February 2020

Investors in the StratXMarkets binary option fraud are being contacted by the Asset Recovery Ltd scam.  There is a genuine company called Asset Recovery Ltd, but this scam has nothing to do with them.  The company’s name and address are being used by scammers to add respectability to their scam.

One of our team has spoken to the owner of the genuine Asset Recovery Ltd company. He said this is not the first time the company name has been used by scammers. We are sending him copies of what we have collected and he will report the matter to the authorities.

The Asset Recovery Ltd scam is a follow-on-fraud. The scammers have obtained the list of StratXMarkets investors (names, addresses, emails, phone numbers etc) and are contacting them claiming that they are working with the Insolvency Service to help investors recover their money. In our opinion there is a very good chance that the people behind this scam were also behind the original StratXMarkets scam. Many investors in various binary option scams may not realise that these kinds of scams, although appearing at first sight to be completely separate, were organised and operated by one or two small groups. They were responsible for a lot of the binary option scams. One such group was centred around the Ilford region in Essex. We are on that case.

Here is a typical email from them.

To many investors the email would look quite professional and genuine. However, we know it is a follow-on-fraud for a number of reasons. Some of them we cannot publish because it would make it easier for the scammers in the future, but the main one which identified it as a fraud right from the start is that StratXMarkets has never existed.  Some of the original documents stated that StratXMarkets was a company incorporated in the Marshall Islands. We don’t believe that. The chances are that it never existed at all. All payments made by investors were sent to money mule companies so StratXMarkets never needed its own bank account. What is certain is that StratXMarkets never existed as a UK company. The Insolvency Service only deals with UK companies.

In the Asset Recovery Ltd scam the perpetrators have forged a letter which they claim has come from The Insolvency Service. It is shown below. Later this week we will publish details on another scam which uses a forged letter from the UK’s Inland Revenue Service. We are just waiting for it to be sent through to us by an investor.

Fake Asset Recovery Ltd_Insolvency Service Letter

We have noticed a very sharp rise in the number of follow-on-frauds. We think this is because enforcement authorities around the world are tightening up on scam prevention. For example, in the UK the Financial Conduct Authority has banned the establishment and promotion of unregulated corporate bonds for 12 months while they look into it. This has been a favourite of scammers for a few years. We think scammers are being forced to go back to old lists of investors to try to find ways to steal some more money from them because they are having trouble identifying new opportunities to scam people. 

Every now and then we find ourselves under attack from the scammers we have been exposing.  That is only to be expected and is nothing new. A recent example is an attempt to link Safe Or Scam to a man called Keith Geary. We do not know a Keith Geary and we never have. As Donald Trump would say “Fake News”.

AMENDMENT TO THIS ARTICLE.

When we first published this article we turned our attention to the man who was spreading this rumour. We are now withdrawing our comments about him. We have had a conversation with him and it is clear to us that he is genuinely owed money by Keith Geary.  It now appears that he was approached by Simon Whittley-Ryan, a man who has established several scam companies and it was him who tried to spread the rumour that Safe Or Scam was linked to Keith Geary. You can read about Mr Whittley-Ryan on this link.

Readers of our blog articles will not only have come across Simon Whittley-Ryan on a regular basis (because he has five companies which have all defaulted on payments to investors), but will also occasionally see the name of Matthew Cullum. He has sold many scams to investors over the years under the trading names of MCI, TSM Corporate Services, MSE Managed Services and so on. He also sold some investments into Simon Whittley-Ryan companies so it is clear that they both know each other. We have written several articles about Matthew Cullum and his business dealings – you can read about him here.

It would appear that Simon Whittley-Ryan and Matthew Cullum were behind this conspiracy. Matthew Cullum recently wrote to us offering to pay off the creditor of Keith Geary if we would take down our latest article about his company.  At the time we thought it was odd that he would make this offer to us. We declined it.  Here are extracts from his email and our reply to it:

matthew@mcimanagement.co.uk> wrote:

Hi Keith,

Right so regarding the [CERDITOR’S NAME] thing. Yes, he seems to be on a campaign against you. To be transparent I have attached all the information I have been sent about you. He also has said he will be speaking to and sending details to anyone featured on your website and putting it on his own new website and likely will not stop until he is repaid.

I state again I will handle [CREDITOR’S NAME] and his debt tomorrow and will make sure he never contacts you again and I will ensure he sends you an email to confirm this the moment my pages are taken down. Please let me know tomorrow.

Thanks,

Matthew

From:  investigations@safeorscam.net

To: matthew@mcimanagement.co.uk

Dear Matthew,

[Our Client Name] has not been paid so we will not be removing anything from the website.

[CREDITOR’S NAME] is nothing to do with us. We assumed he was bizarrely trying to claim a debt from us because one of our clients wound up Win River Developments Ltd [one of Simon Whittley’s companies], but he has sent an email overnight which suggests he had some kind of business arrangement with Keith Geary and claims he lost money ?

We’re not going to respond because we’ve told him enough times that we don’t know a Keith Geary. We have no idea why he thinks Geary is associated with us and we’re not interested in his business dealings or any action he proposes to take.

Regards,

Keith,

Now that we have had the opportunity to speak directly to the Creditor we find out that the misinformation he has been spreading through various websites, has been paid for by Matthew Cullum. Matthew Cullum and Simon Whittley-Ryan have been providing fake information to the Creditor. Cullum has been paying him to post it online. In the interests of fairness we have removed the creditor’s name from this blog. He was manipulated by two very experienced con-men and he genuinely believed what they were telling him. He has told us that he will be removing the fake content from the websites and we take him at his word.

THE REST OF THIS ARTICLE IS AS WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BECAUSE IT IS RELEVANT.

Someone calling himself Charlie Dewey has been touting an article which he claims is “from a reputable company that I invest in (for confidentiality reasons I’m not going to name them) that has been badly damaged by Safe Or Scam”. That’s a direct quote from his introduction. Obviously we were quite concerned that a reputable company might have been damaged by us until we found out the name of that alleged reputable company. If Charlie Dewey won’t say the name of the company, we will.  It is Win River Developments Ltd owned by Simon Whittley-Ryan. We have seen the contents of that article before in letters written to us by Mr Whittley-Ryan. Again, it was an attempt to link Safe Or Scam to Keith Geary.

Safe Or Scam was called in by investors to investigate Simon Whittley-Ryan’s companies AFTER the companies defaulted on payments to investors, not before. Four investors added their name in court to support the winding up of Win River Developments Ltd. There was not one investor who came forward to support the company.

Charlie Dewey is also a supporter of Roger Allanson, the owner of a law firm which has been intervened by the SRA and which was responsible for the Allansons Litigation Fund investment. This investment collapsed and £20m of investors’ money has been misappropriated to god knows where. Allanson isn’t telling. He is leading them a merry dance. The fact that Charlie Dewey is also a supporter of Simon Whittley-Ryan should be a major concern to Allansons investors.

Mr Dewey is an advocate of NOT taking action against Roger Allanson and his accomplices. He is encouraging investors to fight for the re-appointment of Roger Allanson and urges them to work with him to get the cases started. What cases ? They’ve gone mate.

Not only is Charlie Dewey urging investors NOT to take action against a man who was responsible for the loss of £20m of investors’ money, but he is also supporting another man who has run five scam companies, all of which have defaulted on payments and resulted in large losses for investors. It is no wonder Charlie Dewey didn’t want people to know he is in bed with Simon Whittley-Ryan. It is also no wonder he wants to rubbish Safe Or Scam because we are keen to hold Roger Allanson and his associates to account. Something Charlie Dewey is very keen to prevent. His solution is to keep organising more worthless webinars with Roger Allanson. We believe investors are being misled by Charlie Dewey.

Allansons LLP was negligent in the way it handled the investment and investors will get nowhere dealing with Roger Allanson. They are being manipulated in a stalling exercise. The point of stalling an investor action is always to buy more time for scammers to disperse the money and put it out of reach. It is not easy to shunt £20m around. It takes time. The people involved in the Allansons Litigation Fund don’t mind if investors are stalled for years because that suits them. They know investor groups can be infiltrated, manipulated, lied to and stalled.

Simon Whittley-Ryan is back in court soon facing a winding up petition against St Helier Capital Management Ltd. Three investors are taking action against the company. One of them is Dennis Smith aged 89. You can read about Dennis and his experiences in this Daily Telegraph report.  Maybe Charlie Dewey will give Simon Whittley-Ryan a character reference this time around ?  

Matthew Cullum, Simon Whittley-Ryan and their crooked friends will not stop us from exposing scams and continuing to help investors take action to recover their money. Check out our Testimonials page. They’re all genuine people we have helped.

A few weeks ago we published an article on Brookfield Investment Funds PLC and we identified one of their money mules. They have been using a bank account in Singapore under the name of VipCo Holdings. Vipco Holdings is well known to us because it has provided bank accounts to two other scam operations. You can read our first article on Brookfield and its money mules on this link.

We have been provided with details of another money mule bank account. This time it is located in Germany. Here are the bank details:

Account Name: Law Office: John Jennings

Account Address: 40213 Duesseldorf, Germany

Account Number: DE34 7001 0080 0097 3868 04

Bank Name: Postbank

Bank Address: Essen, Germany

Swift Code: PBNKDEFF

We have received a lot of enquiries from investors in Simon Whittley-Ryan companies asking us to provide an update. We have also received information from people who have had dealings with Mr Whittley-Ryan so we thought it was time to bring things up to date.

The Simon Whittley-Ryan companies are (or were):

Highgrove Osprey PLC  –  forced into liquidation by a creditor in August 2019.  Here is a link to the Companies House record;

St Helier Capital Management Ltd  –  currently the subject of a winding up petition. More on that below;

Win River Developments Ltd  –  forced into liquidation by a creditor in January 2020.  Here is a link to the Companies House record;

Win River Ltd  –  currently still in operation. Accounts are 4 months overdue and Confirmation Statement is 2 months overdue. The dissolution process was started by Companies House but has been cancelled because “cause has been shown why the company should not be dissolved“.  This normally means that Companies House has been provided with evidence of a legal action in progress against a company, however Companies House will not provide further details to any enquirer;

Avianta Capital Consulting Ltd  –  currently still in operation but Companies House has applied to have the company struck off.  Mr Whittley-Ryan’s wife is a director of Avianta Capital Ltd, an Irish company which has been seeking to raise money for an airline venture. There is no evidence that Mrs Aislinn Whittley-Ryan is involved in any of the companies described above.

It is worth noting that until recently Aislinn Whittley-Ryan was also a director of Brockingbury Stud Ltd, a company whose registered office is a residential address. That address has also been used by a number of the Simon Whittley-Ryan companies.  Brockingbury Stud Ltd was dissolved in October 2019.

The problem with Simon Whittley-Ryan companies is very simple. In EVERY case the company raises money from investors for a fixed term e.g two or three years.  It promises to pay interest on that money at rates between 8% – 12% per annum.  Interest payments are supposed to be paid every six months.

In EVERY case it pays interest once or perhaps even twice, but then the interest payments stop. An investor, if he or she is lucky, receives only one year of interest. Then it is always the same story. The company states it is going through “a refinancing” and payments will resume shortly. In the case of Highgrove Osprey investors waited years for a refinancing until a creditor finally wound up the company.

Meanwhile, whilst these existing companies have stopped paying interest to investors, Mr Whittley-Ryan is busy setting up a new company to repeat the exercise. One of the questions which needs answering is whether this is a variation on a traditional Ponzi Scheme e.g where instead of using one company to keep taking in the money the perpetrator is using several companies. One thing which is clear is that when the term of the investment is up the investor is not repaid. It doesn’t matter at all what it says in the contract. He just doesn’t repay investors.

We believe Simon Whittley-Ryan’s companies must owe millions to creditors. It’s noticeable that on the rare occasions he actually files accounts for the companies there is always a clause in every set of accounts which says something like “the company is dependent on the financial support of other group companies for its ability to continue trading“.  Those other group companies are never identified. If all of the companies are dependent on each other and none of them have any money then it’s just a smokescreen.

The usual excuse of “an imminent refinancing” is trotted out on a regular basis.  At the recent hearing for Win River Developments Ltd, Mr Whittley-Ryan submitted a “refinancing contract” to the court as proof of an imminent refinancing. It was in the name of a completely different company (with no explanation of that company’s connection to Win River Developments Ltd) and it was not signed by any party. It could quite easily have been downloaded from the internet the day before. Quite rightly the Judge gave it no credibility whatsoever and issued a winding up order.

A few weeks ago we received this email below from an investor in Highgrove Osprey PLC:

I am [ detail redacted ] and foolishly invested in Highgrove Osprey. I cannot afford to lose my investment. Like everyone else I have lost count of the many promises of capital repayment with interest. I actually reported Whittley’s activities to Action Fraud and after a couple of interviews with Essex & Kent Fraud Squad and providing all the evidence I had, I was informed that the Police had visited the home of Simon Whittley and had taken away documents and computers. They also called him in for interview. I was later informed that there was insufficient evidence to secure a conviction. How much more evidence do they need? And now he is involved with raising finance for a new airline. What is wrong with our society that allows someone like him to get away with such despicable activity?

One of our team spoke to the investor to obtain further information. We have now put him in contact with one of the Win River Developments Ltd investors who is keen to get to the truth about his investment.

Last week we received this email below on another matter related to Simon Whittley-Ryan (Simon Whittley as he was known at the time):

Just read your articles about Simon Whittley. He is a keen sailor and in or about 2007, he contacted Bloomsbury Publishing, publishers of Reeds Nautical Almanac, about putting it online. [ Detail redacted ]. He raised about £750k from private investors and others – no doubt Bloomsbury put in a chunk. It was a disaster from the start. Data was in an odd format to import, SW was working for Credit Suisse on other deals and trying to buy Charlestown Port in Cornwall as well. [ Detail Redacted ]. He went on to produce a web system that was only available onshore so useless to sailors. The company went into administration and, strangely, there was no money left. Looking at his history, anyone might think he was an inveterate crook. I’m sure he isn’t really.

We assume the final sentence was made in jest.

It appears that Simon Whittley-Ryan companies have a very long history of failure. That’s OK if he is losing his own money, but it’s not OK when he continually raises money from investors with the promise of regular payments and those payments always stop not long after the investment has been made. If anyone can identify ANY company owned, managed or operated by Simon Whittley-Ryan which HAS NOT resulted in losses for investors we would very much like to hear about it. We will happily publish those details.

It appears to us that Simon Whittley-Ryan has come up with a business model which enables him to live a very comfortable life off other peoples’ money, with all the evidence pointing to the fact that he never actually repays them.

The St Helier Capital Management Ltd saga continues. At a hearing on 12th February 2020, Mr Whittley-Ryan provided a statement to the court to explain why he had not complied with the Court Order of May 2019. He was supposed to submit his evidence by the end of May 2019. His excuse was that there must have been confusion between himself and his solicitor, but he couldn’t actually remember. He couldn’t provide any emails or correspondence in support of his statement because his emails had been “archived” and he needed an IT company to help him retrieve them. He claimed to have spoken to the law firm he was using at the time and they agreed there might have been confusion. We can’t help wondering why he didn’t ask the law firm to forward emails from that time to him. In any case, as always with Simon Whittley-Ryan, he was unable to provide any evidence to support his statements. 

His statement pointed the finger of blame for his inability to pay investors squarely at Safe Or Scam, claiming that we had prevented him from being able to raise more money. His argument ignored the fact that his companies had already defaulted on interest payments long before we published our concerns.    

The Judge has been very considerate in giving Mr Whittley-Ryan another week in which to submit his response to the petitioner’s evidence (which the petitioner submitted in May 2019). Once submitted, the petitioner will have a week of his own to reply to Mr Whittley-Ryan’s evidence. At that time another hearing will be set. The Judge awarded costs against St Helier Capital Management Ltd for both the hearing of 29th January 2020 and the hearing of 12th February 2020.

To view our previous article on the Simon Whittley-Ryan companies please click here.

To view a later update on Simon Whittley-Ryan companies please click here.

Craven Capital again. We don’t normally like putting up lots of articles in quick succession covering the same scam, but sometimes it’s useful because it shows just how quickly these follow-on-fraudsters can adapt.

Yesterday we published this article about Craven Capital.

Around midday yesterday we informed Nat West bank that the bank account mentioned in that article was being used in a follow-on-fraud. Credit where it is due. It appears Nat West took the warning seriously and acted on it straightaway because later the same day the intended victim was contacted by Craven Capital again. They informed the intended victim that the Nat West bank account had “reached its limit for deposits under FSCS rules” so they asked the intended victim NOT to pay that account. Nice excuse, but a complete load of rubbish. They said they would give the intended victim a new account to pay into. We assume that Nat West had immediately frozen the scam bank account.

In less than 24 hours the scammers provided another bank account. It is this one below:

This has been reported to Halifax Bank and they have advised that they will act on it. This just goes to show how quickly scammers can adapt and that they have a ready supply of people willing to provide money mule accounts. These money mule account holders need to realise that they are accessories in a fraud and are laundering the proceeds of crime.

If the Police could act as quickly as this it would prevent a lot of ordinary people from losing their money. For the record, we did try to report the fraud to Bedfordshire Police. This is the Police authority where the Nat West account is located. We were told that they couldn’t investigate or even make contact with the bank. We were told to file a report with Action Fraud.

Investors in Kansas MB Project Ltd will have mixed feelings about the company’s recent announcement. The good news is that the company has announced that it has started paying royalties again. The bad news is that the level of royalty (0.27% per annum) means that it will take 370 years for investors to recoup their original investment. This is in stark contrast to the promotional material which made royalty claims of 40%+ per annum.

Kansas MB Project Ltd is the fifth and final company run by Martin Finch. The other four have been wound up by the High Court in recent months.  Here is the royalty announcement.

Meeting of the Directors Of Kansas MB Project Limited

Held at Braxted Park Estate, Suite 11, Witham, Essex, CM8 3EN

January 2020

Present:                 M. Finch

It was resolved that an interim royalty be and is hereby paid on the company’s non-voting shares in respect of January 2020.

The secretary was therefore instructed to draw cheques in respect of these royalties and to issue the appropriate warrants.

The royalty payments are being distributed by PJU Management Ltd

Stephen Upton is allegedly one of the largest investors in Kansas MB Project (alleged because there are major question marks over whether or not the investment was genuine – see this blog article). One would have thought that Mr Upton would be livid at the paltry return he was receiving on his investment, but it seems that this is not so. Mr Upton is very supportive of Martin Finch. He is so supportive in fact that in October 2019 he formed a new company called PJU Management Ltd (Yes, that is the same PJU Management Ltd mentioned above i.e the company which is distributing the royalty payments !

The registered office of the company is Abacus House, 14-18 Forest Road, Loughton, Essex. This is the office address of the accountancy firm which has been handling the accounts of all five of Martin Finch’s companies.

Investors in Kansas MB Project Ltd will remember that Stephen Upton made a proposal to them for a restructuring. That proposal involved the assets of Kansas MB Project being transferred to a new company which he would set up. Investors were invited to give up the shares in KMB in return for shares in the new company. The problem was that Mr Upton wasn’t offering investors anything different to their current arrangement. The new company would have around 200 shareholders but only one director – Stephen Upton. It would also have only one person allowed to vote – Stephen Upton. It wasn’t a very attractive proposal to put to investors. He was asking them to give him total control of their assets. Very greedy Mr Upton.

So now Martin Finch has appointed Mr Upton’s new company PJU Management Ltd to “distribute” royalties. Here’s another problem. Kansas MB Project Ltd has never told investors how their royalty payments have been calculated. Martin Finch has steadfastly refused to provide investors with any information on oil revenues, expenses, profit share, source of payments etc etc. They have always been kept in the dark.

We have maintained from the very beginning that there is a reason why investors have never been told who is paying their royalties and it is because it’s a scam. If it weren’t a scam the money could be paid by Kansas MB Project itself from its own bank account (if it has one), or by its solicitor or by its accountant. It is noticeable that they are keeping themselves at arms length from the money.

Now PJU Management Ltd is distributing the royalties and it is supposedly owned by an investor, it has the ideal opportunity to be totally transparent and tell shareholders the origin of the payments. Who is paying these royalties to PJU Management and how are they calculated ?

At the end of the day 0.27% per annum isn’t really worth getting excited about. Perhaps the royalty was actually 27% per annum but PJU Management Ltd charges a 99% fee for “distribution”. It’s not clear exactly what Mr Upton is getting from this arrangement or why he is even involved in it. Whatever it is, if it is anything like his earlier restructuring proposal we can be sure it has been structured to ensure he does very well out of it.

It looks like we were bang on with our assessment of how the Craven Capital scam might play out.

A few days ago we published this article on the Craven Capital follow-on-fraud. The scam was very quick off the mark in targeting investors in Win River Developments Ltd. We didn’t have much to go on at that stage, but we took an educated guess about the ploys they might eventually use to try to get money from the investors. We were spot on. They are using the usual scam model of “we have buyers for your investment. You just need to send us our advance fee and we will release all of the money to you”.

This excerpt from their Terms and Conditions document explains:

Craven Capital Limited may here forth be referred to as the Guarantor Services. Craven Capital Limited provide services in respect of the sale and exchange of alternative investments and act as facilitators, working on behalf of reputable third party merchants, corporate and private individuals.

PLEASE NOTE: None of what they say is true. It is all a scam.

We are not going to publish their full Terms and Conditions because we are not in the business of providing templates for potential scammers to use, however we have published below some of the documents they have sent out (with identifying information removed). This is to provide readers with an early warning signal of similar scams. If anyone receives any documents from any company which are remotely like the ones below, they can be 100% certain it is a scam.

Craven Capital Scam_1_Acceptance Letter

Craven Capital Scam_1_Invoice and Escrow

Craven Capital Scam_1_Invitation to Make Payment

The Craven Capital scam follows a very similar pattern to other follow-on-frauds. As we mentioned in our previous article this isn’t even a very good scam. It looks like they rushed to get it out to investors before they were really ready.

We have been sitting on this article for a few days. We could have published earlier, but the documents they sent out had one very important detail missing. The Craven Capital scam included sending an invoice to the intended victim (as seen above), but there were no bank details which would enable the intended victim to make payment. We thought it might be possible the scammers were in such a hurry to be the first to get their follow-on-fraud out to investors that they hadn’t had time to set themselves up with a bank account. We had to be patient and wait for the banking information. We are now able to publish this article because the bank account they are using is this one below:

Bank Name: National Westminster Bank   –   Branch: Leagrave Luton

Account Name (according to the scammers): Cook

Account Number: 34228748     Sort Code: 60 12 42

We have reported it to Nat West and they have advised that they would “take appropriate action”.

It is likely that this is a money mule account. This means that the person providing the bank account is willing to let it be used to launder money. Normally scammers use several money mule accounts so if you have had any dealings with the Craven Capital scam and they have given you a different bank account to pay into, it is still a scam.