Brev at Bond Review has been doing the FCA’s job for it for more than four years. He (or she) has warned the public on the excellent Bond Review blog about the dangers of investment scams in the form of “bonds”. While the FCA have sat around doing little of any use – except keeping the cleaners busy in the men’s toilets – Brev has performed the function of an essential lighthouse for potential victims.
Sadly, Brev has announced his (or her) retirement. Having saved potentially thousands of victims from financial ruin, we all wish this magnificent keyboard warrior well. Thank you from all of us who care about exposing investment scams in the face of the FCA’s sickening failure to prevent them.
Goodbye – from Brev at Bond Review
Regular readers will probably have noticed that the output of Bond Review has continued to drop recently.
In the first year of Bond Review I reviewed over 60 investment schemes that were being promoted to the public; in the past 12 months I’ve reviewed a third of that number.
Although there are still far too many high risk investment schemes being promoted with impunity to the general public by search engines and social media, there are signs that the tide has lessened somewhat. When Bond Review was founded, there was a constant stream of people signing up for consumer finance forums asking whether London Capital and Finance was a safe investment. That is no longer the case, at least not to nearly the same extent.
In 2017 minibonds were mostly ignored by the press other than very occasional articles warning investors of the risks (and sometimes promoting them). They were also, as covered here extensively, completely ignored by the FCA. That is certainly no longer the case, with the collapse of London Capital and Finance (along with lesser schemes) hitting the mainstream press and the subject of Parliamentary enquiries.
But the main reason I am bringing the blog to a close is that I simply don’t have the time any more. Maintaining the trickle of bi-weekly articles (with regular lapses) has often meant staying up past midnight (and drinking too much wine) simply because it was the only hour in the day available. I have a full-time job, a family, a sports club to get back up off the ground after being shut down during the pandemic, and the blog. Something has to give.
I remain proud of what Bond Review has achieved. I know for a fact that as a result of my reviews, millions of pounds whose owners could not afford to lose them have been saved from high-risk investment schemes which subsequently collapsed. I know this because the people that ran them told me so in the course of their legal threats.
All I have done for three and a half years is to post the facts, and nothing but the facts, about the risks of unregulated investments, so that investors can make their own minds up. At times this meant my coverage was open to charges of being “anodyne” or “mealy-mouthed”, but it was sticking to what was verifiable and in the public domain that allowed me to stand behind my coverage for this long.
I considered going public with my identity but have nothing to gain from doing so. At least three different people have been identified as Brev by various idiots posting spam online. None of them are me.
I originally called this article “Indefinite hiatus” but then I remembered how annoying it was when I was reading webcomics twenty years ago and authors would forever be going on “hiatuses” (hiati?) that left you forever wondering whether they’d come back. So no hiatus, just an unambiguous goodbye, and an end to three and a half years that has often been stressful, draining, fascinating, heartbreaking and (emotionally) rewarding in equal measure.
Thanks to all the readers who have read this far. In the early weeks of writing Bond Review I got excited whenever my pageview count went up by 1 (and even more excited when it wasn’t from me). For many weeks posting articles felt like shouting at the bins. The stats, comments and messages of support all helped keep me going for as long as I have.
A special thanks to everyone who donated. If anyone feels they have been shortchanged by the sudden cancellation, get in touch via the Contact link above and I will happily refund any previous donations to their source. The handful of recurring donations to Bond Review have been cancelled at my end.
A final credit goes to Oz, the writer behind the website BehindMLM.com, which was a huge inspiration for Bond Review. If there are any readers of both they will have noticed a few similarities of style which are partly homage and partly lack of imagination on my part. It showed that it was possible to shine a light on an under-covered part of the financial world and keep it going in the teeth of concerted and relentless opposition. How Oz has kept it going for a decade (with a much higher output than I ever had) is beyond me.
Comments on all articles will be closed in a week on June 1st. I will continue to pay the hosting bill to keep Bond Review up for another year. It will then close for good on 25 May 2022.
I can continue to be contacted via the contact link here.
Have you thrown in the towel due to legal action?
When I started Bond Review I knew I needed to be prepared to stand up for myself in court, or there was no point in writing articles on this subject in the first place. A total of 13 different investment schemes have made legal threats to me. None of them have gone to court. Until today I had (unless memory fails me) withdrawn one solitary article from publication: a report on Blackmore Bonds‘ brief sponsorship of the Kent Police rugby team.
So any suggestion that I have been intimidated into shutting down the blog is a perfectly reasonable guess but incorrect.
Nor have I been paid off. I have never (despite offers) accepted money to remove any article from Bond Review, and never will.
A number of articles have been pulled from view today because keeping them up for another year is not worth the time and money it would require. This should not be misinterpreted as an admission that anything in them was false. I cannot comment further. There are special circumstances and anyone who thinks I might be persuaded to pull other articles for no reason (before the website closes) should save their breath.
Brev has been careful not to lay too much overt criticism at the door of the FCA. This may have been a conscious effort not to divert too much attention away from the fraudulent, risky bond investment itself. Or it may have been in order to focus attention on the necessity to educate consumers. Whatever the real purpose, Brev pulled no punches in the blog which did openly slam the FCA’s disgusting culture of laziness, slovenliness and negligence in this powerful blog: “FCA officials shit on the floor, as well as the bed“.
Bond Review will be much missed, a valuable source of information not generally covered in the media.
“Regular readers will probably have noticed that the output of Bond Review has continued to drop recently.”
Same can be said for pension-life. Will it too be retired off anytime soon? I did expect Brev to last longer than she did (I believed Brev to be a woman and not so young either from the style of the writing over the 3 years).
Bondreview has been taken over by “safe or scam” – whoever they are. Another coward hiding behind anonymity – at least we all know who Angie is!
It does feel like victims are losing support, as those who once stood up to be counted against scammers start to crumble under the weight of scams and slowly drop out. However, the victims have to live with the financial devastation all their life. They cannot escape the trauma and stress. They cannot simply “close up shop” and take up some other “hobby”. Their retirement dreams shattered.
I’ve seen journalists come and go. They chase the big headlines, presenting the illusion someone cares and is fighting your corner, but they rarely follow through. I feel a similar thing is happening on Angie’s Facebook group – Blackmore Bond and Global. New upstarts have entered the field of battle, giving false hope and are being hailed as “heroes” but will, imho, soon give up and move on. Fighting scams is a Sisyphean and thankless task and many fall by the wayside and the victims are soon forgotten.
I hope we are not seeing the end of pension-life if I’m honest, it’s the last bastion against scams but it’s output and updates have been seriously curtailed of late. Just what, if anything, is happening?
Your comments are always much appreciated Steve. In fact, I think you should have your own blog – you are a very knowledgeable victim who understands thoroughly what is so terribly wrong with financial services.
Thank you.
The issue with having my own blog is manyfold. I prefer to hitch a ride on the “coat tails” of others because they have a) an established audience cultivated over many years and b) by exploiting different sites, I get access to a diversified audience. By that I mean Bondreview’s audience wouldn’t necessarily have been regulars to pension-life and vice versa, for example. Furthermore, generating a steady stream of articles and managing a blog is taxing – as you well know. It is a lot easier to respond to articles that are interesting when I come across them, than think them up. Also my knowledge is somewhat “limited” to one type of scam and one group of scammers, so it is easier to pitch in my pov when I come across an article in my field of knowledge.