Simon Whittley-Ryan – Coronavirus
Simon Whittley-Ryan has launched an alleged coronavirus testing and research company called Cambridge Medical Screening Ltd.
Here is a link to the website. The domain name was purchased on 30th July 2020 i.e less than two months ago. The website states “since inception the company has quickly established relationships with both private and public sector bodies seeking reliable supply of Covid 19 test kits and total testing solutions. To meet demand we are now considering expansion by investing in our own manufacturing facility under licence in the UK and overseas”.
This may be true, but we doubt it. Cambridge Medical Screening may well be considering investing in their own manufacturing plant, but that’s a very bold statement considering the website has been up for less than two months. Simon Whittley-Ryan has never been shy in promoting ambitious plans because that attracts investment and it is how he funds his lifestyle, but every ambitious plan he has come up with so far has failed and left investors with huge losses.
We are very concerned this may just be another pseudo-investment which will be offered to investors and which will end up going the way of his other investment schemes. Coronavirus is obviously a very hot topic at the moment and if anyone wanted to raise money in very difficult times then a coronavirus company, which appears on the surface to be credible, would be the perfect vehicle.
The address on the website for the company is St Johns Innovation Centre, Cambridge, CB4 0WS. The company which owns these premises provides a ‘virtual office’ for companies which would like to appear to have a presence in Cambridge. They don’t actually have a real office in Cambridge and the company founders don’t work in Cambridge. Our team members have some knowledge of legal matters and it is not illegal to pretend to operate from another address.
The website states “The Company’s clinical advisory board provide in depth analysis across a widely sourced range of tests and research products leading to recommendations and product approvals. This is headed up by Professor G.K. Mahadev”.
Professor Mahadev is the only person mentioned on the website and he is not even part of Cambridge Medical Screening Ltd. He is neither a director nor a shareholder in the company. He is allegedly part of a clinical advisory board which advises the company. A check on Professor G.K. Mahadev reveals he is a breast and oncoplastic surgeon. Maybe we’re showing our ignorance here, but we’re not really sure how coronavirus is linked to breast surgery. We would expect the head of a clinical advisory board of a coronavirus company to perhaps be a virologist or other specialist involved in virus research, but that shows how much we know. It is likely that Professor G.K. Mahadev doesn’t even know his name is being used in this way. So the truth is that the ‘About Us’ page on the website doesn’t say anything at all about the real people behind Cambridge Medical Screening Ltd.
Not to worry, that information is readily available on the Companies House website. Here is a link to the Cambridge Medical Screening Ltd entry. The registered office is not in Cambridge. It is Brockingbury Stud, Roast Green, Clavering, Saffron Walden, Essex, England, CB11 4SQ which is the home address of Simon Whittley-Ryan. If you click on the Companies House Incorporation Document (16 pages) you will see that Simon Whittley-Ryan describes himself as “Corporate Finance Executive”. It shows that the person registering the company was Simon Whittley-Ryan and that he is the 100% owner of Cambridge Medical Screening Ltd.
There are three company directors. They are Simon Whittley-Ryan, David Triggs and David Anthony Peters. We have covered Simon Whittley-Ryan before on this website, but here’s a brief summary of his recent business history.
1. Win River Ltd – a company which raised an estimated £3m+ in investment from small investors. This company is still ‘live’ although it has defaulted on interest payments and capital repayments to investors for two years so if it has any money it isn’t paying its debts. Mr Whittley-Ryan has been promising a ‘refinancing’ throughout those two years. The company accounts are a year overdue which suggests that Mr Whittley-Ryan doesn’t want anyone to know the true debt position of the company.
2. Highgrove Osprey PLC – a company forced into liquidation by an investor in September 2019. The company was funded by small investors. Amount raised is unknown at this stage, but it will be a lot of money because the company was formed in 2012. The company defaulted on payments to investors not long afterwards. Mr Whittley-Ryan has been promising a refinancing of this company for at least six years. Yes, that’s correct – we have emails from investors which show they were kept hanging on for six years before one of them finally had enough and filed to liquidate the company. Mr Whittley-Ryan is still writing to investors even this month promising a refinancing despite the company being in liquidation. The liquidator’s report is due to be published before the end of the year.
3. Win River Developments Ltd – a company forced into liquidation by an investor in January 2020. The early-stage investigation has revealed just over £3m was raised from small investors, but around half of that has gone missing. Mr Whittley-Ryan advised the Official Receiver that the company had no assets, but that £300,000 was recoverable from a sales and promotion company he had paid in advance. Who pays £300,000 in advance ? The answer is that nobody pays £300,000 in advance. Maybe a director might pay £20,000 or even £30,000 in advance, but never £300,000 !
What raises more red flags about this transaction is that it was paid to a promotion and marketing company which was less than a year old and did not even have a website. It becomes even more suspicious when it is revealed the marketing company had only one director – a Romanian citizen who resides in Romania !
It is no surprise that Simon Whittley-Ryan has refused to co-operate with the liquidator on this case and will not even provide the liquidator with the Win River Developments bank account details. We believe Mr Whittley-Ryan does not want this transaction investigated and perhaps others made by the company. It is our opinion that the bank account which received the £300,000 was not controlled by the Romanian director. We believe it is likely the company was a money mule and that it was incorporated to allow a bank account to be established and for someone to buy that bank account from the Romanian director and then control it through online banking. That is standard practice for money mule companies. It allows a person who wants to hide the true destination of the money to route it through another company. The fact that Mr Whittley-Ryan told the Official Receiver that he believed the £300,000 was recoverable could suggest that he has some influence or control over that money. I think it’s fair to say that most of us would be very surprised if the company director could be tracked down in Romania and would say “What, the £300,000 payment ? Sure, I’ll refund that to you. No problem”.
Despite Win River Developments being in liquidation and having no assets, Mr Whittley-Ryan is writing to the investors in this company promising them a ‘refinancing’ too. What is the new investing party actually going to get for paying in £3m ? Absolutely nothing because the company has no assets. But, despite this fact, there are a few investors who choose to believe Mr Whittley-Ryan. Maybe they should speak to the Highgrove Osprey investors who waited six years to be repaid before they finally realised it was never going to happen.
4. Hawksbill Property Consultants Ltd – a company forced into liquidation by HMRC in February 2020. Company funded by small investors. Amount raised is unknown at this stage. This case is with the Official Receiver.
5. St Helier Capital Management Ltd – a company which has a final hearing in October 2020 for a winding up petition brought by two investors. Company funded by small investors. Amount raised is unknown at this stage. Mr Whittley-Ryan has been writing to these investors for two years advising them that he is arranging a ‘refinancing’. It’s the same story time after time.
We’re not going to look into the backgrounds of David Triggs and David Anthony Peters because they aren’t shareholders in Cambridge Medical Screening, at least not yet according to Companies House.
Bizarrely, Mr Whittley-Ryan has recently taken to writing to people using the name ‘Roger’. We don’t know why he has chosen to call himself Roger, but we do know that he has made contact with various organisations featured on our website under the guise of wanting to work with them against Safe Or Scam. That’s OK, he can do that, but those parties have no idea that he has then written to us using his roger email address pretending to be a concerned citizen and providing us with information about those same organisations and the people involved. He is quite prepared to sell out his new scammer friends. He must have some kind of strategy in his mind, but it’s very odd.
We spotted his ruse very early because we already knew about his Cambridge Medical Screening coronavirus business and have been looking at it for a while. It was just too much of a coincidence that an informant suddenly appeared using an email address linked to that company. He attempted to persuade us that he was a professional businessman operating in the finance industry and he didn’t like what these scammers were doing. We asked him why he had a coronavirusloan email address and we asked what he did for a living. It turns out that he has bought a lot of coronavirus domain names – a hell of a lot and he intends to sell them. He said that his main business was a ‘loan and insolvency business’ (his words in an email). Well, technically this not too far from the truth. All of his businesses take in loans from investors and all of them end up in insolvency !
To read an earlier article on Simon Whittley-Ryan please click here.
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