Bradlodge Limited was a recovery room scam. Back in 2014, the company’s conmen rang up people who had already been conned into buying worthless carbon credits as investments. Bradlodge told them they could sell their carbon credits. For an advanced fee, of course.
Bradlodge Limited managed to rake in £804,451 – from people who had already been scammed. Needless to say, Bradlodge couldn’t sell the carbon credits and after a few months the company disappeared along with the money.
On 15 March 2017, the company’s sole director, Lukasz Matula, was banned as a director for 15 years.
Here’s how the Insolvency Service describes the scam:
As sole company director of Bradlodge Limited, also known as Bradlodge Corporate Trading (“Bradlodge”), Lukasz Matula (“Mr Matula”) was responsible for Bradlodge using false and misleading sales techniques in order to induce members of the public into paying Bradlodge for goods and services, which Bradlodge then failed to purchase and / or provide. As a result, investors made payments totalling at least £804,451 and will lose most, if not all, their money. The pattern of trading is such as to evidence the operation of both a “recovery room” fraud and a separate “boiler room” fraud.
REDD-Monitor wrote about Bradlodge in July 2014, after several people left comments saying that they’d been cold called by the firm.
In September 2014, the High Court in London ordered Bradlodge to be wound up. The petition to wind up the company came from Professor Thomas Bolton, a 73-year-old veterinary surgeon in Surrey. Bolton was a creditor of the company.
The order to wind up the company didn’t stop Bradlodge, however. Three days later, “David” left a comment on REDD-Monitor, saying that,
I have just been contacted by someone calling himself Mr Bolton and saying he was calling from Bradlodge as they were in a position to repay me all the money owed plus some – provided I paid 20% “tax” (immediately) before the funds could be released!
On 29 September 2014, the Financial Conduct Authority put out a warning about Bradlodge:
On 7 January 2016, the Secretary of State directed that, “the dissolution of the company be deferred and take effect on 26 November 2021 (unless a further direction is issued)”.