May 2020

Dunn and Burchill scam (and a linked site – Carlyle Capital Management scam).

A bogus organisation calling itself Dunn and Burchill claims to be a financial advisor company with offices in London and Tokyo.  A man called Charles Anthony is selling investments in shares.

A check on the FCA register in the UK confirms that there is no Dunn and Burchill registered as financial advisors.  The website was established in August 2019 yet they have false blog posts going back to 2018 to make it look like they have a history.

The website states:

Dunn and Burchill investment consultancy firm. We provide merger and acquisition advisory and strategic consulting services, and assist companies in obtaining financing through institutional placements of debt, mezzanine capital and equity. Our clients include both healthy and financially challenged businesses and individuals alike.

Wow – an organisation that helps “financially challenged individuals”.  Anyone who gives them any money will be taking a huge step towards becoming a financially challenged individual.

The website continues:

Dunn and Burchill is a professional wealth management company based in London and Tokyo. We have developed an enviable reputation for consistent, market-leading investments for our clients. We strive to exceed the high levels of client service, professionalism and commitment which our clients have come to expect from us. Dunn and Burchill has built its reputation as one of the industry’s leading investment companies on the results that it has shown clients.

Personalized service and attention to detail sets us apart from our competition and provides the confidence that your needs are put first. We realise the importance of ethics when it comes to investing. We evaluate each product, asset class and market for any possible adverse effects on the economy or people prior to committing funds. We see ourselves as your ambassador to the investment market and take a conscientious view of what we do on your behalf.

Clients put their trust in Dunn and Burchill because they know our relationship is built for the long-term, not on transactions.

If they were planning to build their relationship for the long-term you would think they would have purchased a website domain name that doesn’t expire in August this year.  They bought the domain for one year only.  Maybe they were “financially challenged” when they paid for it ?

You don’t need any more evidence that Dunn and Burchill is a scam, but if you are still sceptical and think they might be genuine (please don’t think that), there’s a second website linked to them called Carlyle Capital Management.  It’s built on exactly the same template but is targeted more at individual investors. This website domain name was only purchased in January this year yet it contains this fake testimonial:

If you would like to compare the similarities between the two scam sites you can view both of them below.

Dunn and Burchill website

Carlyle Capital Management website   

Hamilton and Hall Law Scam

Hamilton and Hall Law is the latest bogus firm to try its hand at the “great news – you’ve got shares that you didn’t even know about” scam.

Everybody likes free money so it’s quite exciting to get a phone call or email out of the blue telling you that your shares have been sold and there’s a huge pile of money just sat there waiting for you to collect.  What’s even better is that you never even knew you had these shares !

The only problem is that it’s a scam.  It’s not even a new scam because it has been doing the rounds for a lot of years in one form or another.  Quite often the intended victim is told that the shares were floated on the Chinese stock exchange.  You can count on the fingers of one hand the number of people who know how to research companies floated on the Chinese Stock Exchange.

The Hamilton and Hall Law share scam is not unique.  The branding looks quite professional, but they’re using the same strategy as other share scams where they send the intended victim a summary of the sale transaction showing the huge sum of money that’s waiting to be collected and it is attached to a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) just to make them look even more professional.

The NDA has a secondary purpose.  The bogus company will claim to be incorporated in a jurisdiction which the intended victim knows nothing about.  The reason is because when the victim finally realises that he/she has been scammed and intends to do something about it, the bogus company will come in hard saying that the victim signed a NDA and under the laws of their jurisdiction (in the case of HAHL it is allegedly Illinois) the company will be able to sue the victim for passing on information about the transaction without their permission.  They will say that the victim will definitely lose the case and face a massive order for the HAHL legal costs.  You would be surprised how effective this can be in frightening the victim into doing nothing.  We have had victims contacting us saying they’re afraid of being hit with big legal bills for speaking to us.  We tell them we will remove all identifying marks from their documents and we will publish a warning about these scammers because we know they’re running a scam and we will call them out.  We know for sure they won’t want to go anywhere near a courtroom.

We’ve copied the Hamilton and Hall Law share scam document below (with any identifying information redacted to protect the identity of the intended victim who sent it to us).

Hamilton and Hall Law_Share Scam_REDACTED

Here’s a typical email from a man at Hamilton and Hall Law who is using a false name.

From: Daniel Garcia <d.garcia@hamiltonandhalllaw.com>
Date:
To:>
Subject: Contract
Reply-To: d.garcia@hamiltonandhalllaw.com

Dear

It was a pleasure to introduce our company, Hamilton & Hall Law. I wanted to summarize our initial discussion and confirm I will be calling again to answer any questions you may have.

Please find attached your Purchase Agreement Contract (PAC) as promised. It’s important that you review it and make note of any questions that you have in preparation for when I call back. This will ensure that we are able to get through all the information to avoid any delays in processing your case.

Just to reiterate my contact details, my name is Daniel Garcia, and you may find my direct line and email address below in my signature.

The PAC essentially means you are happy to exchange the shares for the stipulated compensation. If you are happy with the PAC and wishing to proceed before I contact you back, simply sign and return the agreement.

I look forward to speaking with you again, if you need to reschedule please reply to this email or give me a call. If I don’t hear from you then I will as mention, call again.

Best Regards,

Here’s his contact details 

You’ll note that there is no request for the intended victim to pay anything at this stage.  These kinds of scams are designed to make the intended victim respond and that gets them on the hook.  Then the scammer will befriend them and be their best buddy.  At some point they’ll ask the intended victim to make a payment.  It’s usually described as “local income tax” or “a withholding tax or share tax”.  A popular phrase they like to use is that it is ‘chinese withholding tax’ so if you ever see that phrase you can be 100% certain it is a scam.

The intended victim normally says something like “that’s fine – you can take it out of the money you are holding for me”, but they’re used to that response.  Their stock answer is that the laws in their jurisdiction do not allow for that.  The tax has to be paid separately in advance before they can release the large sum.  Once the victim pays money over they will never hear from the scammers again unless they think the victim is a soft touch.  Then they will make some excuse for needing another payment.  We have known scammers to go back several times if the victim is particularly vulnerable.

So there’s another warning sign.  If you are ever told that it is not possible to take the ‘tax or admin fees or escrow fees’  out of the large sum you can be sure it is a scam.

The Hamilton and Hall Law website was established only a few months ago in December 2019.  Whilst the bogus company claims to be based in Illinois with a USA phone number it is noticeable that the email address used by the founder of the website is hamiltonandhalllaw@yandex.ru  i.e it is in Russia.  We’ve seen yandex.ru used by scammers in the past.  For example, it was a favourite of serial scammer Renwick Haddow who had a very successful scamming career in the UK until he decided to try his hand in the USA.  That was a mistake.  The SEC and FBI are very good at catching scammers.

Don’t be tempted to pay any money to Hamilton and Hall Law.  It’s a scam and they will definitely steal your money.

First Atlantic Asset Management is perpetrating a follow-on-fraud scam against investors in Westway Holdings.  No doubt victims of other scam investments will be targeted by them too.  We warned Westway Holdings investors that they could expect to be targeted by follow-on-fraudsters because the sales agents they used cannot be trusted to protect their personal data.  Investor details are always sold on.  The follow-on-frauds started before Westway Holdings was even put into administration !

Our investigations have found no companies registered with the name of First Atlantic Asset Management.  The closest name to that is First Atlantic Asset Management and Consulting Inc which was registered in the Bahamas but was struck off 10 days ago.

The sales brochure, which can be accessed below, refers to the company being in existence since 2013, but their website domain name was only registered on 11^th February 2020 and for one year only (cheapskates).

First Atlantic Asset Management Introduction Brochure

They claim to have £19.8m under management and “300+ talented staff worldwide”.  Of course that’s a complete lie.

A person claiming to be Rebecca Jarvis (it won’t be her real name), describes herself as Accounts Manager, Alternative Assets Department, First Atlantic UK.  She uses the email of accounts@firstatlanticuk.com and is very keen for investors to send her any documents they have related to their investments.  Nobody should send anything to First Atlantic Asset Management because it is a scam.

To view or previous Scam Alert please click here.

Late News – there is yet another follow-on-fraud targeting Westway Holdings investors.  The perpetrator of this second follow-on-fraud is calling itself Harper Lee Financial.   

A fake organisation calling itself Premier Asset Management is attempting to perpetrate a follow-on-fraud scam.  The organisation has cloned the details of a genuine company called Premier Asset Management Ltd and is pretending to be that company.  Please note that the genuine company is not involved in this scam.

Unusually, investors are receiving the scam document by post and not by email.  We know how it has obtained the postal addresses of hundreds of investors, but not the email addresses.  We are not publishing that information.  The letter was dated 26th May and was posted in London with a first class UK stamp.

If any investor receives the letter below or anything similar from any organisation it is a 100% cast-iron guaranteed scam.  Never send any money to organisations which claim to be holding money in escrow, or claim to have a buyer for your investment, or claim to hold shares that you never knew you owned, or claim to be working with an insolvency firm or with an administration firm or with the Official Receiver etc etc.  They are all scams.  To view the letter click on the link below.

Premier Asset Management_Follow-On-Fraud_REDACTED

We are receiving quite a few follow-on-fraud notifications from investors at the moment.  The Covid-19 situation has resulted in many scammers coming out of the woodwork.  We will try to publish as many as we can to warn investors.

Shepherd Cox Administration

On 28^th May 2020 the Judge hearing the Shepherd Cox Administration Applications ordered six Shepherd Cox hotel companies into administration.

The case was brought by ten investors from Asia who had contacted Safe Or Scam.  They had bought hotel rooms in the six hotels.  In the end they were supported at court by another 54 investors also based in Asia.

From 2014 onwards Shepherd Cox Ltd, the entity used by Lee Bramzell, Nick Carlile and Adam Stanborough as the primary sales company, aggressively sold hundreds of hotel bedrooms to investors in the Far East, later involving UK sales agents such as Brett Alegre-Wood of Gladfish Property Investment Ltd in the UK.

Under the terms of the investor contracts they were entitled to guaranteed quarterly rental payments which Shepherd Cox had ceased paying as far back as 2018.

Shepherd Cox accepted that one of the companies was insolvent, but argued that another one was solvent in its own right and the other four companies were solvent because they would be supported financially by one of the Shepherd Cox hotel companies not involved in the administration

The financial information provided by Shepherd Cox was analysed by the investors’ team and exposed as inadequate and incapable of supporting any of the companies, including the one that Shepherd Cox had claimed was solvent in its own right.  The Judge agreed with those findings.

The companies affected by the Administration Order are:

1.  Shepherd Cox Hotels (Sedgefield) Ltd; and

2. Shepherd Cox Hotels (Hartlepool) Ltd; and

3. Shepherd Cox Hotels (Bicester) Ltd; and

4. Shepherd Cox Hotels (Darlington) Ltd; and

5. Shepherd Cox Hotels (Manchester North) Ltd; and

6. Shepherd Cox Hotels (Chesterfield) Ltd.

In a recent choreographed video produced by Brett Alegre-Wood and Lee Bramzell, Mr Bramzell stated that the investment was not an unlawful investment scheme because Shepherd Cox had taken “leading counsel advice” at the very beginning and if the investment was found to be unlawful Shepherd Cox would be able to sue the counsel.  Shepherd Cox did not submit the alleged counsel advice to the court.  This leads us to assume that either Mr Bramzell was not telling the truth and Shepherd Cox never took any advice, or the advice does exist but Shepherd Cox did not follow it.  It is very unusual for a defendant to claim it has a “Get Out of Jail” card (metaphorically speaking) and then not use it in evidence to defend its position.

In letters to investors leading up to the hearing Shepherd Cox stated that more than 100 investors had agreed to swap their leases for shares in a restructured Shepherd Cox company.  We always suspected that was not true and no evidence confirming that statement was submitted to the court.

During our investigation into the Shepherd cox companies we found that when the Grand Hotel in Hartlepool was bought by Shepherd Cox in August 2015 it was described as a 48-bedroom hotel.  The hotel website describes The Grand Hotel as a 48-bedroom hotel – see here.  Documents produced by Shepherd Cox in July 2019 describe the hotel as being a 48-bedroom hotel and two members of Shepherd Cox’s management team at the hotel wrote last month confirming that The Grand is a 48-bedroom hotel.

However, 57 hotel bedroom leases are registered at the Land Registry and have been sold to investors.

In July 2016 permission was granted by Hartlepool Council to convert staff accommodation and store rooms into additional bedrooms.  Nine en-suite bedrooms were then immediately sold to investors in Asia.

Shepherd Cox argues that the nine investors were aware that the bedrooms had not been constructed at the time they paid for them, but the investors we have spoken to emphatically deny that.  They say they were told that the en-suite bedrooms existed and were no different to the other 48 bedrooms. Keystone Law, representing the Shepherd Cox companies, has confirmed that the rooms exist (which we already know because they were staff accommodation and store rooms etc), but has thus far not responded to our request for confirmation that the rooms exist as furnished, en-suite bedrooms which have been let to paying guests. We find it hard to believe the hotel would construct nine new bedrooms and then not update the website, not include the new bedrooms in its own publications and not inform its management team that The Grand was now a 57-bedroom hotel !

Investors bought those bedrooms in August 2016.  Shepherd Cox Hotels (Hartlepool) Ltd immediately began paying the guaranteed rentals to the investors and continued to do so for more than two years, thereby reinforcing the investors’ belief that the en-suite bedrooms exist. The owners of those nine rooms are now very keen for the hotel to reopen so they can see exactly what their “en-suite bedrooms” look like.

If the £540,000 raised from these investors was not used to convert the rooms where did it go ?  If it has not been used to construct the bedrooms would that constitute obtaining money by deception ?  There are still many questions to be answered.

The sales agent in Asia is the subject of a local Police criminal investigation.

Keystone Law also represents Lee Bramzell and Nick Carlile in the personal debt claims made against them by investors who were persuaded to convert loans they had made to Shepherd Cox companies into personal loans with both men.

Our representatives in Asia will be liaising with the investor group to help them achieve the best possible outcome.

To view our previous article on Shepherd Cox please click here.

Osage, Kansas and Sooner

In 2019 and early 2020, four SOS clients worked with us to close down four oil scam companies which had raised almost £15m from international investors.  Those companies were Osage 1 Ltd,  Phenco Ltd,  Kansas B2 Project Ltd and Sooner Energy SPV-1 Ltd.  One of the oil companies is still operating but it is only a matter of time before we are able to close that one down too.

The scams were fronted by Martin Finch, but were really controlled by Glenn King and David Hyman.  King and Hyman have a history of oil investment scams.  Glenn King has also been involved in carbon credit scams.

There are some indications that Glenn King was also involved in the collapsed Allansons Litigation Funding investment.  That would not be surprising as the five oil investment scams all used the back-office services of a Constantine Pagonis company.  Allansons Litigation Funding also used the same service, except on a much grander scale.  We have covered the oil scams in previous articles starting here, and Allansons Litigation Funding in previous articles starting here.

The cases of the four oil companies have now been passed from the Official Receiver to a specialist insolvency firm with a forensic accountancy division.  We have provided a list of questions that should be asked of the company director and its shadow directors.  We will be supporting the investigation into where the money has gone and what assets were purchased.

We already know one place where the money went.  It was to a bank account in Dubai operated by a company called Vital Corporate Solutions.  You can read about Vital Corporate Solutions here.

VCS was fronted by this lady, Amanda Perry.  She has been a long-term associate of Glenn King going back many years and has been distributing money from King’s operations to his personal offshore accounts and to the accounts of his accomplices.

The VCS website has now been shutdown.  We will be keeping tabs on Amanda Perry until she resurfaces so that we can give her the opportunity to explain her role in these scams.

Ourspace and Kevan Halliwell

OurSpace was the brand name of a collapsed ‘virtual workspace’ scheme established by Kevan Halliwell and Jim Moore.  Jim Moore is currently serving a sentence in the USA for fraud.

OurSpace was headquartered in Dubai.  It had only two sites, one in Dubai and another in Marbella, but had raised an estimated $30m from investors around the world.

The scheme initially began with the sale of leases on the virtual workspaces at $25,000 each which came with a guaranteed rental yield of 10% per annum.  Halliwell then switched the leases into debentures “because it was better for investors”.  Whenever a company tries to switch investors from one structure to another it is almost always for its benefit and not for the benefit of the investor.  The new debentures were with a series of OurSpace companies domiciled in Malta.

Cut to the present day and all the companies have closed down.  The company which held the assets (the main leases on the sites in Dubai and Marbella) is in administration in the UK.  The Dubai lease has been cancelled by the property owner.  The Marbella site is closed and may never reopen.

OurSpace was a giant Ponzi Scheme.

In 2018 the main OurSpace company in Dubai entered into a loan agreement and borrowed £2.3m from a company in Mauritius called OurSpace TC International Ltd.  That company wants its money back.  A second company, OurSpace Ventures Ltd, obtained a personal guarantee from Kevan Halliwell for the money.

When OurSpace collapsed Kevan Halliwell fled Dubai for the UK.  OurSpace Ventures filed a claim in the UK courts against Kevan Halliwell for the £2.3m.

This is a link to a court judgement given in December 2019 to an application made by Kevan Halliwell that OurSpace Ventures cannot make its claim in the UK courts.  Halliwell asserts that the claim can only be made in a Dubai court.  It seems fair to assume from that statement that Halliwell has no intention of ever returning to Dubai.

The Judge dismissed Halliwell’s application and concluded that the claim can be heard in the UK court.

We will follow the proceedings with interest.  We helped one of our clients close down an OurSpace company in the UK so that an investigation can be undertaken into where the money went.

To read our previous article on OurSpace please click here.

Anthony Marks Westway Holdings

As a result of our investigations we are able to inform the general public that Anthony Marks, the majority shareholder of Westway Holdings through his Estonian company Westway International O.U, has been using the false name of Anthony Marks in order to hide his true identity.

We have been investigating Westway Holdings for some time and have been warning investors that they need to take action to protect their investment.  We felt there was an imminent risk of the company’s assets being dispersed beyond the reach of investors.  It was our belief that the man who calls himself Anthony Marks and controls the company was intending to mortgage the assets and may have been intending to disappear with the money.  The re-mortgaging plan was confirmed in an email from Anthony Marks to investors this week.  We will not go into the detail of Westway again because our previous articles are available here allowing you to read each update and move through them to the present day.

We have been in contact with the Police over this investment.

At this time it is unclear whether some of the sales agents were in collusion with “Anthony Marks”.

Anthony Marks’ real name is not Anthony Marks.

His real name is Mark Anthony McGovern.  He is a man who was sentenced to two years in prison in 2008 for fraud and money laundering.  He went on the run and it took four years to capture him and extradite him back to the UK to serve his sentence.  This was not the first time he had been to prison.  He had previously been convicted of conspiracy to defraud and had gone on the run then too.

Here is a link to the Bournemouth Echo which covered the story:  Newspaper Report on Mark Anthony McGovern

We believe it is possible the plan was for Mark Anthony McGovern to convert the cash to bitcoins which are untraceable.  He had recently linked up with a Romanian who has a history in bitcoins.

We passed a photograph of McGovern to a trusted party who had met Anthony Marks.  We did not tell that party the reason for our enquiry.  We just asked the question “Is this the man you met and who claimed to be Anthony Marks”.  He replied “Yes”.

Investors have been asked to provide details of their investment amounts to Westway Holdings including their phone numbers, email addresses and bank account numbers.  You would think Westway would have that information because these are their own bondholders !  Now investors are being pestered with follow-on-frauds.  This may be linked.

Our experience is that once follow-on fraudsters have these details they will establish several follow-on-frauds and will repeatedly target the investors who are likely to receive scam calls and emails for at least two years, possibly longer.

If you have invested in the Anthony Marks Westway Holdings scam please contact us.

Aston Darby Investor Action.

On 10^th May 2020 Safe Or Scam initiated a repayment claim for £850,000 unlawfully obtained from investors by Drake Estates Property Company Ltd relating to the Aston Darby car parking plot investment scheme in Manchester.

The basis of any car parking plot scheme is that the founders buy a field, divide it into plots, sell each plot for an inflated price raising ten times the true value of the land, pay investors a “guaranteed rental” of 8%-10% per year for a couple of years and build a car park on the land.  Building a car park is basically laying some tarmac and getting steamroller to flatten it.

What they don’t tell investors is that the guaranteed rental payments are actually the investors’ own money being paid back to them to make it look like the car park is genuine and is doing well.  They also don’t tell investors that the plot is only worth one tenth of the true land value.  Sure, it’s a rip-off and it’s a terrible investment, but it’s also an unregulated collective investment scheme.

To those who don’t know what that means it can best be described as investors have bought into a car parking BUSINESS without even realising it.  The fact they own a plot in the middle of a tarmacked field is irrelevant.  The rental income and the value of that plot is determined by the performance of the car parking BUSINESS.  If the car parking business fails then the plot is virtually worthless.  Who is going to buy plot 637 in the middle of a tarmacked field ?

The investor has effectively bought shares in the Aston Darby car parking business on that site.  Selling shares in a business is a FCA regulated activity.  So this is really a FCA-regulated activity dressed up to look like a land deal.  Aston Darby aren’t regulated by the FCA so they not authorised to sell shares.

This newspaper article warning investors about the Aston Darby Glasgow site is worth reading.

But you might say “well, the investors do own a plot of land”.  Yes, they do own plots and those plots may even be registered at the Land Registry.  But who will ever buy one plot in a field off an investor ?

Picture this scenario – “Hello Mr Heywood, I’m looking to get into the car parking business and I see you’re selling the freehold on this plot of land.  I have to say, it’s remarkably cheap for such a large plot.  Oh, I see, the price is low because there are some leases over the land.  How many ?  1,000 – are you mad !  You’re telling me that if I buy the freehold I have to negotiate with 1,000 leaseholders before I can park any cars !  Then, I’ll have to buy plots off them one by one and that most of them won’t agree to sell unless I give them back £25,000 per plot !  That’s ten times what those plots are worth ! No chance – I’m off.  Good luck finding anyone to buy any plot.”

Investors will never be able to sell their plots for a price which is anywhere near what they paid for them.  The participants knew that.  They also knew that the scheme breached FCA regulations which is why they came up with the most elaborate and incredible workaround in an attempt to circumvent the regulations.  This is why investor action is now necessary.

The guaranteed rental is only for a couple of years.  After that it’s market forces which determine the rentals.  That means the investor’s yield of 10% will plummet to around 1%, possibly less.  It’ll be 80 years before they’ll get their investment money back.

That sounds pretty dreadful, but Aston Darby has taken car parking schemes to a new level.  Drake Estates Property Company Ltd (the Aston Darby company which claims to own the Manchester car park site) sold 34 plots to our investor group for £850,000 i.e £25,000 per plot.  The investors received 8% guaranteed rentals for two years which amounted to £136,000.  Then the rentals stopped.  OK, you might say that Aston Darby did tarmac the whole site and build the car park.  Well……. not exactly.  In fact, NOT AT ALL.

ASTON DARBY DOES NOT OWN THE MANCHESTER SITE AND NEVER HAS.  THEY SOLD HUNDREDS OF CAR PARKING PLOTS ON A FIELD THEY DON’T OWN.

Leigh Heywood of Aston Darby Group has recently written two letters to the poor victims of his car parking plot investment schemes.  Normally at this point we would dissect the letters and comment on relevant paragraphs, but he’s a prolific writer and we just can’t be bothered responding in detail to his 10 pages of drivel.  We’ll give you a quick summary:

2^nd April letter

1.  Rental payments are suspended due to Covid 19;

2.  Lots of people are owed overdue rental payments (no surprise there – new investment into the scheme has dried up);

3.  HMRC are responsible for a lot of Aston Darby’s problems because those naughty tax inspectors aren’t treating the companies fairly;

4.  Mr Leonard Fenton is a right b******.  We don’t know the guy but according to Leigh Heywood he is responsible for destroying Park First, Group First and Store First which makes him a nasty man.  Somebody should point out to Leigh Heywood that these were all scams !

5.  Investors in Park First have turned on the FCA and have come to Leigh Heywood to ask for his help;  HAHAHAHA……Stop it Leigh – that’s really funny.  Was that in a dream ?;

6.  Investors mustn’t close down Aston Darby because it’ll be expensive.  HAHAHAHA – another good one.  That’s like saying the Police shouldn’t arrest a thief because there’ll be a lot of forms for them to fill in;

7.  Leigh Heywood regards himself as a charitable man.  In fact, in his eyes, he’s virtually a saint.  He only takes £1,000 per month in salary and he uses most of it to pay company bills.  HAHAHAHA……Stop it Leigh – you’re at it again.  It’s too much;

8.  Here’s the bit we really like  –  “If you want to close us down and take legal action against us, then I will not defend any action, I will simply let the courts close us down…..”  GREAT NEWS.  THAT’S WHAT WE’LL DO THEN.  IT’LL HELP US SEE WHERE ALL THE MONEY WENT.

2^nd May Letter

This is the letter we prefer because we get mentioned quite a bit.

1.  Safe Or Scam are scammers because “we want frenzied and fearful investors to start an uprising against their own investment”.  Actually, we don’t want any frenzied or fearful investors.  That would be a bit of a nightmare.  We prefer calm and sensible investors who realise that investor action is going to be necessary to attempt to recover their money.  We just tell the truth and people like Leigh Heywood don’t like the truth;

2.  Safe Or Scam will “terrify you with horror stories”…… Err, we just tell the truth.  We think Leigh had been drinking by this point because he gets weirder;

3.  Safe Or Scam this and Safe or Scam that  –  definitely been drinking;

4.  There’s a whole lot of stuff about Smooth Law.  More than there is about us which is pretty annoying !  Apparently law firms can’t be trusted because they use the law – yes, the law – HOW DARE THEY ! Apparently, they use the law to go after people who rip-off investors.  As far as Leigh is concerned that is a total abuse of the law.  The law was not established to catch crooks !

5.  There’s a former employee who Leigh really doesn’t like.  It looks like this guy had the guts to draw people’s attention to the unlawful nature of the scheme so Leigh Heywood really goes after him.  I think the employee is going to have the last laugh;

6.  Finally Leigh Heywood finishes with five statements which are designed to stop investors getting involved in an investor action.  They are:

YOU HAVE A CAR PARK……………Well, that’s the whole point for the Manchester investors – THEY DON’T !

YOU HAVE A GREAT OPERATOR…….. Well, there isn’t one because Manchester is still a field.  And it’s a field that Aston Darby doesn’t own !

YOU HAVE NEW ONLINE BOOKERS READY TO START WORKING TO BRING CARS INTO YOUR CAR PARK AND GENERATE INCOME FOR YOU……….. Well, our Manchester clients don’t !

YOU HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY FOR A GREAT FUTURE………. Madame Heywood has taken up fortune telling.  Cross his palm with silver and then check that you still have your fingers.  Thank you for that Leigh, I’m sure our investors do have the opportunity for a great future, but not if you keep their money.  Refund their money and that’ll go a very long way to making their great future a reality.

YOU HAVE A SOLID INVESTMENT…………..Oh no – he’s back to his comedy act.

OK, on a serious note – Aston Darby is an unlawful scheme and investors are entitled to full refunds.  It doesn’t matter if you invested in Manchester or Glasgow.  They are both massively over-priced unlawful schemes and investors should press for a full refund.  In our opinion investors should NOT switch from Manchester to Glasgow.  In our opinion investors should NOT accept shares in return for giving up their leases.  We believe the nature of the leases and the way they were sold to investors gives them the right to full refunds.  Swapping them for shares will remove that right.  If in any doubt seek the advice of a solicitor, BUT NOT THE ONE YOU USED TO BUY THE PLOTS.

Investors DO have recovery options available to them.  We will be contacting investors in the next week or so with a letter from a law firm explaining what the options are for a recovery action.

There are many people who have played a part in this scheme including Greg Heywood, Katrina Heywood, Christopher Miller, Michael Gibbons, Steven Kane, Michael Starvis, Roderick Bailey and John Clinton.  We will be delving into each of them in much greater detail.  Some of them have a history of involvement in collapsed scams.  All of them are being looked at in connection with the Aston Darby investor action.

There are many aspects to this scheme which bear closer scrutiny such as what is Aston Darby’s UK solicitor doing with an offshore company domiciled in the Seychelles ? and how does the Glasgow site suddenly increase in value so much just before Aston Darby buys it ?

One would almost think it was an engineered inflated price which allowed a poor guy who only gets paid £1,000 a month to extract company funds without attracting too much attention.  Well, it attracted our attention.  The previous owner was a secretive offshore company……..

Here’s the history of the Glasgow site for those who are interested:

SOLD August 2001                          Price £474,000

SOLD April 2007                             Price £400,000

SOLD December 2011                    Price £300,000

SOLD April 2016                             Price £500,000

SOLD September 2017                  Price £3,300,000  (bought by Aston Darby using investors’ money)

We have started the ball rolling on an Aston Darby investor action and are inviting investors to join.

To read our previous article on Aston Darby please click here.

This is a bit of a hurried article due to events unfolding fast with Westway Holdings and Joseph Griffin.

Readers of our previous articles on the subject WHICH CAN BE VIEWED HERE will know that we are in possession of an email from Joseph Griffin which states that he did not consent to being a director of Westway Holdings, had no knowledge of the company’s financial position, was not being paid by the company, had no shareholdings in the company and had no access to the bank accounts.  That is anything but normal for a company which only has the one director.

A director is supposed to direct the company.  He is supposed to know the company’s financial position and to control its finances and direction.

So, Joseph Griffin is today no longer a director of Westway Holdings Ltd.  A new director has been appointed.  It is an Estonian company called Westway International OU.  Here is the link to Companies House.

This is interesting because a UK company is allowed to have a corporate director like Westway International OU, but only if it also has a named individual as director.  It’s clear that Westway Holdings Ltd is toxic and nobody wants to put their name to it, not even Anthony Marks who is still pulling the strings.

Neither does Richard Baptiste of Baptiste & Co, the very dodgy accountancy firm and long-term accomplice in the Westway Holdings scam (there we go Richard – you’re not going to let us get away with making a statement like that are you ?).

We remember when Baptiste & Co first started its involvement with Westway Holdings.  Its accountancy website looked like it had been built by a drunk chimpanzee using a Sinclair ZX Spectrum.  To be honest it’s not much better now.  The chimp has sobered up a bit.  Baptiste & Co has been the Company Secretary of Westway Holdings Ltd since November 2017 and has a lot to answer for.

The story which is currently being spun by “the admin team” – they’re afraid to use a name and sometimes describe themselves as “the back-office team”, is that Joseph Griffin has been sacked by “the Board”.  That’s odd because there is no Board.  “The Board” of Westway Holdings was Joseph Griffin.  He was the only director.

What they really mean to say is Joseph Griffin has decided that the heat has reached the point where he is questioning what he was told.  Maybe his original understanding was that he was guest of honour at a meat feast and now he realises that he’s actually the pig on the spit !

Joseph Griffin has resigned, done a runner and will be lying low for the foreseeable future.  So Anthony Marks has had to put his Estonian company forward as director because nobody else wants to do it and he needs to keep control.

We are absolutely sure that dirty money is involved in Westway Holdings.  There are certainly some dirty people involved in it.

Five days ago one of our clients began the first stage of a legal action.  On Sunday we wrote to all the investors who contacted us advising them of the dangers of Westway Holdings and that they needed to act very quickly.  We normally tell investors they should take time to consider all options and should not jump in, but in the case of Westway Holdings and Joseph Griffin we told them they needed to act very quickly because there is a genuine chance of assets being dispersed.  Less than 24 hours later Joseph Griffin throws in the towel.  We don’t think that’s a coincidence.

This latest development has meant there is even more urgency to take steps to prevent the dispersal of assets.  We urge all Westway Holdings investors to contact us asap.

Finally, it is VERY IMPORTANT that investors do not respond to people calling them out of the blue with promises that they can recover the investment.  These are people linked to the Westway Holdings scam. They have the investors’ phone numbers and bank account details.  They can only have got them from one of two places – Westway Holdings or “the back office admin team”.  We know who the guy who the admin team / back office team because he runs it for many scams.  Here is a very recent article on one such follow-on-fraud company.

Gone are the days when a telephone number and an email address could be considered cast-iron and safe.  Nowadays there is software which can copy phone numbers and email addresses.  It is easy to do and is a favourite ploy of scammers to phone from a number that investors recognise e.g a Westway Holdings number.  The technical term is “Spoofing” and scammers use this all the time.  We intend to do an article on that now that a friendly Police Officer (aren’t they all friendly ?) has explained it to us.

Recovering money lost in a scam is always very difficult and never guaranteed.  Anyone who tells you differently is 100% a scammer.