A very interesting investment - Invest in Care Homes

GomerPyle

http://www.investincarehomes.com/index.php

This has taken a lot of research and I'll tread carefully and cautiously, but it makes interesting reading.

Unusually the website registrant is shown as

Inspire Skills Training

but let's ignore that for now

At the foot of the webpage it says

2nd Floor, Berkeley Square House, Berkeley Square, London, W1J 6BD | © 2011 Elmhurst Ltd

Clearly you might believe that has something to do with the website, registrant or the investment. Elmhurst Ltd is actually a completely unconnected company in Scotland related o a hotel.

Look just above that and you'll note that you are advised to contact an IFA and these details are quoted

*Please seek professional advice from your Financial Adviser about investing in Invest In Care Homes Investments opportunities via a SIPP. Invest In Care Homes is not an IFA and therefore is not authorized to give out financial advice. Listed below is an IFA you can contact to assist you with the setting up of a SIPP.

Company Name: Lexefiscal

Contact Name: Clifford C. Greaves (LLM, HDIpICA, FCIArb,ACPA, IPL, MCIJ)
Now this is where the problems begin

Checking at the Financial Services Authority, neither Mr Greaves nor Lexefiscal are authorised by them to give financial advice, and it's rather unusual to give you the sensible warning to seek independent financial advice, but rather negligent to refer you to someone who isn't qualified to do it.

Matters get worse when you look at the person behind Lexefiscal.

http://www.lexefiscal.com/main.html

(note that the company address matches that at the bottom of the care home investment site)

It seems he doesn't always use the same Christian names but he claims to be the sole proprietor here

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/claude-c-greaves/a/574/398/it

and for clarity his full name is Claude Clifford Greaves

He is quite well known and it is a surprise that he should be recommended as an advisor in financial matters in view of this

http://www.thelawpages.com/court-cases/Claude-Clifford-Greaves--3104-1.law

In fact the Institute ff Tax Management expelled him

http://www.tax-board.org.uk/findings_and_orders/disciplinary/ClaudeGreaves

There is more to this intriguing story but I'm being cautious.

I know that a lot of people will be interested to hear of Mr Claude Greaves' continuing activities.

Loughton_Monkey

So you'll probably not be investing, then?

GomerPyle

I'd be interested to speak to someone selling the investment, and apart from the worrying points I have already mentioned, there are some other rather strange features.

If you're going to invest in something, it's nice to know what it is.

It might be a mistake to leap to conclusions over what the investment actually is, but I'll explain shortly. I'm not being a tease - I just need to re-check what I've discovered so that I only state things that appear as a matter of record elsewhere.

The principle point being that unless you buy a share in a building, you aren't investing in a care home but a business, and its assets may, or may not, include a building that is a care home. If there is lack of clarity over the business you're investing in, it's not possible to know whether or not the investment includes any particular asset and what its worth is.

It doesn't help that the website begins with confusion over company names at the outset. It's possibly not intentional and I'll endeavour to clarify the confusion for everyone's benefit using Company House records.

Loughton_Monkey

Personally, I think for most of us, investing in a 'business' like this is a complete no-no from a point of principle. If we want to invest, we have recourse to thousands of managed funds, thousands of listed shares on the Stocks Exchanges (including abroad), or we can buy a property to rent out.

But this type of investment is basically like being a 'dragon'. Even if I knew the company owner, and knew that he was 'honest', I wouldn't invest since new ventures like this have a bigger probability of failure than success. If he wants money, he should go to a bank or other institutional investor. If he can't get a pig's blister from that, then tough!

GomerPyle

You make some very reasnable points Loughton Monkey, and some of the issues you raise I won't answer yet, but above all else it would be folly for a person to make an investment based on the advice and guidance of someone purporting to be an IFA proposed by the entity offering the investment.

Though the website inviting the investment refers to the care home industry in gneral, it can be seen from the e-mail address put forward for enquiries that your mail will be directed here to elmhurstcare.com, the website being

http://www.elmhurstcare.com/index.php

again it mistakenly identifies itself at the bottom of the page as Elmhurst Ltd, which I must confirm again is not associated with this company or enterprise.

It appears clearer that the investment invited is in one particular care home, though it becomes clearer that it cannot be in any particular building when on this page

http://www.elmhurstcare.com/the team.php

Silverleaf Estates LLP is the 100% owner of Elmhurst

Of course we know that Elmhurst isn't a company, (perhaps the investment target is the building known as Elmhurst Care Home in Shropshire shown on the website) and so must be a building and, referring to Companies House, Silverleaf Estates LLP is actually marked as a DORMANT company. This is highly unusual for a company that might be inviting investment funds.

The point being that investing in a dormant company that doesn't own a care home is not an investment proposition.

If you look up the Care Quality Commission report dated 13th May 2010 where it specifies the owner as LDCG Limited.

Their name hasn't cropped up before so it's worth taking a peek at Companies' House and there it's noted

Next Accounts Due: 31/12/2010 OVERDUE

Any investment in the actual building will rank behind the lender's mortgages and charges, though that appears not to be what is being offered, and is not a practical proposition, even if there is any equity to make it of any value. The investment is in a dormant company which didn't own the buiding referred to, as recently as the middle of last year.

jimjames

Well done for all your research. It's very interesting what you can turn up from public sources of information like Companies House, Google and website registrations. I'm currently looking into a company purporting to be a model agency that also has been dormant for 5 years and is in the process of being struck off by Companies House. http://modellingportfolios.blogspot.com/2011/03/beware-edge-models-scam-company-behind.html The advice I gave to potential registrants was to avoid giving money to any company in the process of being struck off although as models they are paying for a service not investing in the company.

Either way it is a very good warning to people to make sure they know what they are investing in. From your link it appears Mr Claude Clifford Greaves has previously been convicted of:

Conspiracy to carry on a regulated activity whilst not authorised by the FSA or exempt.
Total Sentence : 5 Years 6 Months
Likely Release Date : 25/1/2012

Either he is conducting this from his cell or has got an early release? Even 2009-2012 isn't 5 yrs 6 month though!! Have you reported this outfit to the FSA as they appear to be conducting investment business without authorisation yet again especially if they are claiming their IFA is actually permitted to conduct IFA business?

saverjustice

Avoid UCIS, most of them are get rich quick scams.

http://www.fsa.gov.uk/pages/consumerinformation/product_news/saving_investments/ucis/index.shtml


What worries me is that until I met the regulators they were largely oblivious to what was going on!

jimjames

saverjustice wrote: »

Avoid UCIS, most of them are get rich quick scams.

http://www.fsa.gov.uk/pages/consumerinformation/product_news/saving_investments/ucis/index.shtml


What worries me is that until I met the regulators they were largely oblivious to what was going on!

As the company listed above is UK based I assume that they should still be regulated according to this on the website.

Where a scheme is not authorised or recognised, persons carrying on regulated activities in the UK in relation to UCIS – including providing personal recommendations, arranging deals and establishing, operating and managing schemes – are still subject to our regulation.

Due to the previous conviction I assume the FSA and fraud office would be rather interested to hear about this scheme before too many people get caught.

saverjustice

If they sell through an authorised firm they don't need to be regulated, that is why they are called 'Unregulated Collective Investment Schemes', it is the regulated firm that carries the can and even they had no idea what they were getting into, gullible or what? Too many of them are blinded by the vast fee income they generate. If you buy direct from these crooks then you only have yourself to blame! But everyone needs to report any suspicious activity to the regulators, if you want to remain anonymous you can tell me. Unfortunately the regulators can only do some legal work and pass it on to what was the DTI who will prosecute through the courts, remember the land bankers, well some high profile cases were successful but they are still flogging strips of worthless land for £10,000.

The big problem area is SIPPs, many people have put all their pension eggs in one basket so there is a fair bit of money swishing around looking for the gold in them thar hills, it is fools gold.

I am looking at files where the claims are in six and seven figures, some were sold hotel rooms in supposedly busy city centre hotels. Nobody told them that the rooms are in fact worthless.

GomerPyle

Marketing shares in worthless companies has been done before, to the tune of hundreds of millions of pounds, most notably in the USA where a loophole in SEC procedures was exploited by fraudsters who made massive fortunes out of 'boiler room' operations.

Attempting to market an investment in a dormant company appears to be an attempt to achieve the same thing within our own jurisdiction.

There's a lot more to say on this scheme and only today I've been uncovering the marketing behind this investment. Undoubtedly I will submit a report to the authorities in which I'll be able to provide considerably more detail but, as I say, I'm treading cautiously.

saverjustice

Don't waste your time on detail, just tell the FSA.