James Moore Sentenced to 11 Years

James Moore sentenced to 11 years in a US prison for his role in the Bar Works workspace scam.

James Moore was a leading figure in the world of high volume scam selling from around 2000 until 2017. He ran a very large network of sales agents around the world from his centre of operations in Marbella, Spain. Thousands of investors lost a lot of money to the scams marketed by his sales network.

James Moore’s organisation only marketed BIG projects which had global appeal and tapped into new investment themes which could be exploited to the maximum. He wasn’t interested in small projects. He often worked with Renwick Haddow who was also a big player around that time. Haddow, a qualified accountant, came up with the project concepts and Moore pushed them out through his network. Between them they stripped ordinary investors of hundreds of millions of dollars.

James Moore was fresh out of prison in the US for his part in a major Florida property scam when he was charged with offences related to Bar Works. We’ve covered Bar Works in the past because we were the ones who exposed the scam and revealed that the CEO of Bar Works, a man called Jonathan Black, was fake. Jonathan Black was actually Renwick Haddow operating under a false identity. At the time, Haddow was involved in a protracted civil prosecution in the UK brought against him and his associates by the Financial Conduct Authority. Such was his confidence in his own invincibility, he started two new scams in the USA whilst his court case in the UK was still going. One of the scams involved Bitcoin and the other was a workspace scam called Bar Works.

James Moore liked the Bar Works concept. Bar Works sold virtual workspaces in large premises. Investors paid $25,000 for a workspace that didn’t exist. Haddow would put a deposit down on a leasehold premises in New York, claim that he could put 500 desks in the building and then sell the desks to investors raising $12.5m. Nobody would normally consider paying $25,000 for a desk, but Haddow was the original founder of the guaranteed rental / guaranteed buy-back concept which has been used by scammers in car parking plot scams, hotel room scams, care home room scams and others, ever since.

Investors pay $25,000 for the desk. Bar Works signs up local ‘members’ who need somewhere to work in New York on an occasional basis (as opposed to sitting in Starbucks). The members pay a monthly fee and can use the desk facility and meeting rooms in the Bar Works site. The fees from members are allegedly enough to pay desk owners 10% return every year. Bar Works will then buy back the workspace from the investor after 5 years for $30,000. It’s a simple concept that never, ever works, but it looks good on paper.

It was good enough for James Moore because he could see expansion into more and more sites each taking in millions of dollars in desk sales in a giant expanding ponzi scheme. It would be 5 years before investors realised that they weren’t going to get their $30,000 buy-back. Moore loved it because he wasn’t having to sell properties priced at $300,000+ which is hard work. The entry level here was just $25,000 and he knew investors would love a 10% guaranteed rental every year and a guaranteed buy-back. He was right and the product was flying out the door. Investors around the world were flocking to it.

Haddow was putting deposits down on more commercial properties. Manhattan, the Bronx and Chambers in New York. New sites in California and Florida. It was going so well that Moore felt he deserved a bigger piece of the pie. Sales commission was OK, but he knew Haddow was making a fortune and Moore felt it was all down to his sales network. Moore demanded a stake in Bar Works itself. The problem was that Haddow’s ego was as big as Moore’s. He refused to share so there was a break-up.

By that point Haddow knew James Moore’s whole sales network because Haddow’s office staff were dealing with them all on a daily basis. He contacted the sales agents offering to go direct to them with new sites, cutting out James Moore’s HQ operation and paying the commission Moore had been getting to the sales agents. Moore fought back by starting a rival operation to Haddow. He formed his own workspace company, OurSpace, based in Dubai, with a new corrupt partner called Kevan Halliwell. Moore used cash provided by his Colombian wife to finance it because he didn’t want Haddow to know about his involvement in OurSpace. The cash was provided under the table so it wouldn’t show up in any records. He then promoted OurSpace through his sales network offering them higher commissions than Haddow. The battle of the workspace scams had begun.

The outcome was inevitable. Haddow couldn’t sell enough new workspaces to keep his US-based ponzi scheme going and it started to unravel. Rental payments stopped and, despite putting a lot of effort into maintaining the pretence that Jonathan Black existed, Bar Works eventually got a knock on the door from the SEC and the FBI. Game over for Haddow.

As for Moore, well Kevan Halliwell was a poor man’s Renwick Haddow and wasn’t up to the job. He was also dishonest. When Moore was arrested on charges related to the Florida property scam he asked for his wife’s money back so he could pay for his defence. Halliwell’s response was “money, what money ? You never gave me any money”.

A Ponzi Scheme needs to keep bringing in fresh money all the time or it collapses. Dubai wasn’t anywhere near as attractive to international investors as New York, Florida or California so sales were slow and lower volume. They simply weren’t enough to maintain the rental payments to existing investors. OurSpace collapsed with only two sites. One in Dubai and one in Marbella.

So now we are approaching the end game. Moore has been sentenced to 11 years. Haddow is under arrest in the USA and has pleaded guilty to fraud. He will be sentenced in a couple of months.

To view a Press Release issued by the US Attorney’s Office in New York PLEASE CLICK ON THIS LINK.

To view an earlier article on OurSpace published in May 2020 PLEASE CLICK HERE.

James Moore Sentenced to 11 Years. James Moore Sentenced to 11 Years.