Troubled unregulated investment firm Carlauren, which ran unregulated investments in care homes, hotels and its flopped cryptocurrency C-Coin, has appointed administrators, according to a letter sent to investors yesterday.
Bond Review reviewed Carlauren’s care home investment in April 2018 and concluded that the investment was an extremely high risk investment in a small unlisted company. (The promise to pay investors a fixed 10% per year made Carlauren’s opportunity an investment security in Carlauren itself, not a bricks and mortar property investment.) Contrary to claims in Carlauren’s literature that their investments “dispelled the myth” that “great investment comes with great risk”.
Carlauren’s defaulting on promised payments to investors and subsequent appointment of administrators confirms that investing in a small unlisted company like Carlauren was the definition of a great risk.
Carlauren subsequently tried to raise funds by selling a cryptocurrency “C-Coin” to investors for £70 each which they could use to purchase care services, sell back to the company at a minimum £63 floor, or “hodl” until Carlauren had sold £35 million of them, at whcih point they would somehow jump in value by 170%.
This attempt to enter the overcrowded crypto token market flopped, with Carlauren only managing to raise £3,290 as at April 2019.
In an attempt to reverse obvious investor scepticism about handing over £70 to Carlauren for made-up points, Carlauren sent erstwhile Marketing Director Seth Bishop into the Bond Review comments to allege “significant factual inaccuracies” while not actually pointing any out, unless you consider calling a care service a care service to be a significant inaccuracy.
When this didn’t work, Carlauren resorted to committing perjury under the laws of the United States by stealing my articles and launching a fake DMCA copyright claim against them, in an attempt to stop potential investors reading them.
Evidently this didn’t do much to put off the day of reckoning either.
Yesterday’s letter, which was reposted publicly on the Sandown Hub Facebook group, reads in full:
Dear Valued Client,
Carlauren Group today has instructed administrators. A full update with procedures and next steps will be distributed tomorrow. There is no cause for concern this step is intended to protect all studio owners, whilst updating them on the companies past financial trading by an independent 3rd party. [sic]
Yours faithfully
Sean Murray Chairman & CEO
Andrew Jamieson Chief Operating Officer
Given Carlauren’s numerous documented business problems and the fact that payments to investors have been stopped or reduced (temporarily, says Carlauren), Carlauren’s claim that “there is no cause for concern” is likely to ring hollow with investors unless the administrators come up with good news.
At time of writing there is nothing about the firm’s administration on the carlaurengroup.com website.
Safe or Scam, a US-based introducer between investors and insolvency practitioners / solicitors, has been contacting investors urging them to appoint their own administrators with Safe or Scam’s help rather than allowing Carlauren to do so.
SoS estimates that Carlauren raised £88 million in total from investors.
Carlauren raised funds via unregulated introducers including Property Wealth Limited and Armchair Invest (aka Kernow Property Group Ltd).
More to follow as and when details of the administration enter the public domain.
Carlauren also used Asia gold one touch investment