Comments can be sent to us at irnist23@gmail.com

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.

Tuesday, 20 March 2012

A LAST PUFF FOR COBOCO

Some investors will today have been treated to an impassioned, cliché-ridden bluster from a longstanding (and long-suffering) crony of Coboco to vote for—guess what?—an IVA.

He claims to be "just an investor (like you)" but please note that he has seen their balance sheets, unlike the rest of us, and he has access to the contact details of all of us! This makes him a Coboco mouthpiece, with a heavy bias towards the theatrical and all the benefits that go with such a friendship. 

To repeat our earlier statement: no proper IVA proposal has ever been put to investors. If the partners had been serious about it, they would have produced one months ago and it could have been considered on its merits. It is both useless and silly to go on agonizing about one at the eleventh hour.

We don't know how many investors have studied Ewart Tempest's figures, as set forth in his blog. Those who have  looked at them will be aware that whether this case were to issue in an IVA or in a bankruptcy, there would be very little chance of anyone seeing much return of capital on the basis of Coboco's properties. The difference with bankruptcy is that the whole financial background can be scrutinised by an independent trustee. This is very important, since in 2010, Coboco took more than £1m and - as we have repeatedly pointed out - have given no explanation of what they did with it. 

Are the writers of this Blog being selfish by bringing clarity to bear on this case? When Coboco's earlier ventures collapsed, investors were told that unless they co-operated and accepted PNs, they would selfishly sabotage everyone's chances of getting their money back. What happened? Coboco drew more unsuspecting people into lending them money. Newcomers were totally unaware of the background debt and the earlier investors didn't get their money back anyway. This must not happen again. It is all very well to claim that Coboco will never deal in property again, but if that turned out to be true, wouldn't it be largely due to the work of this Blog and to that of Ewart Tempest? 

Someone said that the present writers and Coboco had two different agendas; we were happy to point out that our sole agenda is clarity.  

Don't miss Ewart's latest post on his blog, entitled, "Dear Goebbels"!
Posted by IFS at 14:04

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