Alastair Dobbie Investor Co-Ordinator Scam

Alastair Dobbie Investor Co-Ordinator Scam.

First a quick note to say we received a copy of Nico Bruyniks’ comparison of legal actions.  It’s designed to rubbish the legal actions we help to establish because we are a serious threat to the Alastair Dobbie Investor Co-Ordinator Scam.  The figures and assumptions they have issued are false, but we will let the law firms address this part of the Bruyniks misinformation campaign.

The law firm we proposed for Qualiacare investors is the same one which is handling the Carlauren case (another scam Dobbie and Pancaldi were involved in).  It’s the same firm which Alastair Dobbie has been saying is working against the interests of investors (all part of his attempts to rubbish people who are intent on exposing him and his investor co-ordinator scam).  That law firm has already achieved settlements for Carlauren investors in quite a short period of time without any court action.  Insurers are not keen on going to court against the firms we recommend because we work with the best.

What Alastair Dobbie and the investor co-ordinators are worried about is the fact that, in addition to making claims against the conveyancing firms in the Carlauren case, our recommended law firm is also running separate actions against two of the main sales agent companies on the grounds that they were aware the Carlauren scheme was unsustainable, but still sold rooms to investors.  This action represents a second opportunity for scam victims to recover more money. Very few law firms are willing to run these additional claims.  Nico Bruyniks and his sales agent friends haven’t told Qualiacare investors about that and it is very relevant as you will see from the information below !

NEW INFORMATION

We have already published a lot of damning information on Alastair Dobbie and his accomplices.  This article adds even more.  The more we look into the Alastair Dobbie Investor Co-Ordinator Scam the worse it gets.

Questions are now being asked as to whether or not the Investor Co-Ordinator scam was part of a strategy agreed a long time ago, before any of the room investment scams collapsed.

The investor co-ordinator structure was devised by Alastair Dobbie, (Maths Tutor, Lawyer and Dreamer)  Alastair Dobbie _ Founder @Zimple.it _ F6S Profile, working with Roberto Pancaldi, Luis Da Silva and Gian Luca Fetta (three sales agents who have sold a large number of scams between them).  They elicited the help of Nico Bruyniks who they call their ‘Chair Of Co-Ordinators’.  Between them they are withholding information from investors, issuing false and misleading information and raising money for the Alastair Dobbie Investor Co-Ordinator Scam.  We believe some of that money is being shared with the sales agents involved and have asked Alastair Dobbie, Shortlands Law and the investor co-ordinators several times to clarify the position.  None of them have ever responded, except for Nico Bruyniks who wrote to say that he won’t be asking any questions of Alastair Dobbie. That does not reflect well on his claim that he can be trusted by investors.

We were fortunate to be able to see how the Alastair Dobbie Investor Co-Ordinator Scam begins its approach to investors.  They start with one of them pretending to be an investor.  For example, when Roberto Pancaldi made his first approach to St Camillus investors to ask them for £1,000 each this is how he signed off his email.

Roberto Pancaldi

Room 608 – No 7 Blackpool Limited

Roberto Pancaldi doesn’t own room 608, or indeed any room in any development.  He sells the rooms.  One of his victims owns room 608, but he pretended to be an investor just to get St Camillus investors onboard.  That is how the Investor Co-Ordinator Scam starts.  Investors have a tendency to trust other investors and that is why they also quickly recruit genuine investors to act as investor co-ordinators.

Alastair Dobbie was a consultant solicitor with B&M Law.  We have already highlighted how he chose to airbrush that out of his LinkedIn ‘Experience’ section.  After all, B&M Law is likely to be one of the law firms which will be a potential source of compensation for investors in the legal actions.  Alastair Dobbie wants to distance himself from that because he was the one who brought in those victims.

Both Alastair Dobbie and B&M Law would have been aware of the SRA warnings about solicitors not getting involved in highly questionable investment schemes.  Here is a SRA Warning which was issued to all solicitors in June 2017 [LINK].  Investors really need to read this warning in full because it is very important they understand why Alastair Dobbie, as a solicitor, should not have gone anywhere near these investments.  He was involved in at least four separate hotel room and care home room scams after this warning was issued.

Here are some excerpts from the SRA Warning:

We have warned for a number of years about the risks posed by dubious or questionable investment schemes.

We expect you [solicitors and law firms] to act with integrity and protect consumers by robustly analysing the risks of any investment scheme you are involved in.

If you suspect that a transaction is potentially fraudulent, dubious or so high-risk that it is unfair to buyers or investors, you should provide full and frank advice to your clients and refuse or cease to act. [our bold].

We are seeing……dubious or risky schemes being presented as routine conveyancing or investment in “land” when the reality is very different.

Schemes are being promoted as involved in the routine buying of a property when in reality the buyer’s money is being used to finance a high-risk development or refurbishment. This is of particular concern in unusual developments such as the buying of individual hotel rooms, rooms in care homes, or self-storage units [our bold and underlining].

Schemes are being promoted by which buyers take a lease of a supposed asset such as a hotel room, care home room, [our bold], parking space or self- storage unit. This list is not exhaustive as fraudsters will continue to search for similar “assets”.

These “fractional property” investments are where the buyer buys a portion or fraction of an investment property and receives a fraction of the rental income and a fraction of the capital growth. These schemes can involve a higher risk than the simple purchase of a property that has already been built. Such investments have been treated as standard conveyances. They were typically marketed as being ‘a low-cost, high-yield investment product that’s hands off and hassle free’.

However, in reality, buyers pay a substantial amount for the asset and also pay conveyancing costs, sometimes of several thousand pounds. There is no obvious reason for someone wanting to invest in a hotel to take out a lease and pay for the conveyancing of one room. It is difficult to see why such schemes require the involvement of a solicitor as this is not a ‘conveyancing’ transaction in the usual sense with a view to title being registered against a piece of land or property. All that seems to be done here is that the law firm is receiving money into their client account and sending it on to the seller. This would be regarded as a breach of rule 3.3 of the SRA Accounts Rules.

Buyers may be inappropriately reassured that taking out a “lease” means that they have a legal interest in the land or property when the reality is that their investment is dependent upon sharing the profits which would arise from the business being well managed.

We also see no particular reason why such investments should provide high returns and you must properly advise your clients of this and of the associated risk of their money being lost. [our bold].

Many of these schemes are likely to be “collective investment schemes” under section 235 of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000. Collective investment schemes are defined in the FCA Handbook Glossary (see link).  If those involved in the schemes are not authorised by FCA, they will be committing a criminal offence and are likely to be imprisoned. You should exercise caution when being invited to be involved in any scheme that appears to involve a collective investment element. [our bold]

We could go on.  The bottom line is that Alastair Dobbie ignored clear SRA warnings (there have been several) about hotel room and care home room scams.

The only other people who could reasonably have known that these kinds of investments were outright scams would have been people involved in the hotel or care home industries.  We’ve spoken to many hotel and care home operators and they have all been shocked when we have described the typical structure of these investments which is:

1.  Property bought for £X.  Bedrooms sold off to investors on long leases for typically 3 times £X.

2.  Guaranteed rental income of 10% of 3 times £X.

3.  Buy-backs after 5 years at 3 times £X + 20%.

Imagine for a moment if there was ever a solicitor who was also involved in hotel management.  That person would be in serious trouble and someone you could never trust.  There couldn’t be any defence for that person not warning clients to steer well clear of these investments. 

Well…….. guess what.  There is such a person  –  step forward MR ALASTAIR DOBBIE.

Alastair Dobbie has managed hotels.  Here he is responding to a Trip Advisor review about his hotel.  Alastair Dobbie_Hotel Manager_Kew Rooms

Here is a link to one of his companies at Companies House [LINK],

Alastair Dobbie would have been fully aware of the value of a hotel or care home room.  He’s a lawyer and a hotelier.  He’s even a Maths Tutor so it would have been very easy for him to work out how much was paid for the entire hotel or care home and how much was being raised from investors through the sale of rooms.  That would have been a massive red flag.  He would have known from his own management experience that the guaranteed rental levels could never be paid without being supplemented from another source i.e a potential ponzi scheme, and he would know for certain that the buy-backs at 3 times £X + 20% would never ever be achievable.  In short, he would have known without any shadow of doubt that each of the investments he participated in was a scam from the very start.

We now believe it is highly likely Alastair Dobbie and his sales agent partners knew these schemes would fail and that they planned to make money from selling the scams, whilst at the same time calculating ways to make money later when the scams collapsed.  

We believe there is a strong chance they planned the investor co-ordinator scheme in advance waiting for these investments to fail and that it is possible their aim has always been to frustrate the efforts of administrators / liquidators to sell the properties at the best price because they want to pick up the properties for their selected high net worth investor friends.

The only way to achieve that aim would be to fool investors into thinking the investor co-ordinators are on their side and to get as many investors as possible to sign up.  They have used a lot of tricks to get those numbers, but they need the investor numbers to give them control of the administration process.

Alastair Dobbie, Roberto Pancaldi, Gian Luca Fetta, Luis da Silva and the majority of investor co-ordinators are part of this large scam.  We also believe Nico Bruyniks is withholding important information from investors and we have to regard him as being part of the scam too.  We believe it is no coincidence that Nico Bruyniks is also a hotelier and he is based in Austria where Alastair Dobbie now lives.

There are some genuine investor co-ordinators, but at this stage it is not possible to know who is genuine and who is part of the Alastair Dobbie Investor Co-Ordinator Scam.

Where does this leave investors ?

It’s very difficult to say.  The genuine investor co-ordinators should contact us and we will try to help them (free of charge).  We work with a number of UK law firms and we are sure that one of them would be willing to help at no cost.  Investors need an honest person to co-ordinate them.  It should be an investor, but one we have checked out on behalf of all other investors.  Do not trust any communications from the Alastair Dobbie Investor Co-ordinator Scam.  It is all controlled by Alastair Dobbie and sales agents.

We would advise all investors to immediately demand the return of their £1,000 because it is clear Alastair Dobbie was involved in scams, acted against warnings given by the SRA and covered up the fact that he had enough knowledge of hotel values, finances and operations to know that these ponzi scheme room investments were sure to collapse and were outright scams.  Investors affected by this scam should report the matter to the SRA using this [LINK].

To view our previous article on Alastair Dobbie please click here [LINK].

To view a more recent update on the Alastair Dobbie Investor Co-Ordinator Scam please click here [LINK].