FE Wealth Management is running a carbon credit recovery room scam

A company called FE Wealth Management is currently cold calling people offering to sell their carbon credits – for an advance fee, of course. And if it is not a recovery room scam, then I’m the Queen of Sheba.

The recovery room part of the carbon credits scam is the advanced fee scam, which involves an offer to sell your carbon credits (at some point in the future) in return for a payment (payable in advance). The company running the recovery room scam will not sell your carbon credits and you will lose the fee.

FE Wealth Management has been mentioned several times in the comments on REDD-Monitor this week, here, here, here, and here.

FE Wealth Management offered to buy 3,000 carbon credits from someone commenting as “Gummidge” for £18,800, plus a 10% “deposit” to be held until 22 January 2013. The payment would be to a company called Esselte Holdings. Perhaps surprisingly, there is a company called Esselte Holdings registered in the UK. But it sells a “wide selection of innovative office products” (and presumably does not accept money on behalf of recovery room scams).

FE Wealth Management also offered to buy “Mark A.”’s carbon credits for £4.90 each, for a 10% “surety bond”. They wanted him to sign a non-disclosure agreement before sending the surety document, but then sent it anyway. FE Wealth Management told him that a Chinese company called CICC would buy the credits. There is an investment bank called China International Capital Corporation Limited, but so what?

FE Wealth Management’s website was registered anonymously in October 2013.

A search on Open Corporates reveals no record of a company called FE Wealth Management (Santa Fe Wealth Management is a completely different company):

On its website, FE Wealth Management gives the name Frank Eppendahl and the registration number: #473547. Frank Eppendahl is a real person, with a real European Economic Area authorisation number. But I doubt very much that he has anything to do with FE Wealth Management. (I’ve written to him to ask him about this, and will update this post when I get a reply.)

Another company called SKJ Capital Partners appeared in a comment on REDD-Monitor in October 2013. SKJ Capital Partners had cold called “Clive” offering to sell his carbon credits. SKJ Capital Partners turned out to be a clone of an Austrian company called Simon Karl Josef and the Financial Conduct Authority quickly put out a warning about SKJ Capital Partners.

By a strange coincidence, SKJ Capital Partners and FE Wealth Management have remarkably similar websites:

FE Wealth Management seems to have cut and pasted the text from SKJ Capital Partners’ website. Both companies claim to represent “a diverse group of prominent private equity houses, financial institutions, corporate & private clients”. But it seems FE Wealth Management didn’t bother to read the text before pasting it on their own website. FE Wealth Management announces that,

“Our team based in Canary Wharf, London, England works closely with the Firm’s international network to provide a seamless global service.”

While SKJ Capital Partners gives an address in Canary Wharf on its webiste, FE Wealth Management’s “Contact” page on its website, gives an office address is Heron Tower, 110 Bishopsgate, London, EC2N 4AY. Which is about six kilometres from Canary Wharf. Oops.

If you’ve been cold called by FE Wealth Management, get in touch with the Financial Conduct Authority via their consumer helpline. Also report them to Action Fraud: 0300 123 2040 or via the website.