This article refers to a SafeOrScam article of 30th January – LINK TO ARTICLE HERE.
The Qualia Care group of companies was involved in the sale of care home rooms to investors around the world. The rooms were hugely over-priced. The scheme was unlawful in the UK and has since collapsed. The total sum raised by Qualia was around £50m.
As is usual, unscrupulous sales agents sold the schemes and were paid large commissions. At least one of the sales agents, Roberto Pancaldi, was assisted by a UK solicitor, Alastair Dobbie.
When the investments collapsed the sales agents came up with a scheme whereby they could profit a second time from the investors. They instructed Alastair Dobbie to represent them. The sales agents had the contact details of their investors so they were able to persuade them that they had a rescue plan which would benefit the investors. Having control of so many investors right at the start meant that they were able to manipulate the insolvencies. No mention was made that they and the solicitor could face criminal charges for their part in the unlawful scheme. They promised that if investors joined with them they could take control of the care homes for £1 each.
The scheme that was described to investors ended up being unworkable and has been changed several times. The ultimate aim of the scheme was to ensure that the sales agents and their associates ended up with 20% of the deal. It would have been very simple for the investors to have bought their own care homes, but the sales agents wouldn’t have been able to justify taking a 20% stake for themselves.
Members of this group has tried the same approach in other room scams e.g Carlauren (hotel room scam), NPD (hotel room scam) and St Camillus (hotel room scam). We have seen no evidence that any of the investors in any of the properties involved in those schemes are better off as a result of them paying fees to Alastair Dobbie. We know of at least one group of more than 50 room owners who felt that they had been misled.
This Qualia group initially raised £200,000 from Qualia Care room owners. Earlier this week they asked room owners to pay an additional £600,000 because the group claims to have reached agreement for investors to take control of the freeholds. That is not clearly not the full picture. They want the £600,000 to be paid over. The administrator is not going to accept a paltry sum after two years of work and a huge costs bill. There will be protections in place to cover the fees which have been incurred. There is no detail on why people should pay £600,000 at this time, except to say that an unspecified amount of it will be used to Shortlands Law for Alastair Dobbie’s services.
The Safe Or Scam article warns investors not to pay the money until they are certain that they are not being scammed. The FCA has to approve any deal and there is no guarantee that it will approve this one. The FCA will be wary of any deal where those involved in breaching their regulations end up being rewarded. It would send a very bad message to the general public. The deal has been proposed by the administrator so there is a good chance that it will be accepted this time.
Also, to operate a care home the operating company has to be accredited by the Care Quality Commission (“CQC”). This group proposes that a new company established by them would operate the homes. The CQC will carefully scrutinise every aspect of an application to ensure that the operating company isn’t likely to provide a poor service or collapse due to lack of funding.
There is a genuine concern that people involved in selling scams to the public are seeking to profit when those scams collapse. In the case of the sales agents who work with Alastair Dobbie it has already branched out into at least four large collapsed firms which all sold rooms to investors. This is a matter that the FCA needs to take very seriously.
