Author: Phoenix

Smith & Williamson sees off rival bid for Park First administration

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Smith & Williamson has succeeding in seeing off rival Quantuma’s bid to investors to be appointed administrator of Park First.

A letter sent to Park First investors on Monday 2nd confirms Smith & Williamson’s proposals for the administration were accepted in full.

Smith & Williamson therefore cements its reputation as the go-to administrator if your unregulated investment scheme has just collapsed, having also been appointed to clean up after London Capital & Finance and Krono Partners (in all cases by the collapsed firms themselves).

Rumour has it that Park First is unlikely to be their last appointment in the sector.

Group First hit the phones in the weeks before the court date to find out which way investors would vote.

Smith & Williamson estimates its fees for the first year of the administration will stand at £1.17 million (it is unlikely Quantuma or any other credible rival would have been any cheaper).

Running parallel to the administration is an FCA court case against Park First, its owner and CEO Toby Whittaker, and other senior managers, seeking compensation on behalf of investors for losses they suffered in the scheme.

Carlauren goes into administration (for real this time)

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At a court hearing in London last week, Carlauren Group was finally put into administration.

A total of £76 million of investor money is believed to be at risk.

Lawyers for Carlauren investors alleged that Sean Murray transferred significant sums into his own personal account.

Murray responded that the money was accounted for and was just resting in his personal account.

Mr Murray, who represented himself at the hearing in London, previously told the court there were no missing millions and although money had been transferred to his personal account, he said it was being held in trust for the company.

Carlauren’s care home investments offering was reviewed here in April 2018. It was followed in 2019 by a failed attempt to raise further funds from the cryptocurrency market, which Carlauren claimed would rise in value by 170% as soon as investors put in £35 million (where the return would come from was never revealed as the coins raised only a few thousand).

Sean Murray
Carlauren CEO Sean Murray puts the writing on the wall. (A joke too bad not to repeat.)

In April Carlauren launched a fraudulent copyright takedown attempt on Bond Review, claiming under penalty of perjury that our articles had been stolen from a made-up Spanish-language blog (which itself consisted of stolen articles from various sources) that somehow managed to review Carlauren’s investments before they existed.

The company then descended into further ignominy as an “Ibiza-style” club on the Isle of Wight failed to open, rubbish piled up outside its properties and elderly residents were thrown out of a Carlauren care home with only hours’ notice as Sean Murray’s latest investment empire crumbled.

Reports of Carlauren’s demise in July, based on a statement from the company that said it had “instructed” administrators, were not so much exaggerated as premature.

Carlauren attempted to appoint its own choice of administrators, but with the appointment of Quantuma and Duff & Phelps, that attempt has failed.

As always we’ll bring you more when the administrators issue their report.

Carlauren reportedly takes its name from a portmanteau of Sean Murray’s two  daughters. “Thanks Dad.” Perhaps to avoid further damage to the innocent, the administrators could consider a rename.

Signature Living continues to struggle with repayments, libels owner’s own brother, reports him for fraud

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[Note: due to a previous legal objection, the logo above is an original representation of Signature Capital’s logo, and not its own.]

Unregulated hotel investment scheme Signature continues to struggle with repayments to investors, and has been the subject of a series of news articles from outlets including the BBC and the Liverpool Echo in recent weeks.

Six months ago in May the BBC first covered Signature’s late payments to investors.

Two weeks ago the BBC reported on international investors flying into the UK in attempt to chase their money.

Ms Grampe said she invested in the company’s football-themed George Best Hotel in Belfast and the money was meant to help pay for the care of her elderly parents.

The BBC has seen a document, signed by a senior Signature executive, appearing to confirm the amount owed and promising to repay her over six weekly payments, starting on 6 November.

To date, Ms Grampe said these payments had not been made.

Signature advertised its investments, which claimed returns of up to 16% per year, as “fantastic returns in a secure environment” and “a safe place”.

The Liverpool Echo is also regularly covering the attempts of investors to get their money out.

Earlier this week, an investor told the ECHO how Signature Living’s failure to pay her back made her dying mother’s final months of life tremendously difficult, with others also demanding they get the money they’re owed.

An Ireland-based investor is another to speak out today, telling the ECHO he cannot sleep at night for fears over his £300,000 of investments in Signature schemes.

Speaking about the impact the situation with Signature Living is having on him, he said: “I haven’t slept for the past three nights.

“I can’t tell my wife about this – she wants to book a holiday but we can’t while I don’t know what is happening with my money and I can’t tell her why.

According to The Caterer, Signature is to sell or refinance (i.e. borrow more money against) its properties.

Signature has told the BBC that investor payments have been delayed because “any bit of spare money that the company has goes on the building sites”. It also said that they are “financially robust and we have a strong track record of returning funds to our investors. Any suggestion otherwise is entirely wrong.” It blamed Brexit for a slowdown in sales and funding.

Signature’s bad publicity took a bizarre turn when the firm libelled Signature owner Lawrence Kenright’s own brother, Graham, in response to criticism.

Graham Kenwright said he and his brother Lawrence had fallen out in the past but reconciled during 2014-15, when he worked for Signature Living on the refurbishment of two of its Liverpool hotels.

“I wouldn’t have invested in one of Lawrence’s businesses,” he said during the interview.

Graham Kenwright also made a number of specific criticisms of the company, which have been explicitly denied.

The allegations against Graham Kenwright, marked “Private and Confidential” were sent to the BBC after a spokesman for Signature initially claimed he had been reported to the police for stalking.

Merseyside Police said it had no record of any such alleged offence and the spokesman subsequently said this was “my mistake”.

The letter, sent by Signature’s lawyers, instead alleged Graham Kenwright harassed his brother’s family, although it provided no contemporaneous evidence of this.

It also said he had been reported to the police for alleged fraud.

Merseyside Police subsequently confirmed this report was made during the afternoon on which the letter was sent.

It will be interesting to say where the allegation of fraud against Graham Kenwright (who presumably denies any wrongdoing) goes.

Making an allegation of fraud to the police purely so you can tell a journalist that they’ve been accused of fraud on the same afternoon seems like the definition of wasting police time. Unless of course there actually is a case for Kenwright 1 to answer.

At a TedX event in July (a franchised offshoot of the popular speaking events where commentators talk about a diverse range of topics in identical monotonous oratory) Kenright spoke eloquently about his business problems in 2009.

I didn’t understand the property market at the time but I thought that’s just what you do.

One day I got a call from a liquidator. He said your bank had been on the phone, they’ve got a couple of questions they want me to ask you.

Everything was fine until I got to the front door to the development site that I had where I had invested all of my money, every single last penny, and I tried the key in the door and it wouldn’t fit. I tried it sideways, I tried it upside down, I even put it away and try the new set of keys that I knew it wouldn’t be but I tried them as well.

…I stood there for another five or ten minutes trying to reason with the door to let me in and if some way they let me in maybe my issues would all be over. Ultimately I turned away and I walked home. Halfway home I was realising that the personal guarantee that I gave the bank actually was joint and several, and the guarantee spread across the two, so I was going to lose that property, I was going to lose my home as well.

So I did what all developers doing at the time of the world crash: I went to bed, I stayed there for three days, and a bailiff come to the door and said “Mr. Kenwright, we’re going to take away your property today” and I used all of my Scouse guile to ensure that I stayed and thankfully I did. And then I went back to bed.

I went to bed for three whole months until one day I got a phone call from my daughter – my daughter went to private school – and she was 14 years of age luckily for me she had an extremely intelligent headteacher who pulled her out of class said to her “you tell your father why we are throwing you out of school today”. My daughter came on the phone and screamed as loud as she could “you’re lying” “you’re the chief” “how could you do it to me at a pivotal time in my life” “how dare you do that to me” – the sort of words you never want to hear as a father.

I bolted upright, I phoned up my best friend, I said whatever you have, please can you lend me it, give me anything, anything. He gave me an amount of money, I ran to the school, I paid the school fees and my daughter finished her school, got a degree and finally started speaking to me again. I was wrong, she was right.

But what I aligned with that was the sweet and the bitter. I used that bitter to galvanize me into who I am today. Understanding what it takes to run through walls. Using my daughter’s high-pitched tone to go into my mind’s eye to use as a tool every time I need it. And that’s exactly what I did.

Ten years on I ended up with a whole array of hotels, businesses, and I don’t know how I got there. All I know is I kept my head down and I was galvanised and I pushed through.

Signature Living claims assets worth £261m in a brochure recently sent to investors.

Breaking: Blackmore to delay interest again

Blackmore logo 2019
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Blackmore Bonds is to delay its already-late October interest payment again, The Times reports.

Days before its October interest payment fell due, Blackmore announced that payment would be unilaterally delayed until November. That deadline has now also been missed.

Watching Blackmore’s interest payments has turned into a Groundhog-Day-esque ritual for those interested in the unregulated investment scene.

It is safe to say that never in financial history has there been this much interest over whether a £25m-odd company can scrape together around half a million pounds to pay quarterly interest.

That a relatively obscure micro-cap property company’s debts, which should only be of interest to a handful of sophisticated private investors, should end up in the national newspapers, emphasises the absurd extent to which the unregulated sector has been allowed to spread into the mainstream.

Movers and shakers news

In other Blackmore news, a Companies House filing shows that Blackmore Chairman Kenneth “Buzz” West jumped ship from Blackmore Bond plc on 1 September, though at time of writing he remains on the board of a number of other Blackmore companies.

West was until recently also non-executive Chairman of Kingswood Group, a regulated wealth management company, but resigned in April according to the FCA register.

West now appears to be taking an interest in the growing legal cannabis sector as Chair of Cannagrow Biosciences.

FCA announces 12 month ban on horses leaving through open stable door

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The FCA dramatically announced yesterday that it would ban minibonds from being marketed for a period of 12 months, starting on 1 January.

In addition, all marketing material approved by an authorised firm will have to declare any commissions paid to third parties (something we’ve already seen from Blackmore and The Capital Bridge in recent months).

During the temporary 12 month ban, the FCA will consult on more permanent measures.

What exactly this is supposed to achieve is difficult to see, until you remember that a decision on who will replace Mark Carney as the UK’s top economic panjandrum is expected any day now. Former bookies’ favourite Andrew Bailey is badly in need of something that makes it look like he has a grip. This is something.

Many unregulated investments are already promoted under the pretense that its investors are all high-net-worth or sophisticated investors. The FCA’s supposed “ban” is not a ban as a ban is something that stops you doing what you want to do. Not an extra hoop to jump through that many are jumping through already.

To quote Simon Marshall who commented on IFA trade rag New Model Adviser:

I was contacted the other day by one of these outfits. The guy said to proceed I needed to select whether I was High Net Worth, Sophisticated or Retail. He then pointed out that pretty much everyone was in the sophisticated category, which shows that they are already looking at a workaround.

Other workarounds commonly employed by the dodgier end of the minibond market include getting investors to click-through a declaration that they are high net worth or sophisticated (which many will do so without reading in the same way they dismiss cookie notices) or electronically sign a document before receiving investment literature.

Investors are often told that this is “just some red tape”. And in the absence of the FCA running spot checks on unregulated investments and their introducers to check that they hold evidence that their investors actually are high-net-worth or sophisticated (not just declaring they are), as they are required to, it remains exactly that.

The FCA’s press release contains a list of actions it has taken to stop UK retail investors losing money in unsuitable unregulated investments:

Investigating more than 80 cases of regulated activities potentially being carried out without having the right FCA authorisation.

Assessing over 200 cases of financial promotions that appeared not to have complied with the FCA rules.

Seeking to persuade the internet service providers, particularly Google, to take more action, for instance to take down websites promptly where they are likely to involve a breach of law or regulations.

Contact with the Department of Culture, Media and Sport to urge inclusion of financial harm in the proposed legislation on online harms.

Developing tools for data analysis, for instance introducing web scraping to assist in the identification of mini-bond promotions.

If this list was meant to disabuse us of the impression that the FCA prefers visiting fellow bureaucrats in the Ministry of Fun or big companies like Google for tea and biscuits, instead of getting its hands dirty with those breaking the rules, it’s not succeeding.

Conspicuously absent from the list is any sign of action taken against the numerous unregulated schemes still currently standing to check that they have complied with their regulatory obligations to obtain evidence that all their investors are actually high net worth or sophisticated.

We should also bear in mind that the ban only affects companies using the mini-bond structure, and has no affect on other unregulated investment structures like “invest in a hotel room with 8%pa assured rent”.

Bailey stated that the timing of the announcement was with a view to “ISA season” (when ISA managers of all varieties encourage investors to use their ISA allowance before the tax year rolls over in April).

The other interesting thing about the timing of the FCA’s announcement is that if any unregulated schemes collapse as a result of new investment drying up, it will be after a decision is made on the Bank of England appointment.

Allansons LLP delays filing accounts again

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Allansons investors watching Companies House hoping for some clue as to where £20 million of their money went will have to wait a bit longer, as Allansons LLP again used the one-day-trick to avoid filing accounts within the deadline.

The Companies Act requires private companies to file accounts within nine months of their accounting year ending, but due to a loophole in UK company law, you can extend the deadline by shortening your accounting period by a single day, which gives you an extra three months.

Allansons deployed this trick in August and now again on 18 November, meaning its last published accounts are now almost two years old.

The Allansons unregulated investment scheme promised returns of 50% over 6-18 months for investing in litigation funding. Third-party introducers to Allansons claimed the investment was “100% secure with FSCS” and “Zero risk”.

The scheme collapsed after Allansons LLP was shut down by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. Allansons’ clients were told to find new solicitors. Allansons partner Roger Allanson was previously fined and banned from running his own practice by the SRA over client money breaches unrelated to the investment scheme.

Companies House has confirmed it has no policy to follow when a company ducks its duty to file accounts in a timely fashion by using the loophole.

Mirror coverage

The Daily Mirror has recently covered the scandal, focusing on sales reps who “hid behind fake names” while selling the Allansons investment.

One poor investor I spoke to has lost £60,000.

“I sold the house I owned with my former husband and was looking to invest some money,” she said.

“The Growth Market said the investment was 100% safe and I very naively thought that was true.

“They sent a lot of articles about the courts already ruling that there had been over-charging of mortgage packages and the mortgage companies had set aside millions of pounds for further cases coming up.

“They explained how they’d got this solicitor who was taking up these cases and they were worth a return of 22 to 50% on investment over six to 18 months.

“I’ve been through a very difficult divorce and have been homeless for a while with the children and was just trying to better ourselves.

“I hear on a Facebook action group I’ve joined that some people have put in £100,000 or more.”

Two members of staff listed on The Growth Market’s website are Paul Farhi (who used the name Paul Taylor) and amateur boxer Lee Roberts (using the name Lee Cannon), both of whom served as directors of firms subject to an FCA warnings for allegedly conducting regulated activities without authorisation.

The Growth Market’s website is still up, claiming to offer “investor security in the form of “Asset Backing” or “Insurance Premium” ” and “Low-risk UK-based companies working in a Government Backed Sector”.

The SRA has not yet revealed its reasons for shutting Allansons down, beyond its original notice in May which stated that Roger Allanson had committed unspecified breaches of SRA rules.

In June the SRA’s Intervention Agent informed investors that their contract was still with Allansons (which can no longer acton the cases investors were funding), that they could not offer any assurances that they would be repaid, and that it is unlikely they would be able to claim from the SRA’s Compensation Fund, as this does not cover failed investments in litigation funding.

Park First administrators block rival administrator from making their case to investors

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A crucial court date looms on Monday 25th as stricken Park First investors decide whether to appoint Park First’s own choice of administrators, Smith & Williamson, or rivals Quantuma LLP, proposed by an investor group and US investigators Safe or Scam.

A reminder of where we stand at the moment:

Back when the FCA shut down Park First as an illegal collective investment scheme, £33m of assets were ringfenced by the FCA to meet repayments to investors.

Smith & Williamson claimed that this sum would only be available to investors if they voted to appoint Smith & Williamson, otherwise Park First would withdraw it, and investors would risk getting nothing.

#TeamQuantuma claimed that this was false, and that the FCA had confirmed to Quantuma that the £33m was still ringfenced for investors regardless of which administrator they appointed.

Team Quantuma further claimed that the proposal to appoint Smith & Williamson in a Company Voluntary Arrangement amounted to allowing Park First to remain in charge of the business, writing off £115m owed by Park First group companies to the companies who owe investors money, and signing away their right to take action against the directors.

Smith & Williamson did not respond to my request for comment back in mid-October on whether their claim that investors had to appoint them to be sure of the £33m was “erroneous”. Nor has there been an update on their Park First minisite since 3 October. So make of that what you will.

According to Safe or Scam LLP, an 11th hour update from Smith & Williamson yesterday finally admitted that the £33m was not contingent on investors accepting S&W proposals, but said that Group First could still attempt to block payment if it didn’t get its way over the choice of administrator, which Safe or Scam LLP describe as “scaremongering”.

Quantuma of Solace

Quantuma’s efforts to persuade investors to give it the job (which is likely to be highly lucrative to either S&W or Quantuma, however much remains in the pot) have been stymied by S&W refusing to grant them access to investors’ contact details.

According to Team Quantuma, Group First has been telephoning all investors to try and find out how they will be voting on the 25th November.

Quantuma applied to the court for investors’ contact details so that they could put their own case, but S&W objected.

S&W say, hilariously, that allowing Quantuma to contact investors directly would put investors at risk of being targeted by scammers.

Hilarious because Park First have already been relentlessly targeted by scammers, using silly names like Herschel Escrow and Everton Rose, for months. These scammers generally claim that they know a Chinese investor who wants to buy your parking space for a huge sum, but first you have to put £7,500 in escrow / legal fees / blah blah / and now that money’s gone as well.

The important thing to note here is that Park First investors have confirmed in large numbers that the scammers did not just have their contact details, but knew that they owned a Park First car parking space.

That can’t happen without a major breach of General Data Protection Regulation on Park First’s part. How it managed to let part or all of its investor list fall into the hands of recovery scammers is beside the point (and will hopefully be fully investigated).

For its favoured administrators say that investors can’t speak to a rival in case they get targeted by scammers who already have their details, thanks to the lax GDPR compliance of the people who chose them, is a bit rich.

(Note well here that it does not matter from a data protection perspective whether scammers got hold of Park First investor details through incompetence, a rogue employee or something else. A breach is a breach, including one due to lax security and poor controls.)

The outcome is that the court did a Solomon and gave Quantuma only investors’ names and addresses. As 50% of Park First investors are reportedly in far-flung places like Russia, China and Malaysia, most of them will not receive postal correspondence in time for the 25th.

Team Quantuma has contacted 324 investors via a Facebook group, but this is of no help to victims in China as Facebook is banned there.

As Group First has had no compunction about ringing round investors to influence their vote, it is a bit like if the Tories were using the Government’s own databases to ring round the entire electorate and persuade them how to vote, but refusing to allow Labour to see the same list because “nah it’s data protection innit”.

Decision time

I am not going to tell investors to vote either way, and have no dog in this fight.

With so much money at stake, however, it is crucial that investors can make an informed decision. With that in mind, investors should read the updates from Smith & Williamson and the counterclaims by Quantuma’s advocates carefully.

If Park First’s own choice of administrators, Smith & Williamson, are appointed, the first job they have is to persuade creditors that they are acting in their interests and not those of the people who appointed them. S&W are a well-established firm and I have no doubt that they will comply with their legal duties to act in creditors’ interests, but that is not the same thing as winning creditors’ confidence; justice must also be seen to be done.

It would be a shame if their first step was to make their appointment look like a stitch-up.

Carlauren’s hotel staff go unpaid as court date looms

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Collapsed care home investment scheme Carlauren continues to resemble Wile E Coyote after running off the edge of the canyon, somehow still moving simply by refusing to acknowledge standing on thin air.

The demise of Carlauren was prematurely reported in July after the company wrote to investors to told them it had “instructed” administrators. In reality, it had only spoken to administrators, not appointed them.

Administrators Quantuma LLP have since been appointed by investors to some Carlauren subsidiaries, but have not yet established control over the group as a whole. Carlauren is trying to block Quantuma’s appointment and have its own choice, CVR Global LLP, appointed instead. A court hearing has been set for 26th November.

Meanwhile, Carlauren’s hotel subsidiary Heritage Hotels has stopped paying staff members due to “cashflow problems”, according to a letter signed by Andrew Jamieson and dated 31st October.

Jamieson has since abandoned ship, according to The Caterer. It was Jamieson who famously spoke to staff at Carlauren’s care homes to tell them “there is no money”, an outburst he and managing director Sean Murray later blamed on male hysteria in a letter to investors. Having had to do the same job to Carlauren’s hotel staff, it appears he has finally had enough.

Back in July, Jamieson told care home staff that there would be money to pay them after the takings of the hotel business had cleared at the bank. The care home staff were later paid as promised, but the care homes were shut down at almost no notice, resulting in elderly and frail residents being given just hours to find alternative accommodation.

Having previously used money from the hotel business to pay care home staff, it appears the hotel money has now dried up as well.

According to residents of Sandown, Carlauren has even been unable to pay fees to booking.com to list its hotels, and resorted to sending its staff out onto the street with leaflets.

Owner Sean Murray declined to speak to the BBC last month, saying he could not comment before the upcoming court action.

We review Quantum Group of Funds – clone scam offering AirBNB IPO shares

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The website quantumgroupfunds.com claims to represent “Quantum Group of Funds”, a subsidiary of Soros Fund Management.

Representatives of Quantum are cold-calling investors claiming to be offering shares in AirBNB (currently privately owned by its founders and venture capital firms).

Quantum Group of Funds does exist, but the website quantumgroupfunds.com is nothing to do with it. It was only registered in February 2019, despite the real Quantum being in existence for 45 years.

The real Quantum Group of Funds closed to outside investors in 2011, and even before then only catered to very wealthy investors, and did not go around cold-calling random retail investors about IPOs.

Being a private hedge fund which mainly manages the Soros family’s private wealth, the real Quantum has no public web presence – which has allowed the clone scam to appear more convincing, because there is not a real website to compete with it on Google.

How safe is Quantum Group of Funds?

In addition to falsely claiming to be selling AirBNB shares, Quantum offers various other bullshit investments including a “Crypto-Currency Hedge Fund” which has returned 15,152.07% since inception and an “Event-Driven Hedge Fund”.

None of these investments exist. In both the above cases, all Quantum has done is copy and paste some graphs from Eurekahedge, which show the performance of baskets of cryptocurrencies and other assets, not actual funds that anyone has invested in. (The 15,000% return comes from measuring the leap in the price of Bitcoin since 2013.) In some places it hasn’t even bothered to find/replace Eurekahedge’s name.

As and when AirBNB does IPO, investors will be able to buy shares after the IPO takes place, via any regulated investment platform that allows access to the US market (or wherever it lists). Until the day it goes public, shares will only be available to institutional investors. Anyone who contacts you out of the blue offering to sell you AirBNB shares is a scammer.

Who are Quantum Group of Funds?

Quantum’s website was anonymously registered and no corporate details are provided.

Quantum names a “Samuel Belmont” as Chief Executive Officer who almost certainly does not exist.

What should I do if I invested in Quantum Group of Funds?

Your money has been stolen by scammers and the chance of recovery is minimal.

Investors who fell for this scam should change their contact details as they are likely to be targeted by – and fall for – similar scams in the future.

If anyone contacts you claiming they can recover your money, it is almost certain to be another scam. They will ask you for “legal fees” or similar which you will never see again.

Vanished Exmount perpetrating recovery fraud on bond investors

Exmount Commercial Developments
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A Professional Adviser article reveals that Exmount Commercial Developments, which disappeared with investors’ money in the summer of 2019, has continued to scam investors even after disappearing.

The couple had invested their life savings with Exmount in 2018, after they were promised between 9.12% and 10.35% annual returns on their investment with three- or five-year bonds. The couple began investing a small amount of money, but over the course of a year took out five mini-bonds with Exmount for a total of £45,000.

The pair tried to redeem the unregulated bonds in early August 2019. According to Chan, a company representative asked the couple to pay a £606 exit fee. The pair paid, thinking they could get their capital back, but were then told there had been an error, and were asked to send an additional £606.

Needless to say the couple never got their £1,212 or their £45,000 back.

Note that August 2019, when the customers attempted to redeem their bonds, was months after Exmount Construction had already done a runner and stopped responding to investor queries.

Whether the recovery fraud was perpetrated by Exmount personnel themselves, or whether Exmount sold their contact list to a third party who then contacted the couple claiming to be from Exmount, is unknown, and matters little.

Exmount Construction Limited went through a series of director changes in its final months, with the final director, Rakesh Raj, resigning on 1 August 2019. Raj was also a director of a shell company, ECD Group Limited (it is probably not a coincidence that ECD stands for Exmount Commercial Developments). Exmount Construction is now rudderless with no directors.

What should I do if I invested with Exmount Construction?

Investors who are owed money by an unregulated firm and aren’t being paid have two practical options: 1) seek legal advice from a registered solicitor, and risk throwing good money after bad, or 2) write it off and forget about it.

Investors can also report Exmount’s disappearance to Action Fraud, although they should not expect to hear anything back beyond an automatic acknowledgement.

If investors are cold-called by anyone claiming they can get their money back from Exmount in return for “legal fees” or “admin fees” or any other payment by the investor, it is a scam – just as in the case reported.