5 Replies to “The Ready2Invest Limited (“R2i”) Alleged Investment Fraud”
We invested in the Mendoza, Argentina project after being offered an attractive interest rate on a 6 month loan. All seemed fine at first, with regular updates about the project’s progress, and seemingly exciting news about letters of interest from quality resort companies like Ritz Carlton etc. We started to have doubts when the loan repayment date came and went, and Mr Crossick requested further funds – stating that ‘we have more than enough security’ for these loans. Thank goodness we didn’t get fooled twice. While all these positive communications were being sent out, unbeknowns to us, the wheels were rapidly falling off the project. Misuse of funds had led to cashflow drying up.
As months slipped by and the loan remained unpaid, we became more and more concerned about the ongoing fobbing-off by the Crossicks and R2i. We discovered that there was an investor group and were relieved to join forces with them. Only then did we learn the full truth about the Crossicks, R2i and the fraudulent practices that had gone on. We were shocked to discover that some fellow members of the investor group had not invested in Argentina at all, but had been given ‘rollover’ investments from other failed projects. We thought, surely this is illegal.
As more and more details have arisen about the bungling incompetence of the Crossicks and their desperate attempts to rescue the project, using tactics that were clearly unlawful and fraudulent, we have joined fellow investors in providing details to Action Fraud – with zero response. It feels like nobody, even those government agencies that are charged with upholding the law and bringing fraudsters and criminals to justice, simply don’t care. They’re not interested. Why is this?
This is not just a case of people investing in a high-risk project and losing their money due to bad luck or judgment. This is a case of malpractice, fraud and injustice. Evidence suggests that the Crossicks are living the good life in London and Australia respectively while their defrauded investors are left to pick up the pieces. Surely that can’t be right.
Between 2007 & 2009 made a couple of investments with R2i, in Romania & then Brazil, their brochures and sales pitches were very convincing, but both schemes failed due to ‘developers’! When my investment in Brazil failed, R2i blamed the developers and offered me a “rollover” to the Valle de Uco Investment Scheme. It would seem this was an effective marketing tool designed to disguise some
irregularities in Brazil and then create a form of Ponzi Scheme fraud in Valle de Uco. Over £60,000 in total ‘invested’ with R2i and over 10 years later still no sign of ever getting a penny back.
Joined a couple of investor groups that have found lots of evidence of fraudulent activity yet
all the regulatory bodies informed or involved : the FCA , the SFO, Action Fraud and the liquidators don’t seem to be interested? Action Fraud have already informed me that no crime had been committed? How is that possible?
Same happened to me! Made investments with R2i in Romania but that got rolled over into Brazil and then a few months later, I was advised to roll it over into the Valle de Uco Investment Scheme as the turn around of investment would be better and quicker but each roll over costed that little bit more…. how naive I was!
The FCA were warned that R2i was engaging in regulated activities without FCA authorisation which resulted in significant retail consumer losses? Surely the FCA should take responsibility for their role in the R2i Scandal.
Why have the Government Agencies and Regulators not done anything about this?
There has been many complaints with stacking evidence but it all seems to have been swept under the carpet.
People like the Crossicks and their accomplices should be held accountable for their actions, not allowed to sail away into the sunset with our stolen money!!!
The Read2Invest fraud is widespread and I find it incredible that more action has not been taken and that the founders continue to walk free.
I invested in multiple locations. When these failed I was offered the opportunity to rollover into another investment scheme. I rolled over more than once as they continued to fail. Their sale people were impressive and befriended me to try to get every last pound they could. The more I was invested in their company the more pressure I felt to investment to ensure success. Instead this was just a form of Ponzi scheme that enriched the Crossicks and allowed them to live a wonderful life while taking away from the rest of us.
Where has my money gone? Is there also Escrow Account Fraud here? Absolutely. This is a terrible state of affairs and, as someone who is also disabled, I feel like I have been preyed on.
This is a serious financial scandal that has been swept under the carpet.
The Ready2Invest fraud sounds very much like the Ecohouse fraud, with every authority failing to act in accordance with their remit, and ignoring massive failings by other entities and evidence of cronyism.
In the Ecohouse case two branches of Lloyds Bank failed to detect money laundering of £33M over the course of 2 and a half years. Ecohouse Developments banked at Lloyds in Richmond who were singing the praises of the investment scheme and boasting about the turnover to assist with duping more investors to join the scheme. Richmone branch suddenly closed when the solicitor firm Sanders & Co. halted their facilitation of the fraud and ceased with laundering client funds to Ecohouse, at the precise point that the SRA wrote to them threatening an intervention.
Years prior to that floods of complaints were made to the SRA, but they did nothing to halt the fraud and employed a single forensic investigator for a month to look into the firm – apparently he found nothing ! Ecohouse Developments IP, PWC refused to provide the creditors committee details of what they had found at Sanders & Co , though they did confirm that large sums had been drawn from their client account with no actual development work having been done. Sanders & Co. reneged on all due diligence to their clients and were operating an unauthorised banking facility, but no action has been taken against the solicitor partners to my knowledge.
Sanders & Co.’s IP, Butcher Woods did not report misconduct against the firm – in fact they did not investigated the period when the fraud was taking place. Mid fraud, Sanders & Co. changed the firm to an LLP in order to protect themselves against inevitable litigation claims once their fraudulence came to light. Clare Taman established Orca Property Management mid fraud and purchased 2 properties on Hagley Road, Stourbridge and leased one building back to Sanders & Co. LLP. Although they had taken premeditated and deliberate steps to conceal their assets (ill gotten gains) prior to their inevitable liquidation, ButcherWoods did not report them for misconduct. There has been no consequence via the Insolvency Service in response to Sanders & Co. laundering £33M in client funds and concealing assets prior to a liquidation (which qualifies as misconduct). Despite being a director of Orca and having two properties to her name, Clare Taman reported having claimed for £90,000 from Legal Aid in order to challenge the firms insurance indemnity declination. Yes, you read that right – she claimed £90,000 in Legal Aid to defend the firms position after the firm had facilitated fraud and laundered £33M in client funds – unconscionable and despicable behaviour, as well as squandering Legal Aid funds that are precious to those who don’t have any assets and can’t afford legal representation.
The SRA didn’t allege dishonesty against the solicitors, so they were not struck off at their original tribunal. Even when the Ponzi fraud was proven the SRA refused to revisit justice against Sanders solicitors despite the SRA CEO, Paul Philip confirming that they had laundered client funds direct to Ecohouse after taking their fees. He even ignored 44 MPs requesting him to revisit justice in the case. He lied by stating that there was no new information against Sanders solicitors despite a lay application making the appropriate allegations of dishonesty against them and their involvement in transactions to a scheme that bore the hallmarks of a fraud. The lay application was disposed of and the SRA has never conceded the solicitors dishonesty even though the Ponzi fraud is proven.
The Metropolitan Police have been investigating for over 4 years. The investigating officer, Richard Kirk was about to make arrests in October 2017, but then suddenly decided to leave the case ,completely out of the blue, apparently to work for Humberside Police and be closer to family. It’s more likely that he was frog-marched off the case because he had found incriminating evidence against officials that somehow benefited from the fraud. He talked of extremely useful interviews with PWC and the discovery of so much evidence of wrongdoing, that he had to go back to PWC for a second time to collect it all. He also talked of significant lengthy interactions with CPS. Since he left the case no arrests have been made, despite an admission of misrepresentation and money laundering by Charles Fraser Macnamara, the former Tory Councillor. Although Richard Kirk promised each investor a regular updates on progress of the arrests and a report on where investors money had been dissipated, none of this materialised. It is believed that the MoJ put the kibosh on the arrests for extremely dubious reasons.
The Met Police had refused to accept irrefutable evidence of fraud from two substantive hearings held in Spring 2019. One by the Insolvency Service, in which the Ponzi fraud was proven, development land was found not to belong to Ecohouse Developments, and nothing had been built, let along sold. Charles Fraser Macnamara’s 2nd SDT hearing also proved the Ponzi fraud and he was struck off. It proves that Sanders & Co. assisted him with wrongdoing, even helping to dupe investors into accepting a deed of modification to transfer their units to another development site, and so permitting Ecohouse to request (and Sanders & Co. to rifle) their funds. Sanders & Co. even got involved with paying returns to existing investors when no units had been sold (in breach of escrow agreement clause 7). They even confirmed bank transfers of illicit Ponzi style transaction payments. They were incontrovertibly immersed in the fraud and assisting it.
The SRA has acted every bit as unscrupulously as the solicitor firm itself. Burying evidence, not making the appropriate allegations, not disclosing evidence to tribunal, not including solicitors with the least penalty in a High Court Appeal, not detecting the fraud, not intervening to halt the fraud, not compensating the fraud, refusing to revisit justice once the Ponzi fraud was proven. The SRA has also comprehensively failed to offer any transparency regarding its incongruous actions. It refused its forensic investigation report into Sanders & Co. solicitors and refused copies of client complaints about the firm. The SRA has sought to conceal its malfeasance for deliberately deciding not to intervene against the fraud in order to save its compensation scheme coffers, which it squanders on funding interventions instead of providing redress to misconduct victims. Having denied compensation to Ecohouse victims for the serious act of fraud by its members, it then decided to reduce levies to the compensation scheme, and has recently subverted a compensation scheme policy consultation by calling in “Ringers” from law societies across the country to vote in the SRA’s proposed policy – the consultation was almost devoid of any legal service consumer representation, unless of course you want to count the superficial representation provided by the Legal Service Consumer Panel, which is just an offshoot of the Legal Services Board. The LSCP did put up some token resistance, but they have little or no power over the SRA, so the SRA railroaded its new policy into place and further destroyed the already ridiculously ineffectual protection offered through its lamentable and non viable scheme.
The LSB , JSC and MoJ have been fully appraised about the SRA’s skulduggery and its patent breaches of the Legal Services Act 2007. It is not providing viable protection to legal consumers, is not following due process, is not administering the rule of law, is not being transparent or accountable, has not brought appropriate prosecutions (in fact it has done everything in its power to obstruct justice against the solicitors and even scuppered a lay application against them by saying it had no case to answer when the SDT referred it back to their partners in collusion, the SRA), it is not taking adequate preventative measures to stop fraud occurring, and is steadily destroying any vestiges of protection still theoretically achievable through its compensation fund of last resort. The SDT is assisting the SRA in its skulduggery by permitting itself to be heavily influenced by the SRA. The SDT has for instance dismissed every lay application over a 4 years period (researched last year). It has also recently subverted the consultation on disclosure of court documents to non parties , which was ordered courtesy of the Supreme Court and Lady Hale. The consultation ignored all argument and concerns from individual responders – as a result the disclosure policy hasn’t changed one iota – it is still prone and vulnerable to the SDT and SRA’s wholly unreasonable subjective subversion.
Despite the abysmal behaviour and systemic failings by the wayward and immoral regulator, the LSB, JSC and MoJ has refused numerous calls for them to take action or intervene against the SRA. The SRA is corrupt – it has chosen to conceal a colossal fraud and let solicitor criminals off the hook, purely in order to evade a significant compensation claim – or perhaps it was an illicit favour to the MoJ to protect unscrupulous officials that benefited from the fraud? With Charles Fraser Macnamara, the former Tory Councillor as the main protagonist of the fraud, its not difficult to foresee that some of his party associates may have benefited from the fraud. That might at least explain why around 90+ MPs have refused to assist or completely ignored their Ecohouse impacted constituents over the last 5 years, despite literally dozens of campaigns requesting their representation. It’s as though fraud is a dirty word that they just don’t want to have anything to do with – I wonder why ? Their refusal to assist is a comprehensive failure in representation and the MPs concerned do not deserve to hold their seats for their downright ignorance and indifference to constituents that had suffered life limiting losses.
Like the Ready2Invest schemes, the Ecohouse case stinks of a colossal “Cover up” by numerous agencies, liquidators, regulators, possibly orchestrated by the MoJ, and the Government circling the wagons to protect the unscrupulous. There appears to be a significant protection racket in place which is influencing all these entities to act inappropriately and in total defiance of their intended remit. The corruption, non-feasance and protection racket extends far beyond the SRA.
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We invested in the Mendoza, Argentina project after being offered an attractive interest rate on a 6 month loan. All seemed fine at first, with regular updates about the project’s progress, and seemingly exciting news about letters of interest from quality resort companies like Ritz Carlton etc. We started to have doubts when the loan repayment date came and went, and Mr Crossick requested further funds – stating that ‘we have more than enough security’ for these loans. Thank goodness we didn’t get fooled twice. While all these positive communications were being sent out, unbeknowns to us, the wheels were rapidly falling off the project. Misuse of funds had led to cashflow drying up.
As months slipped by and the loan remained unpaid, we became more and more concerned about the ongoing fobbing-off by the Crossicks and R2i. We discovered that there was an investor group and were relieved to join forces with them. Only then did we learn the full truth about the Crossicks, R2i and the fraudulent practices that had gone on. We were shocked to discover that some fellow members of the investor group had not invested in Argentina at all, but had been given ‘rollover’ investments from other failed projects. We thought, surely this is illegal.
As more and more details have arisen about the bungling incompetence of the Crossicks and their desperate attempts to rescue the project, using tactics that were clearly unlawful and fraudulent, we have joined fellow investors in providing details to Action Fraud – with zero response. It feels like nobody, even those government agencies that are charged with upholding the law and bringing fraudsters and criminals to justice, simply don’t care. They’re not interested. Why is this?
This is not just a case of people investing in a high-risk project and losing their money due to bad luck or judgment. This is a case of malpractice, fraud and injustice. Evidence suggests that the Crossicks are living the good life in London and Australia respectively while their defrauded investors are left to pick up the pieces. Surely that can’t be right.
Between 2007 & 2009 made a couple of investments with R2i, in Romania & then Brazil, their brochures and sales pitches were very convincing, but both schemes failed due to ‘developers’! When my investment in Brazil failed, R2i blamed the developers and offered me a “rollover” to the Valle de Uco Investment Scheme. It would seem this was an effective marketing tool designed to disguise some
irregularities in Brazil and then create a form of Ponzi Scheme fraud in Valle de Uco. Over £60,000 in total ‘invested’ with R2i and over 10 years later still no sign of ever getting a penny back.
Joined a couple of investor groups that have found lots of evidence of fraudulent activity yet
all the regulatory bodies informed or involved : the FCA , the SFO, Action Fraud and the liquidators don’t seem to be interested? Action Fraud have already informed me that no crime had been committed? How is that possible?
Same happened to me! Made investments with R2i in Romania but that got rolled over into Brazil and then a few months later, I was advised to roll it over into the Valle de Uco Investment Scheme as the turn around of investment would be better and quicker but each roll over costed that little bit more…. how naive I was!
The FCA were warned that R2i was engaging in regulated activities without FCA authorisation which resulted in significant retail consumer losses? Surely the FCA should take responsibility for their role in the R2i Scandal.
Why have the Government Agencies and Regulators not done anything about this?
There has been many complaints with stacking evidence but it all seems to have been swept under the carpet.
People like the Crossicks and their accomplices should be held accountable for their actions, not allowed to sail away into the sunset with our stolen money!!!
The Read2Invest fraud is widespread and I find it incredible that more action has not been taken and that the founders continue to walk free.
I invested in multiple locations. When these failed I was offered the opportunity to rollover into another investment scheme. I rolled over more than once as they continued to fail. Their sale people were impressive and befriended me to try to get every last pound they could. The more I was invested in their company the more pressure I felt to investment to ensure success. Instead this was just a form of Ponzi scheme that enriched the Crossicks and allowed them to live a wonderful life while taking away from the rest of us.
Where has my money gone? Is there also Escrow Account Fraud here? Absolutely. This is a terrible state of affairs and, as someone who is also disabled, I feel like I have been preyed on.
This is a serious financial scandal that has been swept under the carpet.
The Ready2Invest fraud sounds very much like the Ecohouse fraud, with every authority failing to act in accordance with their remit, and ignoring massive failings by other entities and evidence of cronyism.
In the Ecohouse case two branches of Lloyds Bank failed to detect money laundering of £33M over the course of 2 and a half years. Ecohouse Developments banked at Lloyds in Richmond who were singing the praises of the investment scheme and boasting about the turnover to assist with duping more investors to join the scheme. Richmone branch suddenly closed when the solicitor firm Sanders & Co. halted their facilitation of the fraud and ceased with laundering client funds to Ecohouse, at the precise point that the SRA wrote to them threatening an intervention.
Years prior to that floods of complaints were made to the SRA, but they did nothing to halt the fraud and employed a single forensic investigator for a month to look into the firm – apparently he found nothing ! Ecohouse Developments IP, PWC refused to provide the creditors committee details of what they had found at Sanders & Co , though they did confirm that large sums had been drawn from their client account with no actual development work having been done. Sanders & Co. reneged on all due diligence to their clients and were operating an unauthorised banking facility, but no action has been taken against the solicitor partners to my knowledge.
Sanders & Co.’s IP, Butcher Woods did not report misconduct against the firm – in fact they did not investigated the period when the fraud was taking place. Mid fraud, Sanders & Co. changed the firm to an LLP in order to protect themselves against inevitable litigation claims once their fraudulence came to light. Clare Taman established Orca Property Management mid fraud and purchased 2 properties on Hagley Road, Stourbridge and leased one building back to Sanders & Co. LLP. Although they had taken premeditated and deliberate steps to conceal their assets (ill gotten gains) prior to their inevitable liquidation, ButcherWoods did not report them for misconduct. There has been no consequence via the Insolvency Service in response to Sanders & Co. laundering £33M in client funds and concealing assets prior to a liquidation (which qualifies as misconduct). Despite being a director of Orca and having two properties to her name, Clare Taman reported having claimed for £90,000 from Legal Aid in order to challenge the firms insurance indemnity declination. Yes, you read that right – she claimed £90,000 in Legal Aid to defend the firms position after the firm had facilitated fraud and laundered £33M in client funds – unconscionable and despicable behaviour, as well as squandering Legal Aid funds that are precious to those who don’t have any assets and can’t afford legal representation.
The SRA didn’t allege dishonesty against the solicitors, so they were not struck off at their original tribunal. Even when the Ponzi fraud was proven the SRA refused to revisit justice against Sanders solicitors despite the SRA CEO, Paul Philip confirming that they had laundered client funds direct to Ecohouse after taking their fees. He even ignored 44 MPs requesting him to revisit justice in the case. He lied by stating that there was no new information against Sanders solicitors despite a lay application making the appropriate allegations of dishonesty against them and their involvement in transactions to a scheme that bore the hallmarks of a fraud. The lay application was disposed of and the SRA has never conceded the solicitors dishonesty even though the Ponzi fraud is proven.
The Metropolitan Police have been investigating for over 4 years. The investigating officer, Richard Kirk was about to make arrests in October 2017, but then suddenly decided to leave the case ,completely out of the blue, apparently to work for Humberside Police and be closer to family. It’s more likely that he was frog-marched off the case because he had found incriminating evidence against officials that somehow benefited from the fraud. He talked of extremely useful interviews with PWC and the discovery of so much evidence of wrongdoing, that he had to go back to PWC for a second time to collect it all. He also talked of significant lengthy interactions with CPS. Since he left the case no arrests have been made, despite an admission of misrepresentation and money laundering by Charles Fraser Macnamara, the former Tory Councillor. Although Richard Kirk promised each investor a regular updates on progress of the arrests and a report on where investors money had been dissipated, none of this materialised. It is believed that the MoJ put the kibosh on the arrests for extremely dubious reasons.
The Met Police had refused to accept irrefutable evidence of fraud from two substantive hearings held in Spring 2019. One by the Insolvency Service, in which the Ponzi fraud was proven, development land was found not to belong to Ecohouse Developments, and nothing had been built, let along sold. Charles Fraser Macnamara’s 2nd SDT hearing also proved the Ponzi fraud and he was struck off. It proves that Sanders & Co. assisted him with wrongdoing, even helping to dupe investors into accepting a deed of modification to transfer their units to another development site, and so permitting Ecohouse to request (and Sanders & Co. to rifle) their funds. Sanders & Co. even got involved with paying returns to existing investors when no units had been sold (in breach of escrow agreement clause 7). They even confirmed bank transfers of illicit Ponzi style transaction payments. They were incontrovertibly immersed in the fraud and assisting it.
The SRA has acted every bit as unscrupulously as the solicitor firm itself. Burying evidence, not making the appropriate allegations, not disclosing evidence to tribunal, not including solicitors with the least penalty in a High Court Appeal, not detecting the fraud, not intervening to halt the fraud, not compensating the fraud, refusing to revisit justice once the Ponzi fraud was proven. The SRA has also comprehensively failed to offer any transparency regarding its incongruous actions. It refused its forensic investigation report into Sanders & Co. solicitors and refused copies of client complaints about the firm. The SRA has sought to conceal its malfeasance for deliberately deciding not to intervene against the fraud in order to save its compensation scheme coffers, which it squanders on funding interventions instead of providing redress to misconduct victims. Having denied compensation to Ecohouse victims for the serious act of fraud by its members, it then decided to reduce levies to the compensation scheme, and has recently subverted a compensation scheme policy consultation by calling in “Ringers” from law societies across the country to vote in the SRA’s proposed policy – the consultation was almost devoid of any legal service consumer representation, unless of course you want to count the superficial representation provided by the Legal Service Consumer Panel, which is just an offshoot of the Legal Services Board. The LSCP did put up some token resistance, but they have little or no power over the SRA, so the SRA railroaded its new policy into place and further destroyed the already ridiculously ineffectual protection offered through its lamentable and non viable scheme.
The LSB , JSC and MoJ have been fully appraised about the SRA’s skulduggery and its patent breaches of the Legal Services Act 2007. It is not providing viable protection to legal consumers, is not following due process, is not administering the rule of law, is not being transparent or accountable, has not brought appropriate prosecutions (in fact it has done everything in its power to obstruct justice against the solicitors and even scuppered a lay application against them by saying it had no case to answer when the SDT referred it back to their partners in collusion, the SRA), it is not taking adequate preventative measures to stop fraud occurring, and is steadily destroying any vestiges of protection still theoretically achievable through its compensation fund of last resort. The SDT is assisting the SRA in its skulduggery by permitting itself to be heavily influenced by the SRA. The SDT has for instance dismissed every lay application over a 4 years period (researched last year). It has also recently subverted the consultation on disclosure of court documents to non parties , which was ordered courtesy of the Supreme Court and Lady Hale. The consultation ignored all argument and concerns from individual responders – as a result the disclosure policy hasn’t changed one iota – it is still prone and vulnerable to the SDT and SRA’s wholly unreasonable subjective subversion.
Despite the abysmal behaviour and systemic failings by the wayward and immoral regulator, the LSB, JSC and MoJ has refused numerous calls for them to take action or intervene against the SRA. The SRA is corrupt – it has chosen to conceal a colossal fraud and let solicitor criminals off the hook, purely in order to evade a significant compensation claim – or perhaps it was an illicit favour to the MoJ to protect unscrupulous officials that benefited from the fraud? With Charles Fraser Macnamara, the former Tory Councillor as the main protagonist of the fraud, its not difficult to foresee that some of his party associates may have benefited from the fraud. That might at least explain why around 90+ MPs have refused to assist or completely ignored their Ecohouse impacted constituents over the last 5 years, despite literally dozens of campaigns requesting their representation. It’s as though fraud is a dirty word that they just don’t want to have anything to do with – I wonder why ? Their refusal to assist is a comprehensive failure in representation and the MPs concerned do not deserve to hold their seats for their downright ignorance and indifference to constituents that had suffered life limiting losses.
Like the Ready2Invest schemes, the Ecohouse case stinks of a colossal “Cover up” by numerous agencies, liquidators, regulators, possibly orchestrated by the MoJ, and the Government circling the wagons to protect the unscrupulous. There appears to be a significant protection racket in place which is influencing all these entities to act inappropriately and in total defiance of their intended remit. The corruption, non-feasance and protection racket extends far beyond the SRA.