79th Group Fraud Allegations – Advice.

In early March 2025, City Of London Police raided four premises associated with the 79th Group of companies under Operation Mold. This was carried out following an investigation into alleged investor fraud. It has since indicated its enquiries led it to believe the 79th Group loan note investment schemes were part of a Ponsi Scheme.

It would appear that other 79th Group companies are not yet part of the Police investigation. Only the loan note companies are affected.

The Police have invited investors to contact them via this website link – COLP OPERATION MOLD

We have been made aware of several parties which are offering funds recovery and legal services to 79th Group investors. Some are free. Some charge a fee. Some are reputable, professional and are regulated. Some are not.

At this stage we believe there is no need for investors to pay any party.

The parties offering help so far are:

REFUNDEE – a reputable FCA-regulated claims management company specialising in making recoveries against the banks and financial institutions involved. No upfront fee is involved. Their service to 79th Group investors is no-win no-fee. LINK TO REFUNDEE 79th GROUP PAGE.

CROWELL & MORING SOLICITORS – a reputable law firm regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority in the UK specialising in insolvency and in making recoveries against third parties such as company directors, law firms, accountants, and other wrongdoers including security trustees where there is a case to answer. No upfront fee is involved. Their service to 79th Group investors is no-win no-fee. LINK TO CROWELL SOLICITOR PAGE. 

INSOLVENCY AND LAW – An unregulated firm which, despite its name, is neither authorised as an insolvency firm nor authorised as a law firm. We have been advised it is charging investors £1,500 to join “an action”. We have previously reported on Insolvency and Law Ltd and the people behind it. LINK TO ARTICLES ON INSOLVENCY AND LAW. You will need to click on the “I CONFIRM” button which appears.

If anyone is aware of any other party offering services we will be happy to include them in this article in the future.

Late Update – we have just been informed that Refundee and Crowell & Moring have joined forces to work together.

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.

This week Safe Or Scam published another Scam Alert on a scam group pretending to be from the UK’s Trading Standards. Here is a summary of the Alert.

Victims of the Essex and London Properties fraud are being contacted by telephone and email by a bogus scam group calling itself the Chartered Trading Standards Institute.  They have an email address which uses the domain name of ctsi-uk.com, but it was only bought in June 2022.  Their aim is to persuade the victims to part with more money.

The genuine Chartered Trading Standards Institute website can be viewed on this – LINK. 

Here is the email the scammers have been sending out.

The aim of the email is to get the victim to respond.  Once they have the victim on the hook they always end up asking for money.  If you have lost money to a scam like this you should report it to Action Fraud using this LINK. 

To view the full Scam Alert click on this link to the Safe Or Scam article.

Three new follow-on-fraud recovery room scams have been covered by Safe Or Scam this week.

Scammers pretending to be from Blumarble Capital have been writing out to victims of the Essex and London Properties fraud claiming to to be working with The Insolvency Service. It is the usual story that the Insolvency Service has recovered money for investors but isn’t allowed to send it to the victims until they have paid a fee. It’s total b******t and if anyone is taken in by it and pays money to Blumarble Capital that will be the last they see of it. They may well approach investors who have lost money in other scams so be warned. If you are approached by Blumarble Capital it is a scam. You can read more on this link to the Safe Or Scam article on Blumarble Capital.

FFCC-org.com is the domain name used by a group of scammers calling themselves ‘Fraud and Financial Crime Consulting’. They have been targeting investors in the High Street GRP (High Street Group) companies. They claim to have been “appointed by Parliament to investigate and prosecute High Street Group and associated companies”. How do these guys think these things up ? It’s a scam and they will eventually try to persuade High Street Group investors to part with more money. We repeat the warning above. If you are approached by Fraud and Financial Crime Consulting with a similar story it will be a scam. You can read more on this link to the Safe Or Scam article on FFCC-org.com.

Longview Financial Services is the name used by scammers who have been writing out to investors in Minerva bonds. Minerva was a scam bond company which has collapsed. These scammers have quite a lot of information on the victims so they must have got that information from an insider e.g a sales agent company, the back-office service provider or the escrow company. All the people associated with these bond sales are not to be trusted. The story this time is that they have recovered the money, but in order to release it to the investor they need the 16 digit reference number (there never was a 16 digit reference number). Of course, the investor is going to respond with “I don’t have a 16 digit reference number” in which case Longview Financial Services offers to help out. They can get a new one issued for the investor, but there is a fee. The spiel is that once the investor pays the fee a new number is generated, their large investment sum is released to them and they get a full refund of the money that was paid for the 16 digit number. As you may have guessed, the moment the investor pays the fee that’s the last they ever hear from the scammers masquerading as Longview Financial Services. You can read more on this link to the Safe Or Scam article on Longview Financial Services.

The British TV company behind the ‘Panorama’ series has produced a documentary on the performance of the Financial Conduct Authority. The documentary is being shown on 16th August 2022 and will be available for viewing on BBC iPlayer if you aren’t able to watch it today.

Here is a BBC article explaining what the program will contain – Blackmore Bond Collapse: – FCA Failed to Act Before People Lost Their Life Savings

A few days ago our hosting service received a false copyright claim from a Mr Abdul Halim Al Ghazi. He claimed that an article we wrote on 4th February 2020 titled “We Review London European Securities’ unregulated bonds paying 5.5% per year” was a copy of his original work and requested its removal.

We know that article was written by our staff so when something like this happens it normally means that the company involved is planning to raise more money or is in trouble and wants to remove negative articles. We don’t know the current financial position of London European Securities Ltd, but it would be sensible for its investors to check for themselves and take steps to protect their investments.

In order to prove to a hosting company that he wrote the article Mr Abdul Halim Al Ghazi has to point the hosting company to what he claims is his original article. This means it is still visible. Therefore, we have no problem pointing anyone interested in the original article to the webpage – LINK. To be honest, Mr Al Ghazi was not expecting this so we now have two articles instead of one. His article (which is a copy of our original article) and this one. That’s called shooting yourself in the foot.

If you intend to read the original article we recommend you do it as soon as possible because we doubt that Mr Al Ghazi will leave it up for long.

So, now we find ourselves reviewing London European Securities Ltd for a second time.

The original investment offer contained differing investment returns. A facebook post claimed the returns started at 4.9% whereas the promotional material quoted returns of 5.5%. The returns were described as “secure and protected”. Quite a few of Martin Young’s former companies have ended up in an insolvency process.

Corporate bonds are now regulated by the FCA in the UK. The funds raised by London European Securities are used for commercial lending. That must be difficult in this current climate with borrowers struggling to recover after two years of Covid and now the war in Ukraine. Investors will be hoping Martin Young is up to the task.

Asset-backed loans are not secure because if the company goes into administration or liquidation there is no guarantee that the asset values will be sufficient to refund investors. This risk applies to any loan note even when it claims to be “secured”.

As with any individual loan note to a small unlisted company, this investment is only suitable for sophisticated and/or high net worth investors who have a substantial existing portfolio and are prepared to risk 100% loss of their money. Investors should seek professional legal and financial advice before considering an investment in loan notes or corporate loans. 

Before investing investors should ask themselves if they have a sufficiently large portfolio that the loss of 100% of their investment would not damage them financially?

Earlier this week Safe Or Scam published an article on UPayCard – LINK and the involvement of FCA-regulated company Moorwand Ltd.

Without repeating the entire article the key points were:

1. Moorwand Ltd used to be called UPayCard Ltd;

2. UPayCard Ltd provided money collection services for at least one binary option scam (commonly known as money mule services), which is of course illegal;

3. Moorwand confirmed that it was still associated with UPayCard at the time of the offences because it was allowing UPayCard to operate under its licence’

4. Moorwand declined to identify the company, person or persons, who it had transferred the UPayCard business to, and would not give a straightforward answer regarding whether or not it owned the bank account which was being used in the scam.

Remember – this is a FCA-regulated company which is supposed to operate to the highest standards of honesty and integrity.

Moorwand would not say anything about who was operating the UPayCard account under their licence for two years, but was weirdly willing to offer up information that UPayCard was transferred to a Cypriot company two years later and had now ceased all operations. Quite why Moorwand felt that was relevant is unclear, especially when they are so secretive about the first two years’ ownership which is when the binary option scam was using UPayCard to launder the proceeds of crime. Perhaps it was an attempt to warn investors that they’re wasting their time trying to get their money back because the scammers have closed off their options by transferring to Cyprus and then ceasing operations. But investors can still hold Moorwand to account because the offences occurred on their watch.

We know of at least one investor who paid into the UPayCard money mule scam and is taking action through the FCA and the FOS. The investor has also reported the matter to Action Fraud.

Safe Or Scam’s article alludes to there being further concerns about the activities of Moorwand and UPayCard. It has promised a second report next week.

Anyone who paid money to UPayCard from 2017 onwards is recommended to report the matter to the FCA and to Action Fraud.

Last week the BBC ran this article on their website – Ghost Broking: Young and vulnerable people targeted by insurance scam – LINK. 

The gist of the article is that scammers pose as middlemen for insurance companies.  They claim to be able to arrange cheap car insurance for those struggling to get affordable cover. They might advertise on student websites or WhatsApp or social media. They might actually arrange the insurance, but then cancel it without the insured person’s knowledge. This means the money is returned to the scammer and the victim is left uninsured. The victim may never know unless they are involved in an accident or pulled over by the Police for some reason.

Life is hard enough without having to wonder whether every text or email might be a scam. Unfortunately that is today’s modern world and the best advice we can give is to treat every text or email you receive as a potential scam. Don’t pay just because you receive a text from an organisation you recognise. Scammers are very good at copying the branding of any organisation or government department.