STORE FIRST SFO FRAUD PROSECUTIONS

21st August 2025, saw the first hearing in the Serious Fraud Office’s criminal trial of some of the players in the Store First pension scam. The pension schemes involved included bogus occupational schemes Capita Oak and Henley Retirement Benefits Scheme – as well as various SIPPS including Carey Pensions and Berkeley Burke.

Appearing in the court to be formally charged as a result of the Serious Fraud Office’s long-running investigation were Toby Whittaker of Store First, Keith Ryder (aka Tom Smith), Mike Talbot, Terence Wright and Stuart Chapman-Clark (aka Grehan).

But where were the others? The really important players in the Capita Oak, Henley, Carey Pensions and Berkeley Burke schemes – all heavily invested in Store First pods – were conspicuous by their absence. Couldn’t the SFO be bothered with them?

Just so these contributory firms and individuals don’t feel left out (we wouldn’t want that would we!), let’s give a few of them some air time:

Metis Law LLP in Leeds – run by Rajat Sharma and Paul Cooper. This shady law firm was appointed by James Hadley and carried out the “conveyancing” on the Capita Oak and Henley pension investments into Store First. When the pensions were transferred into the Capita Oak bank account, the money was then sent in tranches to Metis Law who deducted their fees of 2% and then sent the balance to Store First to buy the pods for the schemes. No proper conveyancing was carried out – no checking the Land Registry or carrying out any valuations.

Alan Fowler of Stevens & Bolton in Guildford – legal consultant posing as a lawyer who worked closely with Stephen Ward of Premier Pension Solutions. It was Fowler who sourced the alleged sponsoring employer of the Capita Oak bogus occupational scheme. This employer was supposedly a Cyprus company called R. P. Medplant – but there was no such company (although there was a company in Cyprus called R. P. Med Plant). Fowler appointed a woman called Karen Burton as “trustee” of the Capita Oak scheme and forged her name on the trust deed. Fowler was paid at least £86,087 out of the Capita Oak proceeds for his services.

Stephen Ward of Premier Pensions Solutions in Spain – deeply involved in the registration and set up of the pension schemes invested in Store First. He then carried out the pension transfer administration for Capita Oak, Henley and Westminster. Ward had once been highly regarded as a leading pension expert. He was Chartered Insurance Institute Level 6 qualified, a former pensions examiner and a government consultant on QROPS. A prolific pension-liberation scammer, he helped run the notorious Ark scam, the subsequent Elysian Fuels (Suffolk Life and James Hay) pension-liberation scam and finally the London Quantum occupational scheme. Ward was assisted by his bogus-lawyer associate Alan Fowler of Stevens & Bolton Solicitors.

Christopher Payne, an accountant instructed by Alan Fowler. Payne set up the Capita Oak bank account with his own bank – Barclays. When £10m had been processed through the account, Barclays twigged there was something wrong and realised, somewhat belatedly, that the account was for a pension scheme. So they closed the account. Hence why the Capita Oak was capped at 300 members and £10 million in destroyed pensions.

Phillip Nunn and Patrick McCreesh of Nunn McCreesh were two serial scammers who set up a lead-generation operation to feed to cold-calling boiler room Jackson Francis. Nunn and McCreesh also set up a bogus firm called “Its Your Pension Ltd” offering free pension-review services prior to victims being scammed into transferring their pensions to Capita Oak and Henley. Nunn McCreesh had traded as an insurance brokerage between 2009 and 2012. Then they teamed up with Mike Talbot’s firm Transeuro and, in return for providing 200 pension leads a month to Jackson Francis, they received a commissions totalling £899,829.86 from Transeuro. After Capita Oak and Henley collapsed, Nunn and McCreesh went on to set up the Blackmore Group fraud – scamming thousands of victims out of more than £90 million with Blackmore Bond and Blackmore Global Fund.

James Hadley of Nationwide Benefit Consultants Ltd – and his accomplice Tom Biggar – were central to the running of the Capita Oak pension scam. Describing himself as a “distributor of occupational pension schemes”, Hadley assisted Stephen Ward with the pension-transfer administration and also set up the “Thurlstone” loans (5% of the transfer values) which were used to entice victims to transfer their pensions to Capita Oak. Hadley also appointed Metis Law in October 2012. Paul Cooper of Metis Law described Hadley as “shadow director” of Imperial (the trustee for Capita Oak) and as “project manager” of the scheme as he “gave day to day instructions and chased things up”. On 5.2.13 Metis Law was instructed to pay £100,557.58 to Hadley’s Thurlstone loan company from the funds held in the Imperial Client a/c. In addition to this, Hadley’s company Nationwide Benefit Consultants was paid 3% of all transfers into Capita Oak. Hadley went on to launch and operate the Trafalgar Multi Asset Fund fraud which was declared by the High Court to have been a £25 million conspiracy to extract illegal commissions out of the investments.

Bill Perkins of WJP Admin was paid £86,087 for his “services” to Capita Oak. Perkins seems to be a shady spiv who got involved with Alan Fowler, James Hadley and Stephen Ward to “help things along” with the general management and administration of the pension scam machine.

I hope the accomplices who were not in court on 21st August 2025 don’t now feel left out. And if there were other people involved in this fraud but not included in this summary, I apologise unreservedly.