UCIS Advice Point Limited.
UCIS Advice Point Limited was dissolved on 29th July 2021.
Dissolved (in the words of one famous comedy sketch) means that it no longer exists. It is no more. It has ceased to be. Bereft of life it rests in peace. It has kicked the bucket, hopped the twig, bit the dust, snuffed it, breathed its last, gone to meet the Great Registrar of Companies in the sky…….. (award yourself one point for recognising the sketch). However, UCIS Advice Point Limited may have dissolved but, as if by magic, the non-existent company is still approaching investors in failed investment schemes offering its dishonest services. That is not legal and any law firm which is involved with UCIS Advice Point clearly doesn’t care about its reputation.
There is no mention of the backgrounds of the two people operating it, Andrew Eastham and Neil Ronald Bromage, both of whom have served time in prison for financial offences. We won’t revisit those offences again because they have been adequately covered in our previous articles listed below.
UCIS Advice Point – 1st July 2020 – LINK
UCIS Advice Point Scam Alert – 2nd July 2020 – LINK
UCIS Advice Point News – December 2020 – LINK
We have also in the past warned the public that once their details are sent to UCIS Advice Point they are likely to receive unsolicited invitations to invest in more scam investments. Those invitations will not come direct from UCIS Advice Point, but from their linked companies. We will cover some of their scam investments below.
What we did not realise is that despite the company being dissolved on 29th July 2021 and no longer being in existence, the two convicted fraudsters would carry on pretending that the company was still alive, even going so far as to issue invoices in the name of the dead company. Of course, that is not legal, but compliance with the law has never bothered the Bromage family or Mr Eastham before. We have a copy of an invoice issued by the dead company several weeks after it was dissolved.
How does a company which does not exist collect payments ? A dead company cannot own a bank account. The answer is that it uses a money mule. It requests payments be made to a third party which does exist. Money mules launder money for scammers.
But, in this case, the money mule is not a totally independent third party. It is a company which has had a long association with the Bromage family. Even so, it’s still illegal to issue invoices in the name of a company which doesn’t exist and to have payments diverted to another company. This third party has been financing the operations of UCIS Advice Point for some time.
UCIS Advice Point Limited dissolved without filing any company accounts. That’s because it didn’t want its scam to show up to the UK authorities. The former director of UCIS Advice Point Limited, Peter Rowland Dobson, has some questions to answer.
So what is the bogus UCIS Advice Point up to now ? Well, at the end of August, around a month after the company no longer existed, they wrote out to investors in the Shepherd Cox Hotels scam.
NEIL BROMAGE’S INVOLVEMENT IN SCAMS
What we have never covered before is that Neil Ronald Bromage was the director of a company called Hollyhurst 2015 Ltd. Here is a link to his directorship – LINK.
Hollyhurst 2015 was the owner of Penrallt Country House Hotel. This hotel sold off its bedrooms in a scam. We are in possession of a brochure for the Penrallt Country House Hotel describing the investment opportunity for investors to buy bedrooms in the hotel. This is exactly the kind of scam that UCIS Advice Point offered to help investors recover money from.
Here are some excerpts from Neil Bromage’s brochure:
“The Penrallt Hotel has 26 rooms and will be offered to investors to purchase on a 99 year leasehold with a guaranteed exit strategy at year 6 which will be executed through a Call Option Deed. Investors are guaranteed a 10% per annum ROI and a buy back option at year 3 (105% uplift) and year 6 (110% uplift)”.
26 Bedrooms Available From £54,950
99 Year Leasehold Title Deed
Guaranteed 10% ROI per Annum
Fully Managed Armchair Investment
As you would expect this investment opportunity was never achievable. The guaranteed rental of 10% per annum wasn’t paid and there were never any buy-backs. It was a scam and it collapsed. Sadly, none of the investors who bought rooms at the Penrallt Hotel have recovered their money. They lost at least £1.4m.
Strange that Neil Bromage didn’t offer the services of UCIS Advice Point to help those investors.
NEIL BROMAGE SON’S INVOLVEMENT IN SCAMS
You would think that one failed hotel scam would have been enough in the family, but that’s not the case. Eagle-eyed readers amongst you will have noticed from the Companies House link above that Jonathan Neil Bromage was also a director of Hollyhurst 2015 Ltd along with Scott Else. Jonathan Neil Bromage is Neil Bromage’s son. He was also involved in the Penrallt Hotel scam.
Not to be deterred by one collapsed hotel scheme, the son tried the same scam at a second hotel. This time it was in Blackpool and was as recent as 2019. The company was called Mosaic Hotels (Blackpool) Ltd but, in order to hide his involvement in the “investment opportunity”, it was marketed under the name of Majestic Hotels. The problem is that you can’t hide the address of the hotel. The Majestic Hotel had the same address as the Mosaic Hotel at 10-12 Queens Promenade, Blackpool, which amazingly, is also the address of “The Welland Hotel” which is owned by BlueArch Properties Ltd. There are two directors of Bluearch Properties Ltd. As you may have guessed they are Jonathan Neil Bromage and Scott Else.
Majestic Hotel Ltd has the same registered office as Mosaic Hotels (Blackpool) Ltd and was also previously the registered office of Bluearch Properties Ltd. That address is 3b Constellation House, Lockheed Court, Amy Johnson Way, Blackpool, United Kingdom, FY4 2RN which, coincidentally, was also the registered office of UCIS Advice Point Limited before it was dissolved.
Suffice to say that Majestic Hotels, Mosaic Hotels, Bluearch Properties and UCIS Advice Point Limited was the same group of scammers running the same kinds of scams.
Here are some excerpts from the Majestic Hotels brochure:
Investment Overview
NO OF UNITS: 38 En-suite rooms
PRICE: From £49,950
OWNERSHIP: 999-year leasehold
YIELD: 10% PA net
YIELD PAYMENT: Quarterly in arrears
Assured Buy Back Option at end of year 5 & year 10 at 100% & 110% of your purchase price or you can sell on the open market at any time.
FINANCIAL CONDUCT AUTHORITY
We have been contacted by people who have told us that they have complained to the Financial Conduct Authority about UCIS Advice Point Limited. The organisation was covered by the Claims Management Company Regulations in exactly the same way that we are. Readers will note that in order to read this article they had to pass through a pop-up box and click ‘I CONFIRM’. This was an FCA requirement to ensure that we are FCA-Compliant. UCIS Advice Point Limited was required to comply in the same manner, but they didn’t and we have no way of knowing whether the FCA ever took any action against the company.
ANDREW EASTHAM
As readers will note from the first links in this article, Andrew Eastham was convicted of fraud, served his prison sentence and was released. He then worked with Neil Bromage to set up UCIS Advice Point. Neither Neil Bromage nor Andrew Eastham could be directors of the company because of their criminal convictions so they brought in a stooge to front the company for them.
On 21st August 2021 Andrew Eastham was finally struck-off as a solicitor. Here is a copy of the SRA hearing report below.
Andrew Eastham_SRA Decision 21st August 2021
Now Mr Eastham finds himself embroiled in another scandal relating to the issuing of invoices from a non-existent company. These guys must have really enjoyed their time in prison.
THE MONEY MULE COMPANY
People may wonder why we have not published the identity of the party which was due to receive the money from the illegal UAP invoice. Well, we have the evidence to back up our claims and we know these people have had a long established and ongoing relationship with the Bromages. We know they’ve been funding UCIS Advice Point, but we wanted to give them a chance to explain exactly why they would risk their businesses and their reputations in such a manner. We have written to ask them for an explanation. We’ll be publishing another article on this matter next week and that may include details of their companies if we’re not satisfied with their answers. It appears to us that they had agreed to use their company bank account to take payments for a non-existent company in an illegal arrangement with Neil Bromage and Andrew Eastham, but we’ll give them a chance to explain it.
To view an update on this article in October 2021 please click on this LINK.
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