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INTRODUCTION
This Blog is dedicated to making public some of the business activities and methods of Liam Collins, David Bone Jr and their associates. In the spring of 2010, the present authors invested in Collins & Bone (C&B), who were offering an enticing 8-10% interest on the basis of buying houses for cash, renovating them and letting them out to students. We were assured that our money was secured against houses that they owned, including their own homes and the properties held by their associated company, Castle & Gatehouse (C&G). We have emails and brochures that confirm these details, as do others who invested on this same basis at around the same time. The idea worked for us for over a year, then in November 2011 they told us they were insolvent. They refused our every request for clear accounts, which led us to suspect wrongdoing. We began an investigation and then started this Blog. We found our suspicions confirmed: other investors had lost sometimes quite large amounts to C&B and its predecessor CBS, and all requests for repayment were adamantly refused. These people use and have used so many names that we found it necessary to compress them into CoBo (for Collins & Bone) and Coboco (for the whole bunch of them – there are quite a few!) Note that there is an index in the margin at the right hand side.

Wednesday 21 December 2011

SOMETHNG VERY WRONG HERE, APPARENTLY


Page 28 of the Collins and Bone Overview (2010) states that:

"Every aspect of the Fund has been validated externally by third parties and it is FSA authorised through their partners Pointon Yorke and Fund Operators Chestermans. I think you will agree it is a most exciting opportunity into a growing market."

Today we phoned Collins and Bone's supposed partners, Pointon Yorke, to find out in what way the 'Fund' had been authorized by the FSA.  A responsible member of staff carefully checked their files, but found no trace of any dealings with Collins and Bone. The staff member became very concerned upon learning that Pointon Yorke were listed as a 'Fund Issuer' for Castle and Gatehouse.* Not only have they no records of  any dealings with C&G, they do not generally issue funds since Pointon Yorke is a SIPP administrator. The only company for which they had ever agreed to issue a fund, they said, was "something called CBS, two or three years ago—but it didn't go ahead." 

As shown below in our post of 20th December, CBS went into liquidation on 13th October 2010, leaving debts of £70,814 and another company Student HMO Lettings (previously CBS Lettings) on 22nd June 2011 leaving £1,680,520. Directors of both were Liam Collins and David Bone. 


We also contacted Chesterman Capital. They had never heard of Collins & Bone and had certainly not validated their fund. They were shocked to find that they had been listed as the Fund Operators for Castle and Gatehouse* because they are not associated  with that company.


*( This can be seen on page 10 of the Castle and Gatehouse Management Structure brochure)
Posted by IFS at 15:11

1 comment:

  1. Anonymous12/21/2011 3:56 pm

    Great site, thank you. I'm an 'investor' with C&B and keen to hear more, and to get involved.

    ReplyDelete

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