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).
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.