Vanished, salesman who claimed taxman’s approval
A SALESMAN vanished after helping to convince hundreds of customers to transfer millions of pounds into scam schemes by boasting they were ‘UK-government approved.’
Stuart Grehan ran two call centres with up to 20 staff in each that cold-called victims and misled them about their expertise and experience.
They falsely offered ‘guaranteed’ returns so their targets would move retirement savings into the schemes, the Insolvency Service said. In fact, most of the cash went into unregulated investments in storage units which did not yield the level of returns promised. In many cases, members lost everything.
Many of the victims are also facing large tax bills from HMRC because – by moving their cash from existing schemes – they had broken tax rules.
Victims who were targeted in 2013 and 2014 said he successfully tricked them by – correctly – stressing that the schemes were registered with the taxman.
One of Mr Grehan’s companies,
Jackson Francis, boasted on its website that it was a ‘UK-government approved personal pension scheme, which allows individuals to make their own investment decisions from the full range of investments approved by HM Revenue and Customs’.
Two of the main schemes, the Henley Retirement Benefit Scheme and Capita Oak Pension Scheme, were also registered with HMRC.
Letters from the company to potential clients prominently displayed the registered number
from HMRC, which many victims saw as a ‘veneer of legitimacy’.
But after signing up and transferring their cash, victims heard nothing from the company. When they tried to contact staff, the line went dead. Mr Grehan, who was then using the surname Chapman-Clarke, disappeared in 2014 and his exact whereabouts are unknown.
He posts pictures on Facebook of him enjoying himself with his family in the Portsmouth area.
Two relatives agreed to pass him the Mail’s request for comment but he did not respond. In a ruling last year the Insolvency Service said Mr Grehan admitted making false and misleading claims about his company’s level of expertise and experience and false claims about the range of investment products and promises of providing ‘unbiased advice’.
The only product that was actively promoted was the unregulated investment in storage units that his companies had an interest in.
There was no evidence that Mr Grehan knew the two schemes were acting fraudulently.
He agreed to a nine-year voluntary ban from working as a director following the probe. Karl Dunlop, of Imperial Trustee Services Ltd, and Ian Dunsford, of Omni Trustees Ltd, agreed to voluntary bans of seven and nine years respectively for failing to act in the best interests of pension members and subsequently failing to ensure investments were adequately diverse.
The investigation centred on the conduct of directors connected to a Gibraltar company, Transeuro Worldwide Holdings Ltd. It helped to fund Sycamore, an introductions company that Mr Grehan owned.