By Chris Lang
Earlier this week, REDD-Monitor received an email from “John”. John had been cold called by Simon Humphries, who claimed to be from a company called Williams & Gray. Humphries told John that Williams & Gray could sell the carbon credits he had been scammed into buying years ago for more than £20 each. But John would first have to pay a “reformatting” fee of 74 pence per credit.
On 12 October 2020, Colin Cumming left a comment on REDD-Monitor:
Just been contacted by a company called Williams & Gray ltd saying that they can reformat ver’s to EEA’s for £2.81 and sell them on the European market for £22.55 another scammer?
This is a ridiculously obvious scam. Here are the red flags:
Humphries asked asked John to contact the Carbon Credit Registry to “verify all details”. The Carbon Credit Registry is a recovery room scam. REDD-Monitor wrote about the scam two weeks ago:
Following REDD-Monitor’s post, the Carbon Credit Registry’s website has been suspended, but the scammers are still running the same scam.
A company called Williams & Gray Limited does exist. It was registered in 1922. According to the company’s 2019 Financial Statement, the company “operates two Honda main dealership franchises based in Clitheroe and Blackburn”.
But that’s not the company that is cold calling people about their worthless carbon credits. The scammers have cloned Williams & Gray. REDD-Monitor has written to Williams & Gray’s solicitors and accountants to let them know.
The scammers’ website was registered in September 2020. The website was registered anonymously. Needless to say, there’s nothing on the website about selling Honda cars. Instead, it’s full of the usual nonsense found on boiler room websites.
Much of the text on the website is cut and pasted from other companies’ websites. Here are a couple of examples:
The clone Williams & Gray website is on the left, with the original text on Jupiter Fund Management’s website and London & Capital’s website on the right.
The scammers behind the clone Williams & Gray sent John a six-page document titled “Terms of Service”. I think it’s safe to say that the scammers are working on the assumption that “no one reads terms of service”.
A large part of the Terms of Service is gobbledygook. For example, here’s a section titled “Terms and Conditions”:
The terms of agreement is to enable the asset to be released from current ownership unless the governing body formally terminates the project or there is mutual written consent of both parties. Upton Five business days This Agreement may be terminated at any time by the Issuer, upon five business days’ prior notice to such effect to the Underwriter, or by the Underwriter upon five business days’ prior notice to such effect to the Issuer.
Williams & Gray is not registered by the Financial Conduct Authority. Investors who hand their money over to companies not registered by the Financial Conduct Authority have no recourse to the Financial Ombudsman Service or the Financial Services Compensation Scheme.
The scammers’ Terms of Service includes the following lie:
If your are the sole owner of the assets and they are attached to your name you should fit the criteria of the Financial services Compensation Scheme entitling you to a full refund of any payable agency fee.
Williams & Gray is the most recent company to have been cloned as part of this recovery room scam. Some of the companies cloned (so far) include Charles Dickens, W.J.Tatem, Chloride Eastern, and Carbon Credit Registry. No doubt more companies will be cloned. The Financial Conduct Authority has taken no action whatsoever against the scammers, and has not even bothered to list the cloned companies on its website.
If you are contacted by “Williams & Gray”, “Charles Dickens”, “W.J.Tatem”, “Chloride Eastern”, “Carbon Credit Registry” (or any other company that claims to be able to sell the carbon credits that you were scammed into buying as an investment) please report them to Action Fraud, and the Financial Conduct Authority. Do not send the company money under any circumstances.
I too have been contacted by a James Vickers from USA WHO WISHES TO INTRODUCE ME TO A BUYER of my carbon shares
@Miriam – Thanks for this. I’m sorry this is still going on! Did James Vickers say which company he was working for? Or which company is supposed to buy the carbon credits? (It’s a scam, by the way – as you know you’re on a sucker list – anyone who contacts you out of the blue claiming to be able to sell your carbon credits is a scammer.)
Thank you. The company to contact me is apparently Danish. This hasn’t happened yet.. James V said that they are an introduction co. Who check the validity of the shares and they charge 1.5% from the sum obtained from sale.
@Miriam – It’s a scam. Please do not send these scammers any money. Please report them to Action Fraud and the Financial Conduct Authority.
I have been contacted by a Andrew Clarke who claims to work for W J Edwards (Kingswood) Ltd he has offered to help me sell some carbon credits I purchased many years ago. He asked me to contact the ECX – European Climate Exchange to verify my amounts . I can find no records of the ECX and I suspect WJ Edwards has been cloned. Do you have any information on this
I have been approached as a private individual by Capital Finance Ltd in the UK offering to arrange sale of my Carbon Credit holdings to BMG Pharmaceutical. in the EU. I am concerned that this might be a scam as they require me to pay for reformatting of the VCS credits into EUA (EU Allowance) credits upfront before the sale . Albeit they say that I will be reimbursed the reformatting fee once the sale goes through.
I have checked Companies House and Capital Finance Ltd does exist.
Separately I have discovered that apparently EU Carbon Market rules do not allow for conversion of VCS credits to EUA credits.
Grateful for any thoughts on this?
@Clive Bolton – Capital Finance Ltd is a scam. They contacted you out of the blue. They are asking for an advanced payment. You are correct in saying that VCS credits cannot be converted to EU Allowances. Please report them to Action Fraud: https://www.actionfraud.police.uk/
If/when you’ve been sold a sham investment it’s ODDS ON you’ll be called out of the blue in the future by a very nice gentleman from an (often) grandly sounding company with an offer to help and get all your money back.
But as Chris says, you’re being setup again via an advance fee fraud (often from the same scammers as the original scam, that’s how they know all about you). It’s very simple, by paying the company UPFRONT they’ll say you’re going to receive a very large sum in return.
Take the bait, pay the money (often a small amount to start with) and 4 things will happen –
1) You won’t get the big money promised, because
2) There will be an ‘unforeseen problem’ which will almost certainly be caused by a legal technicality and/or new regulations which nobody could have foreseen
3) So you’ll then be offered a very simple way out of the ‘unexpected’ problem – pay them some more money, but then this will happen
4) Go back to step 1 and keep repeating till either you finally click or the scammers have taken you for everything, this is the sort of pure scum you’re talking with.
You’re up against some nasty totally unethical conmen and they’re often very good at what they do. If in ANY doubt post here and we’ll do our best to help you keep hold of your cash and out of the hands of the scammers.
Almost certainly a scam. I have just had a call from a Mark Eden purporting to be from W.J. Edwards on a Bristol UK phone number in relation to repatriating me via an ESCROW agreement allegedly held by a company called Britannia (no detail given – except they are allegedly covered by the Financial Compensation Scheme. Hmmm – really?) with some of the value of a bitcoin scam I was bitten by a few years ago where the company I bought them off allegedly went into liquidation & disappeared. I believe W.J. Edwards has been cloned as Mr Eden had previously contacted me regarding the same thing back in 2020 when he supposedly worked for Chloride Eastern – which itself was cloned (not a finance or investment company – they make batteries) and implicated in similar dubious investment ‘recovery’ activities. The ESCROW agreement indicated a release fee – thus I left it there, for avoidance of the 4 step circle of hell as Bobby K clearly points out above. The W.J. Edwards website looks almost identical to Williams & Gray, using the same layout and visuals, and appears to have been around since1899 which is rather odd for a company involved in such modern activities. Mr Eden said he would send me an email giving the details of this Britannia enterprise. I somehow doubt I will hear from him again. As to how or whether any of the investigative fraud offices deal with this type of activity, who knows? On the basis of this thread alone it would appear there are many folk like me who were sold unregulated ‘investments’ on hype and celebrity endorsement and have been left with nothing, only to be contacted by these boiler room enterprises looking for a second bite. It would appear to be the same people involved as the dots linking the three entities are difficult to ignore.
@Kay – Thanks for this. You’re right, it is a scam. Please report it to Action Fraud. Incidentally, I wrote a couple of posts in 2020 about Chloride Eastern being cloned:
I have been contacted by Mark Eden about reformatting and selling carbon credits in a deal that would yield over £100k for 5000 credits once I pay £5000 for the “reformatting”. It has taken some time to find this evidence of what I suspected, that it’s a scam. The signs were there – incorrect digit in the phone number of the “registry”, careless misspelling of address on what would have been a formal headed stationery item, Mark Eden having no profile anywhere obvious, variation in website address for WJ Edwards. I could go on. Glad I found this today before I spent any more time thinking about it. He is very plausible though, and without my nasty suspicious mind I might well have been reeled in.