Tag: Nunn and McCreesh

London Capital & Finance collapses

Another high-risk investment fund goes belly up. London Capital & Finance (LCF) has gone into administration, not long after taking a whopping £236m of investments – much of which was from first-time investors. It is thought that 12,000 investors have been financially ruined.

This tragic news comes as plans are being drawn up to take recovery action for the victims of three other failed funds: 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 £207m (£62m with FPI and OMI).

With so many millions having been lost between LCF, Axiom, LM and NERR – well over one billion pounds – this does beg the question as to when regulators are going to take some effective action to restrict the promotion of such funds to retail investors. Because, without the active and highly-efficient marketing machine which operates so successfully in so many jurisdictions, these no-hoper funds would never get off the ground. But, of course, they pay fat commissions to the introducers and brokers who peddle them. So, obviously, exposing naive-investor clients to high-risk funds was very profitable.

This also begs the question as to why the success of such dreadful funds continues to flourish – and why trustees and life offices continue to offer/accept them. Certainly, life offices have a great deal to answer for when it comes to doing due diligence on start-up funds with no decent provenance or evidence that they have even the tiniest chance of succeeding.

The London Capital & Finance investment bond was touted as a “Fixed-Rate ISA”, with promises of 8% returns over a fixed term of three years. BBC News reported on the collapse and stated that “Administrators said investors could get as little as 20% of their money back.” Read the full report.

What is interesting in this case, is that the promoters – a Brighton-based firm called Surge PLC – are the same marketing firm that Blackmore Global used to promote their very expensive Blackmore Global Bond. Another high-risk and expensive investment bond, that up until recently failed to be transparent about the costs involved in the investment.

It is thought that LCF paid Surge PLC some £60m to run their marketing campaign, which amounts to a commission of about 25%! Surge ran a series of marketing campaigns comparing the bonds from LCF to high-street bonds, promising consumers an 8% return. Comparison websites put LCF at the top of the retail market for bond investments and did not highlight the high risk of the bond.

These ads were pulled by the FCA, due to LCF being regulated and authorised to provide consumer financial advice ONLY. They were not regulated for the sale of bonds or ISAs. It has also been found that the comparison websites were not independent, but rather had a connection to Surge PLC and are also owned by Paul Careless – we have mentioned Paul Careless in other blogs: he is the Director of Surge PLC and seems to be one of the only parties involved in these high-risk investments to be making any profits!

As with so many high-risk unregulated investments like this, the age-old question is, “Where did the money invested into LCF´s bond go?”

We know that LCF paid Surge that huge commission fee, and this then meant returns of up to 44% would be required in order for LCF to make good on its promises. Even in a great investment, this is an unbelievably high return and totally unrealistic.

Once the investments had been completed, the money was then ‘loaned’ out to twelve other companies, and some of these companies then sub-loaned the money. There are concerns that the companies who received these ‘loans’ have a connection to the directors of London Capital & Finance. Many of the firms were very new and four of them have never filed any accounts!

Michael Andrew Thomson, known as Andy Thomson, took over as the boss of LCF in 2015 and is also director of horse riding company GT Eventing. He and Careless are under investigation over the mis-selling of this bond and their connection to the other companies invested in. However, Careless claims he has only carried out marketing practices that were requested of him and his 25% commission fee is in line with market averages.

BBC News spoke to Neil Liversidge – an IFA who came across the scheme back in 2015 and consequently wrote to the FCA to warn them about the connections and possible mis-selling of the investment.

Mr Liversidge said: “The way it was promoted, a great many people could have fallen for this. A client brought it to us, but when we looked into it there was a lot of interconnection between the people they were lending to and the management of LCF themselves. We warned our clients off and the same day we wrote to the regulator raising our concerns about the promotion.”

Mr Liversidge, of course, was proved to be absolutely right. But, unfortunately, it took the FCA a further three years to shut the bond down, which ended up with 11,605 victims investing £236m in LCF’s bond. Investigations show that recovery is likely to be as low as 20% of the initial investments made.

Whilst the investigation goes forward, there have been no promises of compensation from the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS).

BBC News reported:

“The FCA findings included that LCF’s bonds did not qualify to be held in an ISA account and therefore investors were being misled by being told the interest they earned would be tax free.

The FCA said it was “unlikely” investors of London City & Finance would be protected under the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) but it was “for the FSCS to determine”.”

Yet again we see unregulated investments being mis-marketed, to innocent retail investors – and the high risks being masked by promises of high returns. With high commissions – also masked – lining the pockets of the introducers, these toxic investments only make those who receive the commissions any profit. The victims, again and again, lose their hard-earned savings and there is little that they can do to recover them without expensive litigation.

For more on this story listen to BBC Moneybox by clicking here.

March 21, 2019
The wheels of the law don´t seem to turn at all

This week Henry Tapper wrote a blog entitled, “The wheels of the law turn (too) slowly”. He exposes the fact that when it comes to financial crime the justice system in place just isn´t enough.  I think he was being generous with his title. The wheels of the law don’t just turn slowly – they just don’t turn at all. Friendly Pensions has been in the news this week.

In the case of Friendly Pensions, we know ringleader David Austin is guilty of setting up 11 fake schemes, with toxic investments including a truffle farm. We know that he and his partners in crime, Susan Dalton, Alan Barratt and Julian Hanson (also connected to the Ark Scam), are guilty of scamming 245 pension savers out of £13.7 million. We knew all of this back in January 2018, yet no arrests have been made!

The FCA has, however, just yesterday, managed to enforce the following:

“David Austin, 52, has been banned from serving as a pension trustee and disqualified from working as a company director for 12 years. His business partners Susan Dalton, Alan Barratt, and Julian Hanson have also been barred from trustee roles.

David Austin’s daughter, 25-year-old Camilla, has been banned from serving as a director for four years for helping him with the scheme.”

They have been asked to pay the money back but by the looks of their social media accounts, I don´t think there is much left. Camilla’s Facebook and Instagram accounts show her sunning herself on beaches and yachts around the world, and posing at luxury alpine ski resorts. David Austin is pictured on a gondola in Venice. They certainly got to enjoy the proceeds of their many victims’ pensions.

Camilla Austin was a central part of the operational side of the Friendly Pensions scam. She and a number of her girlfriends went into nursing homes and approached elderly, frail and vulnerable elderly people. They easily conned them into signing transfer request forms – all that is required to get their hands on millions of pounds’ worth of pension funds. And, of course, we all know that the ceding providers do nothing to stop fraudulent transfers.

As Henry points out, banning these people from acting as trustees or directors, does little to deter past, present and future pension scammers. A ban is barely a slap on the wrist as far as we are concerned; these scammers can still launch any number of future dodgy schemes by simply finding the next crooked stooge – just as XXXX XXXX used the idiotic Karl Dunlop to be a director in the Capita Oak scam.

Keeping pension savers safe from financial crime should be at the top of the list – but, instead, it is at the bottom. Pension scammers are left free to commit their crimes over and over again. Take Julian Hanson: he was busily scamming dozens of Ark victims out of more than £5.3 million worth of pensions back in 2011 and 2012, yet he was not prosecuted or jailed. Hence, he was still able to get “friendly” with David Austin and go on to scam hundreds more victims out of their pensions.

Remember the Capita Oak, Henley Retirement Benefits and Westminster pension scams?   These were scams run by XXXX XXXX of Nationwide Benefit Consultants. However, XXXX was never brought to justice and so went on to operate the Trafalgar Multi Asset Fund/Victory Asset Management scam (STM Fidecs acted as the trustees here). So hundreds more people were again scammed out of their pensions. XXXX is currently under investigation by the Serious Fraud Office – but effectively still free to operate more scams.   We already have our suspicions about his connections to new scams.

Capita Oak was registered by HMRC on 23.7.2012 (PSTR 00785484RM) by Stephen Ward of Premier Pension Transfers of 31 Memorial Road, Worsley and Premier Pension Solutions of Moraira, Spain. Ward was responsible for the ARK debacle – also with Dalriada – the scam that was to create the birth of Pension Life.

Despite investigations being made into these schemes, Ward was still able to go on and create the CWM monster scheme that saw around 1,000 victims conned out of their pension funds. Ward is hovering somewhere between his collection of luxury villas in Florida and the Spanish Costa Blanca – but at least he is no longer doing pension transfers. Over the past nine years, Ward can be linked to dozens more pension scams that have left thousands of victims’ funds decimated.

These cases are just the tip of the iceberg. We must not forget Philip Nunn and Patrick McCreesh´s investment scam Blackmore Global. This was in the wake of them doing the lead generation for the Capita Oak and Henley Retirement Fund scams.  The Insolvency Service has wound up these schemes, yet Nunn and McCreesh remain free to defraud more victims as they have never been brought to justice.

David Vilka of Square Mile International was one of the main promoters of the Blackmore Global Fund scam.   He “advised” dozens – possibly hundreds – of victims to invest their pensions in this scam (despite the fact that he is neither qualified nor regulated to give investment advice). Again, he has never been prosecuted or jailed, so still remains at large – free to continue scamming people out of their pensions.

We published the Top 10 Deadliest Pension Scammers blog back in February 2018. In this blog, you can read about Fast Pensions and the Moats, as well as Steve Pimlott of Windsor Pensions. Whilst the Fast Pensions scheme has been wound up by the high court and placed in the hands of Dalriada, neither Sara nor Peter Moat is behind bars.

You can see a depressing pattern here: these words are about cold, hard facts. The authorities are leaving known scammers free to keep scamming.

Victims of these scams have been left in misery and financial ruin. Some have taken their own lives. Yet the perpetrators, those guilty of these repeated financial crimes, are free to do as they please.

This area of financial crime really is where the wheels of the law don´t seem to turn.  Shame there aren’t any regulators capable of doing any regulating, or law enforcement agencies capable of enforcing the law.

October 24, 2018
Trussed by Dolphin Trust?
I’ve been very concerned about Dolphin Trust GmbH for some time. There’s an awful lot of pension money being loaned to this company – and I don’t get to hear of many (in fact any) people who have had their loans repaid. That doesn’t mean they haven’t been repaid – it just means I haven’t heard about it.

The things that bothers me about Dolphin Trust are:
1. There are no audited accounts available
2. Dolphin has been used by an awful lot of pension and investment scammers – including Stephen Ward in the London Quantum pension scam (now in the hands of Dalriada Trustees)
3. “Introducers” get paid eye-watering commissions of up to 25%
4. If the assets and projects are so good, why pay private lenders 10% interest (on top of the 25% commission) – why not just go to the bank?
5. I have recently heard that Dolphin and some of their dodgy “introducers” are now trying to convince lenders to take their loans back in the form of shares in the company
But the biggest concern I have is that Dolphin Trust formed a major part of the underlying investments in the Trafalgar Multi-Asset Fund scam – run by XXXX XXXX of Global Partners Limited and STM Fidecs in Gibraltar. This fund is now being wound up by Stephen Doran, of Doran + Minehane.

The Trafalgar Multi-Asset Fund and XXXX XXXX are currently under investigation by the Serious Fraud Office. Ironically, Justin Caffrey of Harbour Pensions once told me that XXXX came to see him to try to flog the obviously dodgy Trafalgar fund. Caffrey claimed he could see XXXX was an obvious spiv straight away and that Trafalgar was clearly bad news – so he sent the ginger scammer packing.

And then STM Group bought out Harbour Pensions and got custody of some of Caffrey’s Blackmore Global Fund worthless crap to keep the Trafalgar Multi Asset Fund worthless crap company. You couldn’t make it up! A bunch of toxic rubbish flogged by scammers Phillip Nunn and XXXX XXXX.

STM Fidecs had notified the hundreds of victims that there would be a distribution in early 2018 once Doran + Minehane had got rid of some of the Dolphin Trust loan notes. But then STM did a U-turn and announced there wouldn’t be a distribution at all. Clearly, getting shot of the loan notes was more difficult (or impossible) than Mr Doran first imagined. Or perhaps he did get rid of them – but got shares in Dolphin Trust or Vordere instead (and this is the reason for the lack of distribution by STM Fidecs).

Any way you look at it, Dolphin Trust is looking dodgier than ever now it is well known that there are £21 million worth of Trafalgar Multi Asset Fund loan notes out there looking for a warm and cosy (and gullible) home.

Quite apart from the fact that no self-respecting introducer or financial adviser should EVER be caught selling high-risk, unregulated, non-standard “assets” in the first place, surely nobody would ever want to be caught flogging the same stuff that the likes of XXXX XXXX and Stephen Ward were making a fortune out of.

I did try to call Dolphin Trust, but they don’t answer their phone. Maybe they don’t like cold calls (which is how most victims get scammed into lending them money in the first place).

Without the benefit of any assurances from the nice men at Dolphin Trust – Charles Smethurst, Helmut Freitag, Axel Krechberger and Matthias Ruhl – we will just have to hope that Mr Doran manages to offload the second-hand loan notes that STM Fidecs allowed 400+ victims’ life savings to be invested in. Perhaps I’ll drop him a friendly note and suggest he tries ebay.
June 29, 2018
BLACKMORE GLOBAL FUND – ASSET OR BLACK HOLE?
Blackmore or Blackhole Global fund

BLACKMORE GLOBAL FUND – BLACK HOLE?

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.

I WOULD LIKE TO EXPRESS MY SINCERE THANKS TO THOSE – INCLUDING IFAs, PENSION TRUSTEE FIRMS AND BLACKMORE GLOBAL VICTIMS – WHO HAVE CONTACTED ME AND SUGGESTED IMPROVEMENTS, CORRECTIONS AND ADDITIONS.

Allegedly, Grant Thornton is working on an audit – and has been doing so since September 2016. They could probably have audited Microsoft in that time – and squeezed in Amazon on the side during the lunch breaks. Just how difficult can it be to audit a fund which only has a handful of assets in it?

Originally, the directors of Blackmore Global were Brian Weal, Patrick McCreesh, and Phillip Nunn.

Brian Weal – sanctioned by the FSC in 2014 – was also a director of Swan Holdings – the only investment that the Advalorem Value Asset Fund made. Brian Weal was also a director of Advalorem. Advalorem lost most of its money because the investments in Swan Holdings were overvalued. The valuations were supplied by Stuart Black who also provided valuations for a Hedge Fund called Heather Capital which lost $300 million because of overvaluations. Swan Holdings had invested a chunk of cash in Etaireia Investments. Stuart Black was a director of Etaireia Investments. Brian Weal owns a controlling number of shares in Etaireia Investments. So, make up your own mind as to whether having Weal as a director of Blackmore Global is a good thing or a bad thing – or a “black hole” thing.

As for Nunn and McCreesh, I will let Leonard Fenton of the Insolvency Service do the talking:
- Documents and information received from 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.
So, again, draw your own conclusions about those connected with Blackmore Global. 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.

When I first started investigating the Blackmore Global fund in 2016, I started with the brochure which makes all sorts of grand claims: “medium to long-term investment vehicle with a diversified investment portfolio
under one structure. The Company allocates investment between four distinct protected cells, giving a true
diversification of assets between property, sustainable, private equity and lifestyle”. Yeah, right. But what are the underlying assets? Where is the audit?

The Fact Sheet goes on to claim the fund’s NAV is £17.65 million and was launched on 1st May 2014. So why no audit? It also claims that the Investment Manager is a firm in Barcelona called Meriden Capital Partners. I thought it a bit strange that a fund based in the Isle of Man would appoint an investment manager in Spain – especially one without a website. So I called Meriden Capital Partners and asked them to confirm that they were the investment manager. They claimed they had never heard of Blackmore Global. Then one of the partners called me back and told me that some man who didn’t give his name had come to their office and asked them whether they would be interested in being the investment manager for Blackmore Global.

The partner at Meriden Capital explained that they had declined because they were not licensed to provide investment management advice to a fund – only to private individuals.

But then I discovered that that hadn’t been entirely true either. Meriden Capital had actually completed an application form to apply to become the investment manager to the fund on 4th April 2014. So either Meriden Capital was lying or Blackmore Global was lying – or both.

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.

As Grant Thorton is clearly having a little trouble with the audit of a five-cell investment fund, I will lay a wee trail of bread crumbs for them to look at. Clearly they can’t even find the underlying assets – let alone value them:

Swan Holdings PCC (controlled by Brian Weal)

Kingston Capital Partners (Belize private equity vehicle controlled by Nunn & McCreesh)

GRRE Invest – fund manager for aptly-named GRREIF fund (Green Renewable Redeemable Energy Investment Fund –

GRRE Investment Fund – suspended by Anguilla FSC. (Brian Weal recently resigned as a director but still holds a controlling interest in the Fund – https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/09132685/persons-with-significant-control)

Spinaris 90 – UK sports spread betting (invisible – and what happened to Aria Invest?)

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 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?

The list of questions goes on and on. 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. It was also a sub fund of the Nascent Fund run by Richard Reinert. Under the Nascent “umbrella” (a structure for wannabe fund managers) was also the Trafalgar Multi Asset fund which was run by XXXX XXXX who was one of the main distributors behind Capita Oak, Henley and Westminster – all of which are being investigated by the Serious Fraud Office.

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.

Finally, on the subject of Investors Trust, they showed not a shred of interest in the fact that they had facilitated financial crime in allowing UK residents to have their pensions invested in this UCIS, but when I published a photo of John Ferguson and David Vilka posing as a couple of gaudily-dressed spivs in Las Vegas, Investors Trust objected on the grounds the photograph was their property.

pension-life.com/top-10-deadliest-pension-scammers-hmrc/
July 7, 2017