WE’RE WATCHING YOU

A WINE investment company headed by a convicted fraudster who once ripped off the NHS has been shut down by the High Court after investigators found that the prices it charged made it almost impossible for investors to recover their own money – let alone show a profit.

Dow and Jones Limited was headed by 31-year-old Anthony Collins, also known as Kyrone Collins. Working alongside him was Gerry Anyiam, 32.

Both had been convicted in 2011 of swindling the NHS out of thousands of pounds by submitting false invoices that were approved for payment by a colleague working in a hospital finance department.

The pair were given suspended prison sentences, and then went on to work as salesmen for wine scam firm Prime Trading 5 Limited before Collins set up Dow and Jones. I warned against Prime Trading 5 in 2015, and sounded the alarm over Dow and Jones in 2017.

At the High Court in London last Tuesday, evidence was given that sales staff at Dow and Jones falsely claimed to investors that if they bought more wine, their entire portfolio would quickly be sold at a good price.

Irshard Mohammed, senior investigator at the Insolvency Service, said: ‘Even those customers who received the wine they had paid for lost a sizeable proportion of their investment as the wine was materially overpriced.’

Neither Collins nor any of his colleagues has been prosecuted for cheating investors, and they have not been ordered to repay victims who lost money during the four years Dow and Jones was in business.