Safe or Scam LLP, an American introducer which brings together investors in collapsed investments and insolvency practitioners / lawyers, has claimed in an open blog published on Monday 5 August that Carlauren has not appointed administrators, contrary to a statement from Carlauren in late July.
Carlauren claimed on 23 July that it had “instructed administrators”, and that “a full update with procedures and next steps will be distributed tomorrow”. A number of media outlets, including Bond Review, took this to mean that the company had gone into administration, especially against the background of Carlauren’s widely documented financial problems.
Safe or Scam however states:
This led to a number of media outlets picking up the story and reporting that Carlauren Group was in administration. It was not. As of today’s date it is still not in administration. We do not know why Carlauren Group would choose to mislead investors like this. We can only assume it was because they knew the use of the word “instructed” has no meaning in relation to an administration. The important word is “appointed” and Carlauren Group did not appoint any administrators. We can only assume this was a stalling tactic designed to prevent investors from combining to appoint an administrator. Carlauren was trying to buy time. As far as investors are concerned the only company in administration which is relevant to them is Accordiant Ltd. That company is the one which owes the rental payments.
Filings in The Gazette show however that Quantuma LLP were appointed last week as administrators to three Carlauren companies: Carlauren Care Limited, Carlauren Lifestyle Resorts Limited, and Accordiant Limited.
Quantuma LLP was recommended to Carlauren investors by Safe or Scam.
Carlauren Care and Carlauren Lifestyle Resorts are not mentioned in Safe or Scam’s blog but Accordiant is. Safe or Scam also says that Quantuma intends to place all Carlauren companies into administration.
Quantuma is representing creditors of Accordiant Ltd because that is its job and to do that effectively it must interview the people who controlled that company. Murray is not going to take their advice because the Quantuma position is that ALL Carlauren companies ought to be placed into administration for the protection of creditors and assets. We would be amazed if any administrator would ever consider taking advice from Sean Murray. He is a man who buys a private jet with investor money and thinks elderly care can be paid for with a new kind of crypto-currency he has just devised.
So in short: Safe or Scam says that Carlauren as a group is not in administration, however three Carlauren subsidiaries definitely are according to the Gazette, and the administrators’ intention is to expand this to the whole group.
Ponzi allegations
Earlier in the blog, Safe or Scam alleges that Carlauren was a Ponzi scheme, whose business model was to buy properties and sell off the rooms at a 300% markup to investors, on the promise of a 10% per annum return.
Any returns the investor received, according to Safe or Scam, were funded by their own investment or those of others, rather than returns from the care home or any other business.
The model appears to be that a Carlauren SPV company buys a property for X. The bedrooms are then described as care studios and sold off to individual investors for 4X i.e a 300% mark-up. In some cases the mark-up was higher. The SPV company retains the freehold of each site along with ownership of communal areas such as restaurants, lounges, kitchens and gardens. […]
Another element of the investment was that investors were promised an unrealistic and unachievable guaranteed rental of 10% per annum. This may have been achievable if the rental was based on the true market value of the bedroom e.g £20,000, but when Carlauren described these as “care studios” and was selling them for £100,000 each the rental commitment of £10,000 per year was impossible to achieve. The only reason for selling rooms for £100,000 was to raise enough cash to give the investors some of their own money back under the pretence of it being their rental payments. Needless to say all rentals on all sites ceased a few months ago.
Carlauren Group letter to investors of 10th July 2019 states “week ending last Sunday realised the largest turnover since we began of £147,000, this equates to an annual turnover of £7.6m of which we estimate a net margin after hotel running costs of 35% (£2.67m)”. Even when using their best ever week figures and applying that as a yearly revenue estimate, they admit they are currently £5m short every year on the rental payments they owe to investors. Carlauren has never explained to investors how they were able to make the rental payments. Perhaps it is time that they did.
Carlauren would have to admit that the payments came from the investor’s own money and then later from the money paid by new investors buying into the next property. […]
It is worth pointing out that Carlauren Group has commitments to make rental payments to investors on more than a dozen sites which are still closed and non-operational. Carlauren just kept buying more and more sites for X to sell at 4X because that was their only way to raise enough money to meet the ever-growing rental commitments.
Carlauren Group’s £2.5 million pad
Research by Safe or Scam into Companies House records shows that a Carlauren subsidiary named Carlauren Resort 22 Ltd borrowed money from Together Commercial Finance, secured against various Carlauren properties owned by various Carlauren special purpose vehicles, and a £2.5 million residential property in Poole bought by Carlauren Resort 22 itself, known as Western House.
Western House is described by its former estate agents as
An outstanding bespoke built residence situated in beautiful landscaped grounds of around one acre. Located in Branksome Park, a conservation area covering several hundred acres, an area renowned for its natural beauty with tree lined avenues, indigenous pines and rhododendrons.
Complementing the sophisticated interior is a superb outdoor swimming pool, as well as east facing manicured grounds lined by mature trees providing seclusion and privacy. A short drive away are the superb water sports facilities of Poole Harbour with several yacht clubs and marinas, as well as miles of Blue Flag award winning sandy beaches.
For what purpose Carlauren Group used investors’ money to buy Western House is not currently known. But it certainly sounds as if whoever lives there has been better provided for than Carlauren’s former care home residents.
As and when the Gazette or Companies House publishes updates on Carlauren’s administration or non-administration, we’ll bring you more…
That’s a difficult story to follow …. it is in administration – it isn’t in administration …. now you see it, now you don’t …. it’s like some pantomime: “It’s in administration” – Oh no it isn’t! …. Oh yes it is!
seriously?
When are ‘the authorites’ Going to join the dots ?
The three companies mentioned above are in administration, however only one has any relevance to investors. That is Accordiant Ltd because it was contracted to pay rentals. The other two have no money and no contracts with investors so they are not of great importance to us at this stage.
One of the Carlauren freehold companies, CHF3 Ltd, has a winding up order against it. This company owns the freehold to Auckland Hotel in Shanklin.
None of the remaining Carlauren companies are in administration. There are at least 40 companies involving Sean Murray.
All of the freehold owning companies (CHF1 Ltd through to CHF16 Ltd), excluding CHF3 Ltd mentioned above, are still under the control of Sean Murray, as are Carlauren Resort 18 Ltd through to Carlauren Resort 24 Ltd. They are not in administration.
Safe Or Scam is primarily an investigations firm. We are not an introducer to insolvency practitioners and we are not paid for making introductions. There are occasions when, in our opinion, administration represents the best option for investors who have become our clients. In those cases we will approach an insolvency firm to see if they can help. We also work with law firms.
We estimate Carlauren and its subsidiaries have received around £90m of investment from ordinary citizens around the world. The total value of assets bought for that money is less than £25m. The only way for investors to find out what has happened to that money is to call in the Police or administrators. Our assessment is that administration is quicker and easier. The Police can be called in later when the picture is clearer.
Thanks for clarifying. And the blog – Brev referenced in the opening sentence – was informative also.
For full disclosure, a couple of allegations were made against Safe or Scam over the past couple of days.
Following a (non-legal) complaint, my attention was drawn to the fact that similarly incoherent, poorly spelled and random allegations were being made elsewhere on the Internet.
While I am happy to host constructive debate under Bond Review articles, this does not extend to being a billboard for nonsensical spam being posted all over the Internet under stolen names, and the comments have been deleted (as will any repetition).
Brev thanks for pointing this out. I came here looking at Carlauren but to be fair to whoever is posting it seems all over the place about safeorscam, they have some interesting points. If you just look at Steve Conley’s Linked in post, he does indeed confirm he is Safeorscam.
[Edit: Link removed. Anyone who wants to read the allegations is free to do so, but Bond Review is not an SEO funnel. -Brev] I think he has the wrong Mike Davies for what it’s worth. He seems to think it’s a Michael Davies who ran Sanders and Co in Stourbridge, a law firm that is now closed. It’s more likely it’s Michael Davies of Agri Ventura Plc fame, although Thefraudteam.com does have two Mike’s working for them and one is a solicitor. Brev did your complaint come in from safeorscam.net by chance and maybe you can ask them to clarify / set straight these frankly bizarre allegations. You would think for the integrity of their site they would want to do so? Or maybe ask Thefraudteam? It looks like Steve Conley isn’t afraid to tackle trolls so I’m sure he would confirm. Looks like you have some good debate on here tonight
The complaint was from Safe Or Scam, yes. I gave the allegations a cursory glance but when it became clear that they were incoherent, conflating obviously different people, being posted under other people’s names (not just anonymously or pseudonymously) and being spammed in multiple places as a substitute for providing evidence, I got bored.
As Simon says, Conley has responded to the allegations on his LinkedIn profile. If he or SOS wants to respond elsewhere that’s up to them.
Regular readers will know that similar websites have been posted about me and my identity. In my experience there is little point trying to engage with nonsense that has absolutely zero evidence behind it, as they just make up new nonsense or repeat the same nonsense in a louder voice.
If there is any truth to the allegations, it will be covered here when Money Marketing or FT Adviser runs the story, or any of the many other fact-checked papers that would happily write about a crooked IFA doing a poacher-turned-gamekeeper act. If they don’t go to those outlets with their story, it’s because it’s bollocks.
Steve Conley confirms he is The Fraud Team, which is hardly a secret, as it’s on Companies House and their own website. The Fraud Team is affiliated with Safe or Scam but they are separate entities run by separate people.
This is a blog about Carlauren’s unregulated investment scheme, not a billboard to publicise unsubstantiated allegations about a third party. No further off-topic comments will be published.