn’t understand the answers”.
Interestingly, if – instead of repeatedly spending hours denying they did anything wrong when they handed over millions of pounds’ worth of pensions to the scammers – they spent some time talking to me and the victims trying to learn what went wrong and what due diligence should have gone into preventing a dodgy transfer, they might learn how to stop failing so badly.
SIPPS (including international SIPPS) are the vehicle of choice by scammers
Agreed. But the scammers still love the good old QROPS. But whether it is a SIPPS or a QROPS – both of which are just “wrappers” at the end of the day, it is about what goes inside the wrappers. Where the scammers make their money is in the kickbacks: 8% on the pointless, expensive insurance bond from OMI, SEB, Generali, RL360, Friends Provident etc., and then more fat commissions on the expensive funds or structured notes.
“Quality of adviser tops the list of practitioner concerns, with member awareness a close second”
And hereby lies one of the main problems: ceding providers don’t know who the good guys are and who the bad guys are. And that is because they don’t ask. And they don’t learn from their mistakes when they get it wrong. And they don’t care when they hand the pensions over to the bad guys and their former member is now financially ruined and contemplating suicide. Instead of trying to use their appalling mistakes to improve their performance and understand what “quality” actually means, and how to tell the difference between good and bad quality, they only care about avoiding responsibility for their own failings.
The problem about “member awareness” is that most people assume their ceding provider will do some sort of due diligence. They think that words like “Phoenix Life”, “Prudential” and “Standard Life” convey some sort of professionalism or duty of care. Most members are simply unaware of the appalling track record of these providers – and the extraordinary and exhaustive lengths to which they will go to avoid being brought to justice for their negligence and laziness.
“Sharing of intelligence would help avoid duplication of effort”
Oh, how heartily I agree! I remember a year or so ago, I shared some intelligence and a few beers with a nice chap from Scottish Widows. We met at one of Andy Agathangelou’s symposiums in London – the subject of which was pension scams. The Pensions Regulator was there, Dalriada Trustees were there, Pension Bee were there, lots of interested parties were there (including an American insurer from Singapore), and a couple of victims. I gave a joint presentation with one of the victims who described how he had been scammed and how his provider had handed over his pension so easily – well after the Scorpion watershed. The nice chap from Scottish Widows asked the victim why he hadn’t called the Police. The victim replied: “I am the Police”.
It was very telling that the room wasn’t full of delegates from Aviva, Phoenix Life, Prudential, Standard Life etc. None of them were interested.
Not a single provider has ever phoned me up to ask for advice, or to arrange to speak to some victims to learn something about how they were scammed and how and why their ceding providers had failed them so badly. There are so many victims all over the UK and the rest of the world. And what they all share is a passion to try to prevent other people from being scammed by the bad guys and failed by the bad pension providers. So this invaluable intelligence is freely available.
Until and unless the providers develop a conscience, they are going to continue to fuel the pension scam industry – and nothing will change. And the 79-page code might just as well be consigned to the bathrooms of Aegon, Aviva, Friends Life, Legal & General, Phoenix, Prudential, Royal London, Scottish Life, Scottish Widows, Standard Life and Zurich.
Fighting pension scams: 
LCF Bond, Blackmore Bond, Blackmore Global Fund, LM, Axiom and Premier New Earth
Serial 
Firms that give unlicensed advice are breaking the law. Unlicensed advisers often use insurance bonds. These bonds pay high commissions. The funds these advisers use also pay high commissions. The advisers get rich. The clients get fleeced. The funds get destroyed. Insurance bonds such as 
Unlicensed firms 
People can avoid being victims of 
n the news again is the troubled Blackmore Group. This time we read that they have ‘temporarily’ closed their bond – the Blackmore Bond – to new business. Just a few weeks ago, Blackmore Bond changed the wording of the sales material on this product.
Another questionable investment from the Blackmore Group is the 
HOW DO PENSION SCAMS WORK?
Another worrying thing about Blackmore Global is that they use Surge Financial to promote their toxic wares – and has paid this firm £5.1 million in one year for “marketing services”. Surge Financial is run by Paul Careless, and was promoting the failed 
“Information on scams is not readily available at an organisational level”.
“The Scams Code is seen as a good basis for due diligence”
“Significant time and effort goes into protecting members from scams”
“The more detailed the due diligence, the more suspicious traits are identified”
SIPPS (including international SIPPS) are the vehicle of choice by scammers
“Quality of adviser tops the list of practitioner concerns, with member awareness a close second”
“Sharing of intelligence would help avoid duplication of effort”