Craven Capital Scam

It looks like we were bang on with our assessment of how the Craven Capital scam might play out.

A few days ago we published this article on the Craven Capital follow-on-fraud. The scam was very quick off the mark in targeting investors in Win River Developments Ltd. We didn’t have much to go on at that stage, but we took an educated guess about the ploys they might eventually use to try to get money from the investors. We were spot on. They are using the usual scam model of “we have buyers for your investment. You just need to send us our advance fee and we will release all of the money to you”.

This excerpt from their Terms and Conditions document explains:

Craven Capital Limited may here forth be referred to as the Guarantor Services. Craven Capital Limited provide services in respect of the sale and exchange of alternative investments and act as facilitators, working on behalf of reputable third party merchants, corporate and private individuals.

PLEASE NOTE: None of what they say is true. It is all a scam.

We are not going to publish their full Terms and Conditions because we are not in the business of providing templates for potential scammers to use, however we have published below some of the documents they have sent out (with identifying information removed). This is to provide readers with an early warning signal of similar scams. If anyone receives any documents from any company which are remotely like the ones below, they can be 100% certain it is a scam.

Craven Capital Scam_1_Acceptance Letter

Craven Capital Scam_1_Invoice and Escrow

Craven Capital Scam_1_Invitation to Make Payment

The Craven Capital scam follows a very similar pattern to other follow-on-frauds. As we mentioned in our previous article this isn’t even a very good scam. It looks like they rushed to get it out to investors before they were really ready.

We have been sitting on this article for a few days. We could have published earlier, but the documents they sent out had one very important detail missing. The Craven Capital scam included sending an invoice to the intended victim (as seen above), but there were no bank details which would enable the intended victim to make payment. We thought it might be possible the scammers were in such a hurry to be the first to get their follow-on-fraud out to investors that they hadn’t had time to set themselves up with a bank account. We had to be patient and wait for the banking information. We are now able to publish this article because the bank account they are using is this one below:

Bank Name: National Westminster Bank   –   Branch: Leagrave Luton

Account Name (according to the scammers): Cook

Account Number: 34228748     Sort Code: 60 12 42

We have reported it to Nat West and they have advised that they would “take appropriate action”.

It is likely that this is a money mule account. This means that the person providing the bank account is willing to let it be used to launder money. Normally scammers use several money mule accounts so if you have had any dealings with the Craven Capital scam and they have given you a different bank account to pay into, it is still a scam.