SOS INVESTIGATIONS

Allansons Litigation Funding was a scheme operated by the law firm of Allansons LLP.  In June 2018 we warned potential investors that we had serious concerns about this investment proposal. See HERE.

In late May 2019 investors received a letter from a law firm acting on behalf of the Solicitors Regulation Authority. The letter contained the following information:

“Allansons LLP of 1st Floor, Queens Buildings, Central Street, Bolton, Lancashire, BL1 2AB, 658 Ormskirk Road, Pemberton, Wigan, WN5 8AQ and 44 Clarendon Road, Watford, Hertfordshire, WD17 1DR (‘Allansons’), has been closed by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (‘SRA’). This is called an intervention.  The intervention took place on 24 May 2019.

Allansons can no longer act for its clients. This means they cannot act on the miscalculated mortgage payment claims you were funding. The clients pursuing those claims need to find another lawyer to act for them.

What does the intervention mean for my litigation funding agreement?

We understand that the litigation funding agreement is between you and Allansons, not you and the claimants (i.e. the people for whom Allansons were pursuing the claim). 

Although Allansons have been closed by the SRA and can no longer act as solicitors, the company Allansons LLP (Company Number: OC341712) still exists.

Safe Or Scam is investigating the claims made in promotional material and in contracts.  There are third parties involved in this scheme which we believe have some questions to answer.

Please contact us if you were a claimant pursuing a mortgage mis-selling claim or you were an investor funding the litigation. We are very interested in how this scheme was operated. We believed from a very early stage that this investment opportunity was flawed and that both claimants and investors were not being told the truth.

SOS INVESTIGATIONS

This investment collapsed at the end of 2017. A criminal investigation was undertaken by Essex Police and investors are now waiting for the UK’s Crown Prosecution Service to make a decision on whether to file criminal fraud charges against one or more parties.

SOS is involved with two aspects of this scam. We are working with a small group of investors on a claim against an insured third party. We are also looking at ALL the participants in the fraud to determine whether claims can be brought against any parties not included in any CPS prosecution.

SOS INVESTIGATIONS

SOS is representing a number of investors in a recovery action against the company and person involved in this investment. There is a separate website European Property Coin which contains further information.

One of our clients was able to force the company which owns the fake coins into administration. That company is Clear View Marketing Services Ltd. A liquidation firm is now running the company whilst it undertakes an internal investigation. We have provided the liquidator with details of 46 UK bank accounts used in the scam and in the follow-on frauds.

If you are an investor and you are contacted by any party claiming to be an agent of the liquidator, or a seller of your coins or a potential buyer of your coins, do not respond to them. It will be a follow-on fraud and they will just try to get you to part with more money.

SOS INVESTIGATIONS

We are interested in hearing from investors in this company. MCI Sales Ltd entered into loan agreements with investors to develop its own projects.  It also owned the website mcimanagement.co.uk which sold a series of scam investment projects to investors.  Investor losses now run into millions of pounds.  One project claims that MCI charged 40% commission on the funds raised.

The company has recently changed its name to TSM Corporate Services Ltd but it cannot change its history. The company is owned by Matthew Cullum who works out of Folkestone.  He is assisted in the scams by Thomas Scotland.

We have successfully recovered money from this company for our clients in the past.

SOS INVESTMENTS

We are interested in hearing from investors in this workspace investment company.  OurSpace was a clone of Bar Works Inc (see our ‘Live’ actions section for information on Bar Works Inc).

We worked with our clients to force one of the OurSpace companies into administration. The administrator has now begun an investigation into the directors’ conduct and the financial transactions undertaken by the company.  The owner of the OurSpace ponzi scheme is Kevan Halliwell.

SOS INVESTIGATIONS

St Helier Capital Management Ltd provided false and misleading information to investors in order to obtain investment money.  The director of St Helier is a man called Simon Whittley (aka Simon Whittley-Ryan).  Mr Whittley is well known to us because he has several companies which owe money to investors (see Win River Ltd and Win River Developments Ltd).

His business model is to form a new company, issue a false and misleading Information Memorandum, raise significant sums of money from investors, fail to make the interest payments that the contract requires and then fail to repay the capital when the contract has come to an end. He does this time and time again.

Our clients have filed a winding up petition against the company for their unpaid debts.  Any investor wishing to join the petition is invited to contact us.

SOS INVESTIGATIONS

Safe Or Scam has started an investigation into Strategy Markets.

Strategy Markets operated a bogus equity and commodity trading platform whereby investors agreed to allow “traders” to buy and sell shares and commodities using the investor’s money.

Strategy Markets promised average monthly returns of 1.1%.  It was a very well-constructed scam offering different packages to investors with titles such as SWP Portfolio or PPP Passive Preservation Portfolio, but of course none of these packages really existed.  The investor’s money was stolen the moment they paid it over.

The investor’s trading history could be viewed online when they logged into their account.  The investor would be able to see a lot of impressive graphs, a history of the trades undertaken on their account, movements on equity and commodity indices in real-time etc.  It looked impressive but the trading history was entirely false.  None of the trades were ever made. Investors were watching a piece of software designed to produce a fake trading history.

Strategy Markets is a new investigation for us and is not to be confused with StratXMarkets, a binary option trading scam for which our investigation is well advanced and one where we have been achieving results.

The hook for trading scams such as Strategy Markets is to offer investors the opportunity to make a small initial investment or to reassure them that “for the first month all trades are undertaken at the traders risk”.  The scam trading company will then adjust their fake software to show healthy profits over that early period.  The investor, believing the profits they see on the screen are genuine, is then persuaded to increase their investment.

We are working the Strategy Markets case on behalf of a client and we are following up on leads.  If anybody can assist us with information on Strategy Markets please make CONTACT.

SOS INVESTIGATIONS

We have started an investigation into Van Gossum Consult and the money mule companies associated with the investment.  Van Gossum used the same money mule companies as another scam called St Johns Asset Management.  Money mules are individuals or companies which take in money on behalf of scammers and act as a cut-out to prevent investors from tracing where their money ends up.  They are well rewarded for their part in the scam.  Safe Or Scam targets money mules because we regard them as accomplices in a fraud and we will go after both the founding crooks and the money mules to recover money for investors.

Van Gossum Consult offered a fake trading platform.  Our clients invested a significant sum of money with them and we are motivated to trace the people involved.  Whilst the company initially used UK money mules it quickly moved on to having payments made to overseas bank accounts.  If you were an investor in either Van Gossum Consult or St Johns Asset Management please contact us.

SOS INVESTIGATION

Win River Ltd and Win River Developments Ltd are two companies owned by Simon Whittley aka Simon Whittley-Ryan.  Mr Whittley is well known to us.  He also owns St Helier Capital Management Ltd.

All three companies owe millions of pounds to investors.  All three have stopped paying the 6-monthly interest payments and all three are not repaying capital to investors.  St Helier is the subject of a winding up application.  We have clients in all three companies and are supporting them in taking action to recover their money.

Simon Whittley’s standard excuse for not making payments is that he is in the process of “refinancing” the companies.  He is always ‘refinancing’ his companies.  It is an excuse he uses to make investors think there is a chance of them recovering their money.

Simon Whittley has recently turned his attention to fundraising for his latest venture – Avianta Capital Consulting Ltd.  Bearing in mind his history of defaulting on payments, investors would be well advised to give Avianta Capital Consulting a wide berth.