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High Street GRP Ltd Administration.

Following on from the Notice Of Intention to File For Administration which we covered in this article – LINK on 8th November 2021, High Street GRP Ltd went to the High Court in London a few days later seeking to put itself into administration. The Administration Order was not granted by the Judge at the hearing and the case was adjourned to be heard again  in December.

A request by a company for an Administration Order is normally a formality. The Company Director submits a Witness Statement stating that the company is insolvent and that the best outcome for creditors is that the company is put into administration. The Witness Statement is supported by Exhibits (an evidence pack). The director’s chosen administrator submits a Witness Statement backing up the director’s claims and confirming they are willing to be appointed.

There are a number of reasons why a Judge would delay granting an Order at the first hearing. They are typically:

1. The company made a procedural error when filing the application which needs to be corrected;

2. The company has not satisfied the Judge that an administration is the best course of action and is given more time to improve its case;

3. The company has provided too much information for the Judge to be able read in the time alloted for the hearing;

4. The company has not given objectors enough time to review the company’s submission and to prepare and file a counter-argument.

We don’t know the reason why the Judge adjourned the hearing, but we do know that the Witness Statement and Exhibits submitted by the director Gary Forrest were provided very late. We also know there are parties objecting to the administration application and they would have had very little time to prepare their counter-arguments and to highlight discrepancies, inaccuracies and omissions in the company’s case.

Our article last week also flushed out the double-dealing of some of the self-appointed leaders of a bondholder group. We had heard that a small group of bondholders was seeking to use its position as leaders of the group to get refunds for themselves. Tough luck for the rest of the group. We support any investor taking whatever action they feel is necessary to recover their money as long as they are not misleading or abusing other investors in doing so. Putting yourself in a position of influence within a group of investors and then using it to your own advantage is clearly abusing the trust of the investors in that group. The leaders of this particular group have now admitted that they were fully aware High Street GRP was intending to file for administration, but did not tell the rest of the bondholder group.

We see this so many times in Facebook or Whatsapp groups. These groups range from the Alastair Dobbie “investor group” model which uses sales agents who pretend to be investors and they operate a recovery room scam, the Allansons Investor Group model which involves one Supreme Leader who controls everything published in the group ensuring that the perpetrator of the scam is protected from negative comments (in that case investors were misled for almost two years), and the HSG and FRE models where there are self-appointed leadership teams which have their own self-interests at heart.

It will be very interesting to see how the High Street GRP Ltd Administration application progresses. The odds are very much in favour of the company in this scenario. It is difficult for a Judge to declare that a company must continue trading when the directors have declared it to be insolvent. It is also difficult for a Judge to support a liquidation effort by objectors when there may be jobs and livelihoods at risk. An administration seeks to rescue a company as a going concern thereby protecting jobs. A liquidation is closure and the sale of the assets. Judges tend to support administration applications because if the administrator cannot save the business he would be forced to change the status of the company from administration to liquidation anyway.

This is not really a fight between administration and liquidation. This is a fight to stop Gary Forrest appointing administrators who are sympathetic to his cause and who will apply only a light touch to any investigation into his conduct. His administrators are also very unlikely to reverse the transfer of assets which has been taking place in recent months, placing those assets beyond the reach of HSG creditors. This is a fight by small investors against the power of dishonest directors to cover up their wrongdoings.

The administrators proposed by Gary Forrest are Carrie-Ann James of SKSi, and Paul Michael Davies of James Cowper Kreston. Let’s hope they haven’t been advising the company on the transfer of assets prior to their appointment and are determined to make their first task the return of assets to the company over which they’ve been appointed. Let’s also hope we don’t get the standard friendly administrator statement of “having carried out an initial investigation into the conduct of the directors and with consideration to the financial position of the company and the likely benefits to creditors of extending the investigation versus the costs involved, we have determined that it is not in the best interests of creditors to continue investigations into the directors’ conduct”.  We’ve seen a version of that statement quite a few times when the administrators are appointed by the directors.

High Street GRP Ltd Administration.

High Street GRP Ltd files a Notice Of Intention to Appoint Administrators.

A Notice Of Intention to Appoint Administrators (“NOI”) was filed by High Street GRP Ltd with the High Court in London on 4^th November 2021. A NOI is exactly what it says i.e that the company intends to appoint administrators.

However, it is not necessarily the case that the company will go through with its intention. A NOI gives the company 10 working days protection from creditors who might have been taking their own insolvency action e.g filing a winding up petition. If the company does not appoint administrators in that period the NOI falls away. We have clients who had advised High Street GRP of their intention to file a winding up petition against the company. The filing of this NOI has prevented them from being able to do so until the NOI lapses. The company can apply for an extension of 10 days if it looks like a deal is imminent, but this extension must be in the interests of creditors and must be justified.

Coincidentally, this filing was on the same day that Castle Trust and Management Services Ltd, the Security Trustee for the High Street GRP bondholders which appears to have failed in its duty to adequately protect bondholders, sent out a letter stating that it has been in regular contact with the Board of Directors of High Street GRP Ltd and has been aware of the restructuring plans throughout. It is apparently pleased that the first phase of the restructuring has been completed, but does not give any details.

Castle Trust and Management Services Ltd, based in Gibraltar, is allegedly working with the Board and its corporate advisors. The letter does not mention that High Street GRP Ltd was intending to file a NOI on that very same day.

We don’t trust Security Trustees generally and we definitely don’t trust Castle Trust and Management Services. Security Trustees are appointed by companies, not by loan note holders, and it has become apparent in a number of cases in recent years that Security Trustees are in the pocket of the companies which appoint them.

We were given legal advice on the position of loan note holders following the opaque vote in June 2021, (supported by Castle Trust and Management Services Ltd who sat alongside Gary Forrest), at the meeting which allegedly resulted in loan note holders agreeing to waive all their rights under their contracts. The legal advice was that the vote outcome would be unlikely to stand up in court and would likely not be binding on loan note holders who had not agreed to change their contracts. It was likely that the court would view it as a frustration of contract issue because many loan note holders’ repayments were due and a company cannot avoid paying its debts by changing a contract without the agreement of the other party. If any investor is owed a debt they should seek legal advice if they intend to challenge the vote and the restructuring.

The restructuring consists of High Street GRP Ltd transferring its assets to Hadrian Real Estate PLC. Loan note holders have been offered free shares in Hadrian Real Estate PLC. One thing investors should always remember is that swapping a debt for shares puts them lower down the pecking order for a distribution of assets should the new company collapse. Creditors, i.e those who have proof of debt, come before shareholders. At the moment we are not aware that loan note holders have been asked to give up their debt claims, but be warned. This restructuring looks very much like the loan note holders’ debts will be left behind in High Street GRP Ltd whilst they end up with shares in Hadrian Real Estate PLC.

Whenever a company owes a huge sum of money and suggests a restructuring, which is certainly the case with High Street GRP Ltd, it is guaranteed that it is in the best interests of the company, but it is often the case that it is not in the best interests of creditors. Investors should take legal advice on the implications of any restructuring and whether it diminishes their rights in any way. It pays to be cautious because once an investor agrees to a change it is binding on them from that point onwards.

We were informed of the involvement of a company called Broadleaf Assist Ltd which was offering to help investors. Broadleaf Assist Ltd had a representative at the June vote who was handing out his business cards. His name was Bradley Lincoln. The Times newspaper has run a couple of stories on Bradley Lincoln which do not paint him in a good light at all. Here are the links to those stories:

Times Article From 2019.

Times Article From 2021.

We have also been contacted by Jane Sanders, a person known to some High Street GRP loan note holders. She has also been covered by the Times newspaper. See below.

Times Article on Jane Sanders.

Ms Sanders’ position in High Street GRP was very similar to her position as described in the Times article. She had gathered together High Street GRP loan note holders on the basis that she was prepared to help them, but she declared to us that she had been working for High Street GRP and she was now upset that they had refused to pay her invoices. We declined her offer for us to work with her because we don’t work with people who operate on both sides of the fence. We only work with people who are 100% committed to helping the victims.

Our investigations have revealed that this is not the only High Street Group company to have filed insolvency papers with the High Court last week. Three other Gary Forrest companies also filed.

To view one of our previous articles on High Street GRP please click here – LINK.

High Street GRP Ltd files a Notice Of Intention to Appoint Administrators.

Renovare Fuels Investment.

It was only due to the events of this week that we decided to take another look at Matthew Stone, Duncan Clark and Kevin Godlington, and the way in which Renovare Fuels was promoted to investors.

Firstly, let’s remind ourselves of how Kevin Godlington and Matthew Stone were described in the Renovare Fuels Investment Memorandum. Here is a copy of that page.

Renovare Fuels_Management

Yesterday’s article – LINK HERE – highlighted Mr Godlington’s shameful behaviour in attempting to steal hundreds of thousands of acres of land from villagers in Sierra Leone, but he also appears to have attempted to hide other relevant and disturbing information from investors. Here is a copy of the Companies House register showing directors with the name Kevin Godlington.

Kevin Godlington_Companies House Records_Nov 2021

According to this register there appears to be at least five different company directors named Kevin Godlington, but look again. They are all the same man.

Either Mrs Godlington popped out five male children between March 1972 and January 1977 and decided to name each one of them Kevin (highly unlikely but not impossible if she REALLY LOVED the name Kevin), or the lone Kevin Godlington deliberately filed false information at Companies House in an attempt to hide his involvement in some of these companies.

Filing false dates of birth is a common ploy used by scammers because it makes it more difficult for investigators to link their companies together. In Kevin’s case he has actually used 5 different dates of birth across his 29 companies. The birth dates he has used are:

March 1972; July 1975; September 1975; April 1976 and January 1977. He hasn’t just changed the year of his birth. He has also used a different month each time.

Some entries do not have a date of birth alongside them. These are entries where Kevin Godlington is acting as Company Secretary. Company Secretaries do not have to provide their date of birth, but Company Directors must always do so.

How do we know these 5 Kevin Godlingtons are the same person ? These 5 people are all linked by common addresses e.g entry 4 where KG says his date of birth is April 1976 shares the same address as entry 9 where KG says his date of birth is September 1975. The addresses prove they are either all the same man, or one of the Kevin Godlingtons has tracked down four other Kevin Godlingtons and persuaded them all to come and live with him !!!

So let’s look at the companies and tie them up with the dates of birth.

DOB March 1972

Entry 14  – GB Adventure Ltd  –  DISSOLVED. The company went bust owing £397,259. We note that this wasn’t mentioned in the Renovare Fuels Investment Memorandum.

DOB July 1975

Entry 3  =  3 companies: 

The Godlington Foundation Ltd  –  DISSOLVED.

GBR Productions Ltd  –  DISSOLVED.

GB Adventure 2 Ltd  –  DISSOLVED.

Entry 5  =  2 companies

Soil 2 Skin Ltd  –  DISSOLVED.

Good Earth Organics Trading Ltd  –  DISSOLVED.

Entry 6  – 

Calmen Lifestyle Company Ltd  –  ACTIVE since January 2019.

Entry 7  –

Guiding Forces Ltd  –  DISSOLVED.

Entry 11  –

Veterans Coalition (Global Adventure Plus) Ltd  –  DISSOLVED.

Entry 12  –

Calmen Sleep Ltd  –  ACTIVE since February 2021.

Entry 15  –

Heropreneurs Ltd  – ACTIVE, but KG resigned in 2012.

Entry 16  =  7 companies    

Aristeus Consultants Ltd  –  DISSOLVED.

Spank My Pig Productions Ltd  –  DISSOLVED. Yes, he really did have a company with that name.

Caparo Renewable Agriculture Developments Ltd  –  DISSOLVED.

Be Green Stay Pink Ltd  –  DISSOLVED.

Sierra Leone Agriculture Ltd  –  DISSOLVED. See newspaper article on this scam – LINK HERE.

Aristeus Productions Ltd  –  DISSOLVED.

Aristeus Bamboo Ltd  –  DISSOLVED

Entry 17  =  5 companies

The Kind Planet Company  –  ACTIVE since January 2018. Very small home-based business run by Kevin and his wife.

Martis Consulting Ltd  –  DISSOLVED.

Aristeus Capital Ltd  –  DISSOLVED.

Aristeus Projects Ltd  –  ACTIVE since 2012. Another small home-based business run by Kevin and his wife.

34 London Road (Freehold) Ltd  –  DORMANT.

Entry 19  = 3 companies              

Renovare Fuels Ltd  –  ACTIVE.  Resigned as a director in January 2018. Still owns 250,000 shares in the company. We believe the fundraiser, Syndicate Room, would have required a copy of a passport or driving licence as part of their due diligence. Therefore, we believe KG would have had to give his correct date of birth which means that we are confident his true date of birth is July 1975.

Lion Growth LLP  –  ACTIVE. Resigned in 2014.

Aristeus Trading Ltd  –  DISSOLVED.

DOB September 1975

Entry 9  =  2 companies 

Treejumpers Holdings Ltd  –  DISSOLVED.

Treejumpers HF Ltd  –  DISSOLVED.

DOB April 1976

Entry 4  –  Treejumpers WP Ltd  –  DISSOLVED.  The company went bust owing £346,974. We note that this wasn’t mentioned in the Renovare Fuels Investment Memorandum.

DOB January 1977

Entry 8

Divoc Ltd  –  DISSOLVED.

Two things are clear from the analysis. They are:

Kevin Godlington had two failed businesses which went bust owing money to creditors. In one he declared a date of birth of March 1972 and in the other he declared his date of birth as April 1976. However, for Renovare Fuels Ltd he declared his date of birth as July 1975. Therefore, had any potential investor checked the background of Kevin Godlington DOB July 1975, the two failed companies and their debts would not have shown up. We believe this was a deliberate attempt to hide these failed businesses from prospective investors.

The Renovare Fuels Investment Memorandum not only failed to mention these companies, but it appears to have grossly exaggerated Mr Godlington’s experience and achievements. For example,

“…….Kevin has founded several charities and a number of environmentally and socially responsible companies, overseeing them from start-up to orderly exit.”  If that means he has started up and closed down a lot of companies we would agree with that.

“Kevin leads investment teams in setting up large-scale development businesses, providing highly proven management teams and diminishing execution risk in high barrier to entry environments.” We think that might refer to the Solari scam. There is evidence of ex-military personnel having been involved in it. It may also refer to the Sierra Leone scam which he was responsible for. We’re not sure he has ever provided “highly proven management teams” because when we wrote to him he didn’t reply. Everyone involved in the Solari scam has been keeping their heads down.

“Kevin is a specialist in developing pioneering businesses into well-established highly valued entities.” We see no evidence of any ‘highly valued entities”, just a succession of dissolved businesses. None of the 29 businesses he was a director of can be described as being well-established and highly valued. Most of them no longer exist. Those that do are low value. Amongst those which were dissolved are two which went bust owing money to creditors and two that were embroiled in a major international scandal. There is no evidence of Kevin Godlington ever having sold any business for a substantial sum. 

“His previously founded projects are now valued at over £70m.” That’s rubbish. To make a statement like that in an Investment Memorandum you would need to provide proof of a valuation. The only project that could ever even loosely be described as having any significant value would have been the Sierra Leone palm oil business, which turned out to be a scam and collapsed.

“Kevin’s founded projects currently employ over 1,000 people.” We assume he was counting the poor Sierra Leone villagers who didn’t know anything about it and whose lands he tried to steal.

Matthew Stone’s CV is not much better. It is just pure waffle. There is nothing of any substance.

“Matthew…….has an established research catchment of over £6bn annually.” What does that mean ? Does it mean he lives near silicon valley, or that he subscribes to magazines which cover an industry worth over £6bn ? It’s waffle which doesn’t mean anything to investors.

“Matthew has direct experience………designing and implementing investment strategies of £100m and above.”  Let’s break that down. ‘Designing investment strategies’ – doesn’t that mean sitting down and working out ways to get people to part with their money ? ‘Implementing investment strategies of £100m and above’ – doesn’t that mean starting the process of trying to raise £100m ? It doesn’t say that he managed to raise it. It just says he thought about ways to raise money and started trying to raise it.

Now, if the words “designing and implementing” were replaced by the word “delivering” then it would be a different matter, but it doesn’t. The sentence was worded to make it sound like Matthew Stone is successful, but it doesn’t clearly state that he has been successful at anything. He doesn’t give a single example of one of his companies having made money for investors. It’s just waffle.

There’s no doubt that Matthew Stone is successful making his living from getting members of the public to pay money into his companies. As one of our team pointed out, if he is operating at the £100m+ level as he claims to be, then why on earth is he piddling around trying to raise £10,000 here and £15,000 there from members of the public ? He would be working with institutional investment funds. His CV is a very cleverly worded piece of waffle. Matthew Stone has finally hit upon a business which suits him to a tee – anaerobic digestion plants need tons of bullshit.

Project RF-1 Ltd.

Yesterday we published an article titled “Were We Stoned?” Here is a LINK to that article. It questioned why anyone would file a fake copyright claim against us in order to have one specific article removed. That is the act of a desperate person.

The article they were trying to remove by illegal means contained references to Matthew Stone, Duncan Clark, Renovare Fuels Ltd, Teysha Technologies Ltd, Nextgen Nano Ltd and the Solari investment scam, amongst others. The article will be reinstated later this month, but we have to allow the legal process to run its course.

We came to the conclusion that the fake copyright claim was related to the above people and companies. The timing of the fake claim, i.e 18 months after the article was written, was both suspicious and surprising.

Things had gone relatively quiet on the activities of Matthew Stone and Duncan Clark until around the middle of September, except for the fact that there is a Police investigation in Australia where Solari is based, and one of the participants in the Solari scam has been charged with fraud in the UK relating to another scam in which he was involved. Some investors in that other scam also invested in Solari so we, in conjunction with those investors, are now seeking to have the Police extend that criminal investigation into the Solari scam. The Police should be interested in Solari because the defendant in their case has already confirmed the involvement of Matthew Stone and Duncan Clark in the Solari scam.

We mentioned things had gone quiet until around the middle of September, but then we received two unconnected enquiries about Matthew Stone and his companies within a few days of each other. One enquiry was from a man who had invested in two Matthew Stone companies. These were Teysha Technologies Ltd and Nextgen Nano Ltd. He was concerned about his investments. The other was from a landowner in Scotland who had been approached by Matthew Stone because he wanted Project RF-1 Ltd to buy / lease his land and facilities. He told the landowner that his company had been given a government grant of more than £4m !

The Teysha Technologies / Nextgen Nano Investor

This investor had invested £10,000 in Teysha Technologies and £10,000 in Nextgen Nano and was concerned that he had been the victim of a scam. He asked us if we had undertaken an investigation into the companies. We told him that we had not because we had not been instructed by any investor. He said that he had seen our articles on the Solari scam and wanted to know if what we had written was true. We confirmed to him that it was and that we knew Matthew Stone and Duncan Clark had founded that scam. It has since become their standard modus operandi i.e to partner with credible firms in the renewable energy sector which have their own technology and to use their credibility to raise money from investors.

The investor told us that when he had first invested he would receive updates on a regular basis, but now they had stopped and both websites were well out of date. He asked us if we would investigate the companies for him. Our advice to him was that if there is no evidence of fraud or deception at the time that he made his investment it might be difficult for him to get a recovery now. He had bought shares in both companies. We also told him that we felt it might not be viable for him to pay for our services because it would require two separate investigations. He had invested £10,000 in each company and we said that in percentage terms he would be paying quite a lot for the investigations when he has no clear evidence of wrongdoing in those companies. The end result of the investigations might be that there is nothing he can pin on them which would force them to compensate him.

£20,000 in total is not a small sum, but we felt it wasn’t cost-effective for him to pay for the service. We gave him some free advice on how to approach Matthew Stone. We told him to tell Matthew Stone that he had been in contact with Safe Or Scam and that we were very keen to investigate the two companies. We told him to say that he is considering it. We said that ought to make Mr Stone take notice of his refund request.

A week later we checked to see how he had got on. He told us that Mr Stone got a little bit ‘tetchy’ when Safe Or Scam was mentioned. He said that he asked Matthew Stone about Solari and Mr Stone refused to discuss it. He then said that he asked Mr Stone to give him an example of one successful company for which he had raised investment in the past and which had resulted in a profitable outcome for investors. He asked Mr Stone to give him something tangible which would enable him to check for certain. Apparently, Mr Stone got a little bit cross at this request and declined to provide him with any information. However, that discussion did have a happy ending. Matthew Stone ended up promising to refund the investor’s money in both companies within the next few days.

We’re surprised that Mr Stone didn’t give the investor anything to prove his previous alleged successes because he wasn’t so shy giving vague references to them in the Renovare Fuels Information Memorandum when he was trying to raise money. Here is a copy of the Management page.

Renovare Fuels_Management

You will note the glowing report on Kevin Godlington. We’ll return to that later in this article.

A week or so later the investor came back to us to say that nothing had happened on his refund, but the websites had now been brought up to date . We told him to tell Mr Stone that he had decided to instruct Safe Or Scam and we would begin investigating.

Another week or so later we contacted the investor to find out how things were going. He thanked us for our help and said that everything was now sorted out for him. He said that he couldn’t discuss it because he had been made to sign what he described as “a big document” and that was all he was allowed to say, but he will never be contacting either company again.

So, normally what that means is that an investor has been paid off and has signed a gagging order forbidding him to talk about it. We assume that Teysha Technologies and Nextgen Nano don’t want other shareholders finding out that they’re willing to refund the investment money if an investor pushes hard enough.

If the investor has been paid off (which let’s face it we’re sure he has) then that is a great outcome for him. We were surprised that the companies rolled over so quickly, but by that time we had received the second enquiry from the Scottish landowner and it all made sense. Matthew Stone could not afford Safe Or Scam publishing that an investor had instructed us to look into two of his companies at a time when he had government grant money to spend and he was in a hurry to spend it before further checks were made !

Before the investor signed the gagging order (which let’s face it we’re sure he has), he did his own research into Kevin Godlington, the CEO of Renovare Fuels as shown above. Mr Godlington didn’t mention his involvement in this palm oil scam on the Renovare Fuels management page !

LINK TO ARTICLE ON KEVIN GODLINGTON PALM OIL SCAM

The Scottish Landowner / Project RF-1 Ltd

As we said, not long after the initial contact from the investor we were contacted by the Scottish Landowner. He told us that Project RF-1 Ltd wanted to buy / lease his land and the Anaerobic Digestion facilities constructed thereon.

He had come across our Solari article. He told us that he already had concerns about Project RF-1 Ltd because the company was pushing very hard to get the deal signed whilst he still wanted further clarifications on some aspects of the contracts. The contracts were, in his opinion, opaque and unnecessarily complicated. He was uneasy and felt something was not right about the proposed structure. Project RF-1 Ltd was represented by Taylor Vintners in the transaction.

The landowner was concerned because there have been some high profile scams involving biogas / waste-2-energy schemes, one of which had already occurred in Scotland. He told us that the current global focus on alternative fuels and reductions in fossil fuel usage had brought a lot of scam operators into the market. Over the past few years there have been a number of renewable energy scams involving solar power (Solari is a prime example), wind farms (e.g DCR) and now scammers are moving into biogas / AD. He did not want to fall victim to a scam like the one which already occurred in Scotland. He referred us to this newspaper report below.

LINK to newspaper article on Scottish AD / biogas scam.

The landowner asked Matthew Stone about his involvement in the Solari scam and has advised us that he did not receive a satisfactory explanation. He has advised that he has informed Taylor Vintners that he will not be entering into a contract with Matthew Stone and Project RF-1 Ltd, and that he believes there was not full disclosure on their part.

Its clear to us that the Teysha Technologies / Nextgen Nano investor benefitted from a unique set of circumstances. His timing in asking for a refund could not have been better.

When funds are being raised from the general public there is a legal requirement for the fundraising documents to be clear, transparent and not misleading. Sometimes it is not what is in the Investment Memorandum that matters, it is what is left out. Knowingly excluding important information from fundraising documents can give rise to claims for compensation.

For example – Kevin Godlington. He is a man who thinks he has learnt how to hide his failed businesses from public scrutiny. Unfortunately for him he’s a novice and we know how to spot false identities. He’s just not clever enough. The difference between Kevin Godlington and Matthew Stone is that Matthew Stone doesn’t falsify records, Kevin Godlington does. Matthew Stone just doesn’t give anyone anything which enables them to check his claims of being successful at anything. Matthew Stone gives waffle and it’s very difficult to prove or disprove waffle. What we do know is that we can find no evidence that any group of investors have ever made any money from any Matthew Stone company. We know 38 investors who have definitely lost a lot of money to one of his schemes.

We’ll be writing a separate article on how Kevin Godlington has attempted to hide his failures. It is relevant to Renovare Fuels investors because none of his failed businesses, where investors lost a lot of money, were declared in the Renovare Fuels Investment Memorandum, which they should have been.

Finally, if a government awards a grant to a company we would like to think it has obtained guarantees that the company directors have disclosed all relevant information. It is public money and the due diligence needs to be extremely thorough. It looks like the due diligence in the Project RF-1 Ltd case. was severely deficient.

On 21st September Taylor Vintners issued this statement “Mishcon de Reya and Taylor Vinters – a leading legal and consultancy business in the innovation economy – have today announced that they will be creating MDR Taylor Vinters, a new business that will offer legal and consultancy services to innovators and entrepreneurs and the organisations and ecosystem that support them”.

Investors be very, very cautious. If this new collaboration intends to support “innovators and entrepreneurs” like Kevin Godlington, Matthew Stone and Duncan Clark, (who Taylor Vintners have supported for years), then there’s going to be a lot of very unhappy investors in the future.

Were We Stoned ?

Some readers may have noticed our website was unavailable for one day earlier this week. We are regularly targeted by scammers and most of the time they have little success, but this time they were able to persuade our hosting provider to take down the website due to an alleged copyright infringement by Safe Or Scam. Normal service was resumed by the end of the day, but we have had to temporarily remove the alleged offending item for a while as is required by US Law.

So what was the alleged offending item ? It’s actually a very interesting case because it was a blog article we published on our site in March 2020. It was one of our ‘Scam Alerts’ which was called ’Insolvency Case Support Scam’.

This article was published 18 months ago and it covered one of the standard follow-on-frauds where scammers pretend to be working with an insolvency firm and they claim to have recovered money for investors. We were contacted by one of the scammers’ intended victims in February 2020 asking for our opinion on phone calls and emails he had been receiving. He sent through the paperwork he had received. We told him it was a scam and we published the Scam Alert. Nothing very unusual about that. We do it on a regular basis.

So we were very surprised this week when we were informed by our hosting provider that somebody in California had come forward and claimed that they had written the entire article and that we had effectively stolen it and published it on our website in breach of their copyright. Unfortunately, we are not able to show you the article for a week or so because we agreed to take it down while the complaint/complainer is looked into, but we can give you a link to the complainer’s site where this article (at this moment in time) is currently published. This is because, after all, this person claims to have written it and claims that we stole it from this site ! So whilst we are not allowed to show it to you ourselves, you can read it in full on the complainer’s website.

The article can currently be viewed on this LINK. 

We have been advised that the person making the complaint and the alleged author of the article is:

COMPLAINANT:
Full Name: Karen Ruckert
Street Address: 4133 Rainbow Road
City/State/Country: Los Angeles, California United States
Phone: 626-283-9586
Email: legal.karenruckert@gmail.com

COPYRIGHT INFO:
Description of Copyrighted work(s): https://legalkarenruckert.tumblr.com/post/663588929088438272/insolvency-case-support
Original work(s) attached.
INFRINGEMENT DETAILS:
URL of Infringement: https://safeorscam.net/insolvency-case-support/
Identification of Infringement: “A company calling itself Insolvency Case Support is operating a follow-on-fraud. A man going by the name of Robert Howarth (it will not be his real name) has been cold-calling investors claiming that Insolvency Case Support Ltd has been “appointed as the liquidators of Pan Global / Solari Holdings“. He follows up with a letter which is so poor that his scam colleagues must be laughing at him behind his back.”

Now, we can’t promise “Karen’s” link will stay there so it might be gone by the time you click on it because it’s a scam. We have downloaded an image of it for future reference.

What we can say with absolute certainty is that the blog article was entirely all our own work, it is a Safe Or Scam original piece and was 100% written by us from scratch. We don’t actually mind if ‘Karen’ wants to use it, but she should really have read the article more thoroughly because it contains statements which prove beyond any doubt that it was written by us. For example, the article ‘Karen’ claims to have written includes the following statements:

“We have a group of 37 investors working with a UK solicitor to recover money from the Solari scam”.  Well, there’s a coincidence. We also have a group of 37 investors working with a UK solicitor (it’s 38 now by the way). What are the chances of Karen and us both having 37 Solari investors? Pretty slim I would say considering there were only ever around 45 investors in total ! Of course, we can prove our investors exist. Sadly, she cannot.

Another section states:

“Renovare Fuels Ltd, Teysha Technologies Ltd and Nextgen Nano Ltd all have their registered offices at the law firm of Taylor Vintners LLP. That is the firm which recently wrote to a Solari investor warning him that he was slandering their clients (Matthew Stone and Duncan Clark) because he referred to them as being “convicted fraudsters”. That is a fair point. We wrote to Taylor Vintners on the investor’s behalf apologising for the use of the word “convicted”. Neither of them have been convicted”.

There’s another coincidence. One of Karen’s imaginary investors wrote to Taylor Vintners and accused their clients (Matthew Stone and Duncan Clark) of being convicted fraudsters. Taylor Vintners then allegedly wrote a warning letter back to her investor and Karen then wrote to Taylor Vintners herself apologising that her investor used the word ‘convicted’. Hell’s Teeth – what an amazing coincidence. Exactly the same happened to us ! We’ve got the letters to prove it. We might even publish one of them in our next article.

We could go on and on because there are other examples, but suffice to say that our hosting provider has seen through the attempted scam copyright claim.

Now…….. when something like this happens out of the blue it peaks our interest. We start wondering about two things  –  WHO ? WHY ?

We can forget about Karen Ruckert. There is an attorney in California called Karen Ruckert, but it’s not her. She would not make a false statement under penalty of perjury. She also wouldn’t use a gmail address for official business. It was someone using her name.

So who else would want that SPECIFIC article taken down ? Not any of our other blog articles, but that SPECIFIC article. The obvious candidates would be the people or organisations named in that specific article. Those would be:

1. Insolvency Case Support  /  Robert Howarth.  It’s not likely to be them. They were operating a follow-on-fraud. They don’t worry about being found out. They just rebrand the same scam, use another false name and start again. They’re not interested in an article which exposed them 18 months ago.

2. Dr Constantine Pagonis. He’s not worried by that specific article either. There are other harder hitting articles about him and he has a hell of a lot on his plate at the moment. He has been involved in a dozen or more scams and some of them are very high profile. His company was also FCA-regulated which means heat will be coming on him from more powerful adversaries than us. No, he’s not behind this.

3. Taylor Vintners LLP – the UK law firm. Well, that really would be a surprise. There are law firms which value their ethical integrity and those which do not. It doesn’t really matter what we think of Taylor Vintners because it is simply inconceivable that it would be prepared to file a false copyright claim either for itself or for any party, even if that party were a long-standing client of theirs. No, it’s not them either. In fact, we think they’re not going to be very pleased at all if this scam claim is linked to one of their clients. That would really be testing their ethics and integrity to the limit you would think. The perpetrator of the copyright scam claims that he/she has been in correspondence with Taylor Vintners and gives specifics, which happen to be identical to our correspondence. Taylor Vintners is mentioned several times by ‘Karen’ so if they value their reputation they would want to get to the bottom of it themselves.

So who does that leave ? Well, at the beginning of this article we asked “Were We Stoned ?”

4. Matthew Stone  /  Duncan Clark and their companies Renovare Fuels Ltd, Teysha Technologies Ltd and Nextgen Nano Ltd. They are mentioned quite a lot in the article. The article also mentions Matthew Stone and Duncan Clark’s involvement in the Solari scam which might go to the heart of this entire sequence of events. Solari was the scam which involves the 37 investors and which neither Matthew Stone, nor Duncan Clark, nor Taylor Vintners (as the law firm representing these men and their companies) have ever been willing to answer direct questions about.

They’ve given answers to questions which haven’t been asked and have avoided the ones which were asked, like “Were Matthew Stone and Duncan Clark involved in the Solari scam, and if so, what were their roles and how much money did they receive?” We already know the answers to that question. We’re just forcing them to recognise that they’ve been found out. They were described by others involved in the Solari scam as being “the architects and founders of the Solari investment scheme”. It’s quite telling that neither of them will answer simple questions, but we recognise it is a challenge for them to own up to having founded an investment scheme where 85% of investors’ money was siphoned off in fees and commissions. There’s not really a defence to that. It’s thoroughly dishonest.

Whichever way you look at the scam copyright claim, it doesn’t look good. If we have published anything which isn’t true, the wronged party can write to us and we will correct it if they can prove to our satisfaction that we were wrong. Matthew Stone has used Taylor Vintners as his legal representatives, both in attempting to defend against our allegations AND in raising investment for his various companies. Caveat Emptor.

If Matthew Stone is behind the false copyright claim because he needed to have the article removed, then that is pretty serious because he has been prepared to break the law to prevent others reading the article. It is an offence to file a fake copyright claim. Unfortunately, it’s back-fired on him because here we are writing another article about him and Duncan Clark and their various companies. What’s more, the offending article is still visible if you use the link above ! Gun, foot, shoot, ouch !

So, we think we might have identified who was behind the false copyright claim and we are left with WHY, or more relevant would be to expand that question to WHY NOW ? After all, the article has been up for 18 months and they’ve known about it all that time, so WHY NOW ?

We’ll keep you hanging on that one until our next article which is being pulled together as I write. Publication this week. We’ll be mentioning Solari (of course), but also providing some more information on Teysha Technologies, Nextgen Nano, Renovare Fuels and Matthew Stone’s latest venture – Project RF-1 Ltd.

Aaaah, Project RF-1 Ltd – now we’re getting warmer. We have been receiving some interesting reports concerning Project RF-1 Ltd which may well provide the answer to the WHY NOW question.  Anyone considering doing business with Project RF-1 Ltd would be well advised to insist on full disclosure of the involvement of Matthew Stone and Duncan Clark’s involvement in the Solari investment.

Our advice to Matthew Stone and Duncan Clark is to come clean with the Solari investors and consider how they can compensate them for the losses investors have incurred at their hands. We believe Matthew Stone’s later ventures were funded with the misappropriated Solari investors’ money and we want those investors to get their money back. Maybe it’s time for Taylor Vintners to offer some sage advice to the deadly duo about owning up to their involvement in Solari and doing something to refund investors. That would certainly be a better approach than resorting to extreme measures to try to prevent any prospective partners from reading damaging, but truthful, blog articles.

To view an earlier article on the Solari Scam please click here – LINK

The question at the start was “Were We Stoned”?  Yep, we think it’s pretty clear that we were.

To view our latest article which follows on from this one please click here – LINK.

UPDATE 25th November 2021:  The party which made the false claim failed to provide any evidence proving who they were or that they had written the article. They tried it on and they lost. Our article has now been republished and can be viewed here on this LINK. We hope nobody was fooled into investing with them while our article was down.

Global Insolvency Solutions Scam.

We have been receiving reports that victims of investment scams have been cold-called by people claiming to be from Global Insolvency Solutions Ltd.  They are carrying out a follow-on-fraud where they ask their intended targets to pay a fee in order to release money which they claim to hold for the investor.  It is a scam. It is being operated by the same people who have been running the Kingsgate Insolvency Ltd scam.  We reported on that scam in June 2021 – LINK to the article.

Neither of these organisations are licensed insolvency practitioner firms.  There is no doubt that the same group of scammers are behind both of these scam operations because they are too lazy to design a different website. We have printed a few pages from both websites to show the similarities – see below.

Global Insolvency Solutions Website

Kingsgate Insolvency Ltd Website

There is a genuine company called Global Insolvency Solutions Ltd which has been around since 2012, but the scam approach is not coming from this company.  The domain name of globalinsolvencysolutions.com which is being used by the scammers was purchased in April 2021.

If you have fallen victim to either scam you should report it to your relevant Police Authority.  We know that they have been targeting the victims of the Essex and London Properties scam, the five oil scams established by Glenn Jamie King and David Hyman, and other scams which go back even further including the CTI China Renaissance scam.  It is important to remember that if you are contacted and told a company has gone into liquidation, that doesn’t mean that it has. The best way to check is to go online to the Companies House website to check yourself, or to write, email or telephone Companies House. Even if the company has gone into liquidation, insolvency firms DO NOT allow third party organisations to represent them. Insolvency firms always deal direct with creditors themselves.

Global Insolvency Solutions Scam.

Serious Fraud Office Focus on Property Scams.

In August we reported on the SFO investigation into the investments offered by Gavin Woodhouse of Northern Powerhouse Developments fame. See our article here – LINK.

Now there has been another major announcement by the SFO following dawn raids upon Alpha and Green Park group companies which sold student accommodation and holiday home investments in the UK. According to the SFO Press Release – LINK, the sums involved are in the region of £150m. The majority of investors in these schemes are already involved in legal actions seeking compensation from the parties involved in the formation, operation, promotion and sale of these investments.

The Press Release states:

• The SFO suspects the Alpha-branded companies of fraudulently misleading investors into purchasing leaseholds for student accommodation across the country.
• Green Park-branded companies are suspected to be part of a similar scheme, selling leaseholds for holiday homes in Devon. 

The two recent announcements send a clear message that the Serious Fraud Office has been looking into room sale investment schemes and is prepared to prosecute. The collapse of many of these schemes and the unlawful activities of the company directors is coming under scrutiny at long last. We will be writing to the SFO highlighting other such schemes and also the recovery room activities which investors are often subjected to.

The SFO statement continues:

“Alpha and Green Park branded companies sold investments into leasehold units between 2014 and 2019, promising investors 8-10% returns on their investment over the first 10 years. Over 1,500 investors from around 50 different countries invested an estimated £150 million into the leasehold schemes on the back of these guaranteed returns, but all stopped receiving these in 2018.

Meanwhile, the directors of the companies are thought to have made around £20 million from their schemes.

Commenting on the case, Mick Gallagher, Chief Investigator, Serious Fraud Office, said:

“Thousands of ordinary people lose their pensions or life savings on risky schemes, while those at the top line their own pockets and enjoy a lavish lifestyle. The Serious Fraud Office is committed to delivering justice for victims of fraud and corruption. We invite anyone who believes they have a connection with our investigation to come forward.”

Serious Fraud Office Focus on Property Scams.

Burlington Capital Holdings Scam.

A group of scammers calling itself Burlington Capital Holdings Ltd is carrying out a follow-on-fraud against people who have lost money in investment scams.

Just to be absolutely clear, the genuine company called Burlington Capital Holdings Ltd has nothing to do with this scam.  Its identity has been hijacked by scammers who are pretending to be the genuine company.

The scam group is using an email address of info@burlingtoncap.co.uk.  The domain name of burlingtoncap.co.uk was purchased on 31^st August 2021 and is therefore only 22 days old at the time of writing this article.  These scammers are obviously very keen to get their scam out there and to take in as much money as they can before they are rumbled.

Here is an email they have been sending out to their intended victims:

From: info@burlingtoncap.co.uk
To:
Subject: Information from Burlington Capital Holdings

Dear

We can confirm we have now received your funds, your cheque will be issued to you once we have received authorisation from the client holding facility stating that your account has been successfully completed.

Once completed, we will issue payment to you by way of cheque or bank transfer.

For your records, I have attached a copy of the cheque we have received. Please keep a record for your own book keeping.

Please get in contact with us at your earliest convenience for your Capital retrieval.

Kind regards,

John Gray.

Compliance Officer.

Burlington Capital Holdings Ltd
Trading Address: 111 Buckingham Palace Road, London, SW1W 0SR
Registered Address: 30 St George Street, London, W1S 2FH
Website: www.burlingtoncap.co.uk
Telephone: 0203 488 4836
Company Number:  10549015

Two things to note.

1. “We can confirm that we have now received your funds”.  No payment has been made by the intended victim so that sentence is designed to entice the intended victim to email back and query the payment, at which point they will probably be told there was an admin error and no funds have been received, but would they like to pay the release fee and then the large sum that Burlington is holding can be released to them.

2. “I have attached a copy of the cheque we have received”.  This is the hook to make it look like a buyer for their worthless investment really exists and that it has paid money into an account.  The cheque is made out in the name of intended victim [NAME REMOVED BY US], and as you can see below it is for a very large sum.  The cheque is of course entirely fake.

The cheque is from Nat West Bank and shows the sort code of 60-70-80.  It also states that the branch location is Temple Fortune Branch, 1175 Finchley Road, London.  It turns out that the sort code is a genuine Nat West code, but the branch to which it relates is Government Banking CST PO Box 2027, De Havilland Way, Horwich, Bolton.  That’s 200 miles away from Finchley.  We also ran the sort code and account number through an account checker and were informed that account number 15166423 does not match to the sort code of 60-70-80.  In other words, the bank account number is fake.

It would be nice if somebody was out there willing to pay £204,971.44 for something that has absolutely no value, but sadly the world doesn’t work like that.

Safe Or Scam Blog Articles Now Open For Comments.

Following requests from readers we have now removed most of our restrictions to allow readers to comment on our blog articles. Some restrictions are still in place. For example, comments have to be approved by us before they will appear. We will try to approve comments as quickly as possible, but please bear with us.  Here are our rules:

1. You must be a registered member of the site to be able to post a comment;

2. Don’t slag us off. It’s our website and we’ll simply consign your comment to the trash folder if you just want to call us names. Our advice to scammers is not to bother. You’ll be wasting your time and we’ll still write about you;

3. No unauthorised advertising please. We’ll read every comment and we’ll delete or amend any advertisements, spam or self-promotions we don’t like;

4. Please try to stay on topic. Don’t write to complain about the price of cabbages on an article about binary option scams;

5. Don’t be nasty or disparaging to other users. No bullying (unless it is aimed at the scammer and then we’ll accept it);

That’s it really.