October 2021

UCIS Advice Point VAT Fraud.

Two weeks ago we wrote this article on UCIS Advice Point – LINK. We covered a number of issues in the article including the scam investments offered by Neil Bromage, the scam investments offered by his son and the striking off of Andrew Eastham as a solicitor.

We also covered the fact that UCIS Advice Point Ltd was dissolved on 29th June 2021 and therefore no longer existed, but a few weeks later it somehow managed to issue an invoice.  Obviously a company that doesn’t exist cannot have a bank account which is why the invoice requested that the payment be made to a money mule account i.e somebody else’s bank account. We decided not to publish details of the money mule company because we wanted to give it a chance to explain its role in this fraud.

We have emailed the two directors twice and have not had a reply so we took a closer look at the company and its relationships. First of all we’ll show the invoice below.

UCIS Advice Point Invoice – VAT Fraud

There are a few points to note. The first is that the invoice just says “UCIS Advice Point”. It does not say “UCIS Advice Point Ltd”, but it is clear that it is the limited company and we’ll explain why. The second is that it is dated 20th August 2021 which is seven weeks after the company no longer existed. The third is that it asks to customer to pay the money to Adlington Finance Ltd.

The invoice is for £120,000 + VAT.  The VAT element comes to £24,000. As the law requires, the issuer of the invoice must provide its VAT Registration Number which can be seen in the top left corner of the invoice. It is 351505230.

The UK Government provides a website which allows VAT numbers to be checked just in case anyone is tempted to use another company’s VAT number to defraud HMRC.  We checked number 351505230.  Here is the result:

Check a UK VAT number – GOV.UK

This proves that the VAT number belonged to UCIS ADVICE POINT LIMITED.

So we know that a dissolved company cannot have a bank account, but why did Neil Bromage, Jonathan Bromage and Andrew Eastham choose Adlington Finance Ltd for their bank account ? The answer is that they have a prior relationship with Adlington Finance Ltd.

In our previous article we highlighted a hotel room scam perpetrated by Jonathan Bromage and Scott Else through their company Bluearch Properties Ltd. This relates to The Welbeck Hotel which was promoted under a different branding of ‘Majestic Hotels’. If you look at the charges registered against Bluearch Properties – LINK Here you will find a charge registered by Adlington Finance Ltd.  Adlington Finance loaned money to Bluearch Properties to tide the company over whilst it was selling over-priced hotel rooms. Adlington is owed money by the Bromages and doesn’t believe it has much of a chance of being repaid by Bluearch Properties. That may be the case, but this invoice amounts to VAT fraud and it raises the question as to whether this is the first time. It’s possible that money has been diverted to Adlington Finance Ltd before.

It is incredible that Neil Bromage and Andrew Eastham who have both served prison sentences for financial offences are involved in yet another serious criminal offence.

In a recent letter to investors, UCIS Advice Point provided details of four law firms it claims to work with. We checked with two of them who confirmed they do not work with UCIS Advice Point and will be writing a strong letter to them. We will be checking with the other two, one of which is based in Cardiff and the other in Sheffield. It would not surprise us if the other two also state that they don’t work with UCIS Advice Point.

UCIS Advice Point VAT Fraud.