‘I’m open to a knighthood,’ says scammer back in Britain
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WHAT’S in a name? Not a lot, according to Aaron Banks. This is not the same person as Arron Banks, the millionaire businessman behind the Leave. EU campaign. No, Aaron Banks – with the slightly different spelling – used to be known as Mark Brewer.
Five years ago, I warned that Brewer and his wife Kendall Twigden had come to Britain from New Zealand, bringing a scam called WiseFX, investment software marketed for up to £20,000 a time. It was said to make automated foreign exchange trades, with a success rate of over 50 per cent. Fronting for them as director was Jonathan Chubb from Dublin.
Chubb is no normal forex dealer. He has 27 convictions, including at least 12 for theft and fraud, while his brother is a leading member of an organised crime gang in the Irish Republic and his father was jailed for manslaughter.
In New Zealand, Brewer has been declared bankrupt in 1997 and 2010, though this was reversed when he paid his debts. He was a salesman for an investment software company registered in Twigden’s name until advertising watchdogs condemned it for making false claims, and it collapsed owing £1 million. Twigden is banned from acting as a New Zealand company director.
Not surprisingly, WiseFX’s advertising claims in Britain were also false and investors lost heavily. After being exposed in The Mail on Sunday, the pair left Britain. Now they are back, having arrived from Ireland and moved into a £2 million house in Bath. Rent has not been paid for months, but the tenancy is in the name of Blockchain Innovation Ltd. Its sole director is CarolAnne Greening, from Gloucester.
Last year a county court judgment was registered against her at the Bath address. Her firm stopped paying rent because, she says, it wants the landlord to carry out repairs. She refused to say when she first knew that Banks was in fact Brewer, but added: ‘He has invested time and money into helping me do something I believe in.’
So what does Blockchain Innovation do? According to Banks (let’s call him that for convenience), he is chief executive of Global Investor Group, which invested up to £2 million in two Blockchain Innovation projects.
The first is Medi-Cert, a scheme that allows employers to check an individual’s qualifications. The second is Credyts, offering ‘ digital accounts’ representing gold.
Global Investor Group is said to be a Singapore firm. But there is an established British financial publisher of the same name and, curiously, a list of its staff on LinkedIn includes ‘Aaron B.’ as ‘co-founder’. Will Browne, general manager of the London publisher, confirmed it had no connection to Banks and he was certainly not its founder.
Confusion also surrounds MediCert. According to Banks: ‘MediCert now enables the right people to be connected with the right jobs.’ But Greening says: ‘Medi-Cert does not now, and has never, traded.’ And there is a genuine firm called Medicert Ltd in Falkirk, with no connection to Banks or Greening.
As for Credyts, Banks claims to have been an investor for more than two years. He says: ‘The team at Credyts now offers a token which is one-to-one backed by hard gold stored in a client’s name securely in global vaults.’ But Greening says it is just ‘a concept that Blockchain Innovations briefly explored’. She added that ‘it does no trading’.
When I questioned Banks, he pointed me to a website called The
Jolly Capitalist, where he writes: ‘I was once Mark Brewer. I am now Aaron Banks. Tomorrow – who knows. I’m open to a knighthood, or I may “identify” as a mermaid.’
So, a man who sold dodgy investment software now uses a name like that of a multi-millionaire, has founded a business with the same name as a long established firm, has invested in a scheme whose name is like that of an established company, and who puffs up a project promising investors a digital wallet stuffed with real gold held in a vault somewhere. Oh, and he might decide to be a mermaid. What could possibly go wrong?
‘He offers a digital wallet stuffed with real gold’