Insolvency And Law Update

Insolvency And Law Update.

Following publication of the article titled Peter Murray and the Insolvency And Law Scam – LINK HERE, we were copied into an 8-page letter from Insolvency And Law Ltd which was addressed to a private citizen. The letter demanded that this individual, who has no connection whatsoever to Safe Or Scam, take down the Safe Or Scam article or face legal charges for defamation. We informed Peter Murray that we didn’t know this citizen and if he wanted to continue threatening him it was no concern of ours.

The letter stated it was NOT FOR PUBLICATION. Clearly Peter Murray doesn’t know us very well. If he didn’t want the contents published he shouldn’t have copied us into his email. It was a long and tedious letter so we will summarise it for this article. Our comments in response to the points raised within the letter are in brackets [ ].

The letter was clearly written by someone with legal experience. Insolvency And Law Ltd, by its own admission on its website, does not have anyone with legal experience. Peter Murray sent out the letter on Insolvency And Law letterhead paper as if it was written by him. This is not the first time Peter Murray has kept the names of legal advisers quiet. For example, High Street GRP investors who were conned into paying 3%+vat of their investment to Insolvency And Law Ltd haven’t been told the name of the lawyer(s) or the law firm which is supposed to be running the case against Castle Trust And Management Services Ltd, and Stokoe Rodgers LLP. One of the I&L clients asked Peter Murray to provide the name of the lawyer so he could speak direct with him/her. Peter Murray refused to give the name stating it was confidential.

Well, perhaps information on the case against these parties is confidential, but the name of the lawyer absolutely shouldn’t be withheld from an investor who has paid towards the legal action. All Peter Murray ever says in his communications is “our lawyers”. We will stick our neck out and declare that we don’t believe Insolvency and Law Ltd has any lawyers running the High Street GRP case. We think he has pocketed the money and is misleading investors who were tricked into paying money to Insolvency And Law Ltd.

Insolvency And Law Ltd certainly did have a lawyer last October. It was Martin Scott of Walker Morris Solicitors – LINK. He sat in on a webinar which encouraged HSG investors to pay 3%+vat of their investment money to Insolvency And Law Ltd. We wrote to the Compliance Officer of Walker Morris Solicitors after that webinar to ask why Mr Scott was endorsing the request for investors to pay such a large percentage of their investment to an unproven, unregulated claims management company operating in breach of FSMA regulations. One investor we know paid more than £15,000 to Insolvency And Law Ltd to join the HSG third party legal action. He has now demanded a full refund. It is a criminal offence to operate an unregulated claims management company with the aim of procuring money from victims of collapsed financial investments. Walker Morris replied to our email to say that they do not discuss the affairs of “their clients”.  OK, that explains why Martin Scott was on the webinar. He was supporting a client in its fundraising attempt. It was never declared on that webinar that Insolvency And Law Ltd was a client of Walker Morris. Recently we wrote to Walker Morris again with another list of questions. We had noticed that Martin Scott had disappeared from the “Our People” page of their website. We asked more questions about Insolvency And Law Ltd and other linked companies. Their response was that Insolvency And Law Ltd was no longer a client of theirs and they refused to answer any more questions.

Law firms often represent some horrible clients – murderers, rapists, paedophiles etc. They represent them because there is a view that everyone has a right to be represented. Law firms don’t normally withdraw their services from a client without good reason. When they do it is often because they have realised that their client is acting unlawfully and the law firm doesn’t want to be associated with a client involved in criminal activities. We don’t know why Walker Morris withdrew its services from Insolvency And Law Ltd, but we can take a guess. Peter Murray himself let it slip that Walker Morris had contacted him and raised the issue of Insolvency And Law Ltd’s compliance (or not in this case) with FSMA and the claims management company regulations. After that conversation they ended their relationship and Martin Scott is no longer present on the Walker Morris website. We think that is unusual. Perhaps Martin Scott retired and I&L didn’t trust anyone else at Walker Morris to handle their case. It’s possible, but unlikely. Martin Scott’s specialism was in the construction industry so we thought it was very odd at the time that he was going to be involved in a financial services investment case.

The Letter From Peter Murray of Insolvency And Law Ltd To The Private Citizen

Insolvency And Law Update.

The letter began: “This response does not address your opinion on Mr Murray’s past, interpretation of any of Mr Murray’s statements and your description of content of Insolvency And Law’s website….”. That’s a shame because they were key parts of the article which Peter Murray should have been keen to clarify rather than attempting to sweep them under the carpet, but hey-ho there were enough stupid statements in the letter for us to comment on.

There were the usual statements directed at the unfortunate individual claiming that he had made – Untruthful and baseless claims that are completely unsupported without a shred of evidence, and that neither Insolvency And Law Ltd nor its employees have ever been involved in unlawful practices, and that there has been no wrongdoing on the part of the I&L employees and that Gill Clow does not investigate investments offered by any of the companies. She only investigates “a company’s viability as a trading concern”. [ All of this is the usual baloney and none of it is true. A solicitor acting on behalf of a company targeted by Insolvency And Law Ltd has reported I&L and its employees (Peter Murray, Britena Clarke, Gill Clow and Marcia Abbott) to the FCA for their involvements in unlawful claims management practices. Investors who have paid money to Insolvency And Law Ltd should follow suit and do the same. If Gill Clow only investigates a company’s viability as a going concern, then why has she been reviewing investors’ documents relating to HSG and attempting to induce investors to sign up to a legal action which has little chance of success?  HSG has been in administration since January 2022 so it’s clear Gill Clow’s activities weren’t related to any “viable trading” company! Peter Murray needs to work on his excuses because they are very weak and don’t stand up to scrutiny].

Other points raised were:

None of their websites are aimed at “attracting investors”.  [ We disagree ]. Peter Murray has not abused any insolvency regulations. [ Well, he has and there is a court hearing coming up in which witness statements have been submitted outlining examples of abuse of insolvency regulations ]. We will report in more detail on that after the hearing.

Peter Murray does not target vulnerable people, nor make false promises, nor charge extremely high fees. [ We beg to differ. Our first article covered those points and further evidence has come to light which we will publish in another article. A regulated claims management company is capped on the fees it can charge investors. Insolvency And Law Ltd has already taken payments from investors which exceed those capped levels. We will provide a table of the maximum charges in our next article ].

The awards on the Insolvency And Law Ltd website are real and I&L did not pay for them. [ The awards are clearly fake (see below). This is covered in our previous article and in an article on bondreview which can be seen on – THIS LINK ].

Image of the three awards claimed to have been won by Insolvency And Law Ltd

Finance Monthly issued fake awards like confetti in return for a fee. We repeat our previous statement where we questioned how a company with no lawyers, and which is not regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority, can win “Law Awards”. Insolvency And Law Ltd claim not only to have won these awards for just one year, but for three years in a row. WOW, there are some huge law firms around the world that don’t have these Law Awards. They must be extremely jealous. They can’t win these awards, but Peter Murray and his tiny team of bedsit workers had no trouble winning them. These fake awards were an attempt to fool investors into thinking that Insolvency And Law Ltd has legal qualifications and experience. It does not. Readers might wonder why the awards stopped in 2018.  The reason is because Finance Monthly went bust!  The fake awards business wasn’t as profitable as they had hoped. In the UK the Solicitors Regulation Authority issued warnings to law firms about engaging with these fake award companies. That didn’t bother Insolvency And Law, however we have to say that any law firm working with Insolvency And Law should have picked up on these fake awards and thought twice about becoming involved with them. Scam companies always put fake awards on their websites.

I&L is not a scam because the I&L disclaimer on the website states that it is not a law firm, does not conduct litigation, and has no lawyers or barristers. The disclaimer is clear that it is an unregulated company. [ The disclaimer is very small in comparison to the size of its fake awards. Mr Murray is missing the point.  I&L is operating as a claims management company and as such it is a legal requirement for it to be regulated. Also, Peter Murray is confirming exactly what we have said about the fake awards. If it “is not a law firm, does not conduct litigation, and has no lawyers or barristers” then how can it win Law Awards? Peter Murray knew these awards were fake and was happy to use them. He has been using them for a long time to add false credibility to his company in order to dupe members of the public into believing I&L is, in his words, “an award-winning company” ].

Insolvency And Law has not made false claims of success. [ No examples proving it has reclaimed £40m for investors have been provided. If they are provided in the future we would be happy to review them and issue an apology, but he won’t be able to provide them. As these cases have not been identified by I&L and remain unproven we stand by our article which states that the claims of having reclaimed £40m are false ].

The SOS reference to High Street GRP claims being pushed by I&L as being doomed is untrue. I&L always relies on legal advice before making a statement on recoverability of funds. There are live legal actions which are ongoing. [ We have to thank Peter Murray for confirming that I&L is undertaking regulated activities in breach of The Financial Services and Markets Act. We can also confirm that the declared target of these legal actions being undertaken by I&L was Castle Trust And Management Services Ltd which went into administration on 27th June 2023 thereby killing off any claims against the company. As a self-proclaimed expert on insolvency Peter Murray must surely have seen that coming because it was obvious. Our lawyer said this would happen when we looked into CTMS 18 months ago. We believe HSG investors who have paid I&L should seriously consider whether they want to risk losing that money on what we were advised was a very high risk claim with little chance of success. At some point in the future we expect Peter Murray will claim those funds have all been used up in “costs” (which means charges levied by I&L) and that more money will be needed from investors if they want to progress matters further. This is a standard scammer strategy].

Insolvency and Law is not a claims management company. [ It has been reported to the FCA by a solicitor so it is expected that the FCA will now investigate. It has certainly been providing claims management services ].

The SOS opinion that applying for FCA regulation would be a problem for Peter Murray is unsubstantiated. [ We shall see because Insolvency And Law will have to apply for FCA regulation if it wishes to continue to offer regulated services. It’s unlikely to be able to claim fake Law Awards if it ends up being regulated because the FCA would not allow it. Keep your eyes open for those fake awards being removed at some point in the future ].

SOS is not capable of understanding the business structure of Insolvency And Law. [ That caused a few laughs. We exist to expose scams and we probably have more experience of investigating scams than most other organisations. We understand the Insolvency And Law business model extremely well ].

Insolvency And Law receives its fees from recovered funds so if is allows a debt to just sit there it does not get paid. [ That’s not what the contracts say. Some of the contracts say it can deduct 48% of any payment recovered during an insolvency even if I&L has done nothing. I&L has not disputed this clause exists or that our interpretation of that clause is incorrect. Furthermore, there is an extension to this clause which states that Insolvency And Law can also retain money for its costs. Those costs are always unspecified and there is clear evidence of gross inflation of costs way beyond what genuine costs would have been. Finally, Insolvency And Law charges every person an upfront fee to take on these assignments so it is already making money out of the clients from day one. If it did not charge clients an upfront fee then we would be more lenient, but it is actually making a lot of money from charging upfront fees ].

Insolvency And Law does not inflate its costs. [ That statement is untrue. It does inflate its costs. This was covered in the first article so we won’t go through it again – LINK TO FIRST ARTICLE ].

Insolvency And Law disputes that the Assignor is only entitled to receive money from a payment made in settlement of the debt. The Assignor is entitled to receive all payments. [ This is another lie. We have evidence proving our statement is correct and can provide it to a court if necessary. There is an investor who assigned his debt to Insolvency And Law. I&L then used it to demand protection money from a company of more than £100,000 which was paid (see previous article). When the investor enquired about that money he was told by Peter Murray that he wasn’t entitled to it, but if he agreed not to terminate his contract with I&L Peter Murray was prepared to discuss it at the end. The investor terminated his contract with I&L because he could see that Peter Murray was dishonest. The company involved has started a legal action for the recovery of the protection money payments plus the inflated costs payment plus other money paid to I&L. This amounts to more than £400,000. Their grounds are that the I&L assignment was invalid and unlawful meaning that Insolvency And Law Ltd had no entitlement to demand any payments  at all from them ].

Charging of ‘monitoring fees’ in return for not winding up a company is untrue (but it did happen in one case). [ Odd statement from I&L. Peter Murray claims that the company doesn’t run a protection racket (which he describes as monitoring fees), but then he admits that it did against one company ].

The demand for ‘monitoring fees’ was not a protection racket. The fees covered legitimate costs directly incurred by I&L in monitoring the status of the company. A number of full-time employees as well as additional software had to be engaged in order to monitor the status of the company. [ Oh Please! Peter Murray must think we are idiots. By the time the company stopped paying the protection money Peter Murray was demanding £60,000+vat per month.  We would love to see a breakdown of the costs he claims amount to £60,000 per month for “monitoring the company”. Insolvency And Law Ltd never engaged a number of full-time employees or purchased additional software. We have asked questions of the company that was being targeted and been told that Peter Murray never once asked it to provide any bank statements, nor any income or expenditure management accounts, nor any information on its financial position, nor to be kept informed of any financial commitments it might be entering into. In other words, no monitoring whatsoever was taking place. The only way to monitor a company’s day to day financial position would be to see all of the above and receive reports each day on its income and expenditure. Insolvency And Law did nothing. The bottom line is that neither I&L nor Peter Murray incurred any costs which justified a payment of £60 per month let alone £60,000 per month. It was a straightforward criminal protection racket and we believe Peter Murray would have continued to increase the monthly demands until he had bled the company dry. Thankfully the company finally had the sense to call in a lawyer. He put a stop to the payments and initiated legal action to recover those that had already been made ].

The letter finishes with demands that the unconnected individual:

• removes the original article;
• undertakes that he will not re-publish the allegations;
• publishes a suitable apology in terms to be agreed;
• archives that apology on the SOS website so that it remains searchable to users of the website;
• compensates Insolvency And Law for the damage to its reputation, distress and financial loss caused; and
• pays its legal costs.

We wonder if the recipient of the letter ever responded or just put it straight in the bin.

INSOLVENCY AND LAW UPDATE – HIGH STREET GRP INVESTORS

For those unfortunate HSG investors who paid Insolvency And Law Ltd we suggest that they start demanding answers to simple questions like:

1. Who provided the legal advice and am I, as one of the people who is funding the I&L claims activity, covered by the legal adviser’s insurance should that advice prove to be negligent or wrong ?;
2. What is the name and contact details of the solicitor who is running the case?;
3. How much will Insolvency And Law Ltd deduct from the money investors have paid?;
4. If a legal action is required are you likely to require any more money from me or have you already obtained litigation funding and ATE insurance?;
5. Please provide information on the cases you claim to have successfully ran which recovered £40m for investors?;
6. Are you holding investors’ funds in a separate account, how much has been raised and how much has been spent?

If they don’t receive clear and honest answers to these questions HSG investors may want to follow the route taken by other investors and demand the return of their payment.

Later this week we will publish another article on the activities of Insolvency And Law Ltd relating to the High Street GRP Ltd case and Peter Murray’s attempts to persuade investors to switch from Third Party Action Services Agreements to Deed Of Assignment contracts. We believe this would have been because Insolvency And Law was advised that the TPASA contracts were in breach of FSMA regulations and were unlawful and unenforceable. Investors should have been given refunds. Instead they were told at the beginning of May 2023 that the switch was needed in order to allow “their lawyers” to file Disclosure Applications at the High Court. Investors were told the applications would be filed a week later around 20^th May 2023. We have found no evidence that there have been any applications made to the High Court. Perhaps now is the time for HSG investors to ask to see copies of the applications filed by these ghostly lawyers because we can’t find anything. We think it was a lie to enable Insolvency And Law to keep HSG investors’ money instead of refunding it.

Insolvency And Law Update.