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Signed in as:
filler@godaddy.com
It was Valentine’s Day, and Wendy had planned to meet me for the whole day. I had bought flowers, champagne and fine food for us both to enjoy during our day together. When she arrived, I could see she had been crying.
‘Are you okay?’ I asked, as I went to give her a hug,
‘Oh, no – it’s not alright,’ she began to explain, whilst sobbing into her hands until ready to explain further. ‘Luigi has booked us a surprise Valentine’s trip, and I have to leave at 3.00 pm today.’ Then she burst out crying uncontrollably.
I could see that she was genuinely upset. She knew the outcome of her revelation, as I did her predicament.
‘What can I say?’ I began
When looking back, I gave no real consideration for her feelings, as I felt upset and disappointed for myself. I focused on my feelings, rather than hers, which isn’t acceptable or helpful.
‘I guess that’s it, then?’ she asked
When I looked down, pausing to answer after considering her question, she ran out of the apartment and slammed the door shut. I took a few steps forward, thinking that I should chase after her, but decided that I should let her go until I had taken stock of the situation.
I knew it wasn’t her fault. I just wanted to leave the situation there for a while and reconsider when she returned. A phone call later I realised she was clearly in absolute pieces, emotionally conflicted.
I understood at that moment that our relationship was over.
I had planned a mid-morning tennis match and afternoon meeting at the tennis club with a new contact: the experienced and influential writer and Journalist, Shyama Perera. She was a guest to whom she wanted to introduce me: Mrs Jo Stoller. I had just stepped off court and met them both in the bar, thinking about Wendy throughout my game on court.
As we sat and shook hands, I could clearly see that even though dressed reasonably casually, in jeans and slightly unbuttoned white long-sleeved shirt, Jo had a certain look about her: an aura of confidence and class. Not to say that Shyama lacked this quality, it was simply that I couldn’t see it in the same way I could with Jo. As we continued our meeting, Shyama’s initial respectful demeanour had given way to an arrogant alpha-female, demanding and aggressive in her animated performance.
I had to manage Shyama, by listening to her rambling about who she knew, what she had achieved, who she could introduce me to and even proposing to organise a date with the Duke of Kent’s daughter, which she said would be ‘great PR,’
I brushed off her comment with a joke, by saying, ‘So does she play tennis?’
Jo remained tight-lipped and yet glowing. I wanted to hear her points of view, although she had to wait quite a bit longer before getting a word in edgeways. Eventually Jo told a great story about purchasing a luxury car and, whenever Shyama interrupted her, she acted with grace and dignity. I felt that Jo was Shyama’s route to new business and that Jo knew that she had all the tools in the box to deliver on quality and trust.
Talks continued with Shyama trying to tell me who she could introduce me to and how I should promote my profile as an entrepreneur. Whilst I could see her trying, what she was saying was old hat and of no interest to me. I decided to email her, to find out more about her proposals, but, my interest was solely with Jo, for whom I have a lot of time.
As they both left, I sat out in the cold but sunny early evening and looked across the tennis courts where Wendy and I had first met and the sports hall in the corner of the estate. I recalled the fun that we might lose for a while as we got back to being just friends and social tennis buddies.
I was then surprised to receive a call from Wendy, telling me that she was going to leave Luigi. She had asked a close friend to move in with them until she could move in with me. I thought initially that this was a great idea and so continued the relationship with her, even though it wasn’t quite the same. It felt more of the end of a long-term relationship that had gone wrong than an exciting new beginning to plans that we were enjoying putting in place.
Then I received a call from my mother, ‘I think you’d better pop round and see this,’ she said. I already knew she had found something important, but I wasn’t quite prepared for exactly what she had discovered.
(Shyama Perera pictured left)
I arrived at my mother’s home and was greeted with her sitting in her dark tan, leather, boardroom chair, looking intently at a 50-inch television monitor. I stood behind her, peering over her shoulder to catch a glimpse what she might have found on the screen, when she said, ‘It’s down here,’ pointing her finger at a beige-coloured document on the table that I recognised as a Marriage Certificate for the name Michael Phillip Buckmaster-Brown.
I picked up the corner of the paper for a closer look, when my mother placed her finger on the detail she wanted to show me,
‘Right there!’, she said.
As I looked even closer, I could see under the part labelled ‘Rank or Profession’ the title: Lord of Ashclyst.
‘So, he is a Lord in the peerage then’ I said,
‘I can’t confirm that as yet,’ Mum replied. ‘But I have spoken with the House of Lords, Burke’s and Debrett’s Peerage – and even the Ashclyst estate – and none of them have ever heard of him.
I’ve just sent for his birth certificate.’
‘Oh, you might also be interested to know that Russell Dalgleish’s first name isn’t “Russell”. Instead, his full name is “Douglas Russell Dalgleish”. Here is the file on him, along with marriage certificates and Companies House documents.’
I had a flashback to my fraud trial and the people using different names, especially their middle names.
Russell was doing the very same thing. Michael was most likely not a Lord in the peerage and Russell was actually named ‘Douglas’.
This investigation was fast resembling the scenario I encountered with Scott Jamieson and Keri Jamieson (nee Wilkinson) and Jeremy Poyntz previously.
I now had a promising lead and a trustworthy expert that had joined me who was up for the chase. There is no better detective than my mother, although I did feel guilty for taking her away from researching her own family. I got over my remorse by remembering that she just loved to hunt as much as I do: our passion for taking on quests is In The Blood.
I now visited my mother more than ever, which was saying something, as we spoke on the phone many times each day anyway. On one such occasion, I was shown Buckmaster-Brown’s birth certificate: his name was registered as ‘Michael Phillip (one L) Brown’, not ‘Michael Phillip (two L’s) Buckmaster-Brown’. This discovery only served to remind me about Sean Taylor’s emailed reference to an ‘MP Brown’ as a ‘Regular’ in the Sandhurst Military Academy files.
We also found out that he had a distant relative on his maternal side that was a Buckmaster, so when he attached his family name of ‘Brown’ he created the double-barrelled profile and persona of ‘Buckmaster-Brown’.
We then checked his references to being descended from a ‘long line of aristocrats’. By cross-referring his family tree and the public documents, we soon discovered that his father was a ‘van driver’ and that his’ wedding took place in Lewisham.
The likelihood of Michael being a ‘blue blood’ seemed remote: it appeared that he devised a nonsensical cover story to misrepresent his background in order to gain people’s trust, including my own. As I contemplated his trickery, I recalled his deep military knowledge and his senior position in what he claimed to be a global security firm working for Saudi and Chinese Royal Families.
‘What would foreign dignitaries have to say about this revelation and the risks involved? What about City AM?’ I thought.
I then remembered that the contract Buckmaster-Brown’s company had with the City of London newspaper, City AM which was supported by the Lord Mayor’s Office. I had deduced a key piece of information and was excited about finding out more.
I carried out a search on Facebook for Michael’s name and soon discovered ‘Fayre Times Festival Limited’.
On the front page I saw a photo of Michael Buckmaster-Brown adorned in fancy dress, acting as a ‘larder’ and recreating military battles. He clearly had an amateur-dramatics interest in military history, so he partly obtained his subject knowledge through re-enactments, which he used to convince me and others that he was a blood relative of Sir Winston Churchill.
All I needed to do now was to take Michael and Russell to court for breach of contract. Unearthing this evidence gave me comfort and confidence, but I still couldn’t understand why all the other previous The Home Club team members had first left the organisation and then all approached the same solicitor: Nicola’s colleague, Mr Andrew Gillett.
Pictured Left - Buckmaster-Brown (the Larder)
After a period of seeing less of Wendy, we finally put an end to our relationship. Whilst this was a mutual decision, the feelings were raw on both sides, so I decided not to visit the tennis club so often. I did not want to remind us both of our times together and it would be difficult to hide the fact that we had been in a relationship.
After visiting people outside The Home Club network, it usually didn’t take long before interest followed. My next meeting followed this trend whilst revealing to me the inner workings of other social clubs: this new avenue opened up when I met up with Mark Abraham from The Nth Degree private dining The Home Club owned by Bob Walton MBE (who is also the President of the Restaurant Association of Great Britain).
Our meeting in The Ned was reasonably brief: I got the impression that Mark wanted to show off his previous meeting with a Saudi Royal. He handed me his mobile phone, so I could watch a secretly recorded video of the Prince’s tiger being walked on a lead through the room. This episode immediately raised a red flag in my mind. I changed the subject and asked why Bob had not attended the meeting.
I was informed that he had another engagement but wondered if I might meet with him at the Arts Club in Mayfair.
I had connected with both Miss Danijella Dregas – an English investment banker, originally from Birmingham in the West Midlands but self-proclaimed 'Sloanie' (sic), before moving to Newport Beach in Southern California – and Mr Dan Benham, who was interested in advising The Home Club on its duties on new regulations of GDPR data protection and compliance.
I planned to meet with Danijella in The Botanist bar in Sloane Square whilst she was in the UK to visit her family in Birmingham.
I decided to meet with Dan Benham for breakfast at the Côte Brasserie restaurant, next door to The Botanist. Dan and I would meet every couple of weeks to discuss data protection and GDPR: we got to know each other quite well.
I mentioned my issues with The Home Club ’s previous team, and he replied, ‘I can do other types of detective work, you know.’ ‘F**k it,’ I thought. ‘Old Bill’
I was right. He went on to ask if I wanted to have all The Home Club members checked out by him for a fee.
Why I would want people in the shadows to have knowledge of who is in my club? The man must be an idiot to think I would let him have my contacts’ personal information.
After breakfast, I met with another LinkedIn contact: Miss Sherry Roberts, an interior designer at The Longest Stay, based in Chelsea.
We discussed her contacts’ interest in The Home Club and how I might help her win residential building projects in South-West London.
We went back to her studio, where I met with her Italian business partners and building contractors. I left Sherry to meet up with first Tessa Herman and Laura Rosinska at the Colbert bistro on Sloane Square.
As I walked along the Kings Road, I saw Luigi standing outside the menswear store, Boggi Milano, carrying a couple of designer shopping bags.
‘Alright?’ he said, surprised as me.
I asked him what he was up to.
‘Nothing, just buying myself some clothes,’ he replied
I invited him to have a couple of drinks with me in Colbert and meet my next two appointments. As we drank champagne, we broached the subject of Wendy and how he thought that we were having an affair. Although he was fishing, he was right, of course, but I laughed off the suggestion and asked him why he had that thought...
We stayed in Colbert chatting and drinking more champagne and met with Tessa and Laura, who both knew each other. Laura told me of an event that she was attending the same evening and couldn’t stay long. I told them about my meeting at The Botanist with Danijella and we finished our drinks and crossed Sloane Square.
As we arrived, Laura said out loud, ‘Oh, she must be 70’, referring to Danijella, who looked amazing and very fashionable.
‘That’s a bit much,’ I replied.
I watched the two mean girls continued to snigger, staying only to drink our champagne, before greeting Danijella with a couple of air kisses and then stayed for more champagne before leaving.
Luigi and I continued where we had left off, including Danijella and her new friends as we continued to order more champagne. (Pictured left Daniella Dregas and Luigi at the Botanist - Sloane Square)
The place was filing up, as a Friday night in The Botanist often does. Luigi had connected with an Italian girl and her mother. At first, I couldn’t make out which one he was hitting on, but when I went over to investigate, it was then clear he liked the younger of the two. Danijella and I continued to chat briefly, before she had to leave to travel back to Birmingham where she was staying. We decided to meet again for some tennis and then I noticed a beautiful girl standing alone at the bar. I introduced myself, made some joke and began a conversation with Annabelle, who told me that she was a lawyer but could easily have been a model. I invited her to join us and we had a great evening before leaving for Brinkley’s restaurant in Chelsea.
After an hour or so of drinking and dancing, even though we were all having fun together, I realised that Luigi was looking to go on to a club. He was chatting to a random guy at the bar, trying to organise something. We were all invited to a private club, somewhere on the King’s Road. After a couple more hours and even more drinks, Luigi and I left in an Uber, stopping at the Kebab Kid takeaway in Fulham.
It was my drop first and as we were about to stop, Luigi turned to me and said, ‘What a great night, see you at the Club.’ He meant the tennis club. I agreed that we did have a great night.
(pictured left with Annabelle)
Whilst The Home Club had become even quieter at my end – as there was little or no public development or discussion – I heard that my relative silence had made it even more interesting to people.
The stark reality was that I was doing my utmost to save the company. Limited companies come and go, but The Home Club was worth the fight: there were too many people that desired entry and access to the network within. Hotels were still of interest to me. I hadn’t yet understood the potential and dynamics of any business relationships, so I decided to visit a hotel I knew had real quality and yet was struggling to attract interest. I arranged to meet Sarah Buchannon, Director of Sales at South Place Hotel near The Barbican.
Sarah was an experienced saleswoman: her CV confirmed her experiences as the previously director of marketing and sales at Gordon Ramsey Holdings and, before that, group director of sales at Clivedon House Hotel. Sarah was doing what she does, trying to create new business for the hotel. She offered me some great things, such as email introduction to Lady Hayat Palumbo: owner of the Walbrook Club in the City of London.
I arrived at the Arts Club in Mayfair to find Bob in reception. He stood to greet me wearing his usual double-breasted suit and groomed beard. We discussed The Home Club and The Nth Degree Club to see if there were any means of our members having shared benefits. Bob is well known and respected in the restaurant trade, of course, and has arranged numerous private dining experiences for The Nth Degree Members.
The Home Club ’s basic membership fee is over twice that of The Nth Degree, so I was keen to understand whether Bob would be interested in his members registering as Members of The Home Club and visa versa. I envisaged fine dining experiences as one small part of The Home Club events’ programme, and we discussed how this might develop. It seemed that whilst having an arm of The Nth Degree business based in Dubai, he was unable to find a hotel room anywhere for his forthcoming event and had noticed The Home Club ’s contact with Taj.
I said that Taj might be able to assist. After speaking with my contact, I put them in direct contact with Bob, who was then able to get any room of his choice in Dubai, as he had hoped, and in addition a suite and car for a fraction of the price that anyone else would have paid.
He was blown away by my apparent ‘test’, so asked me what he should do to reciprocate. I told him that I have been tested in ways he couldn’t even imagine and thought that the test he had created for me was insignificant by comparison.
His reply was to invite me to the Devonshire Club for his book signing, as his special guest, then to be his personal guest at the 60th Anniversary of the Cayman Islands’ Coat of Arms at The Foreign Office, where the event would use the diamond jubilee celebration to highlight the close links between the Cayman Islands and Britain: a connection that goes back to 1658, when the first permanent settlers of the uninhabited Islands were thought to have arrived from Wales and Cornwall.
I agreed and added his generous invitation to my diary.
(pictured left at The Home Office with Sir Alden McNee McLaughlin Jr. KCMG MBE KC JP)
I had somehow become a hated figure to the B-list fashionistas and previous team of The Home Club which had paradoxically given me added kudos with the social elite, as they could recognise the hatred from their own experience and had the added ability to hear, first-hand from their inner circles, the realities of my trusted network. This situation helped to part the waves, placing on one side those that I would exclude and, on the other, those that should certainly be considered for Membership or as an Affiliate brand.
I had previously made new contacts such as James Floyd of Beacon Global Group, who met with me at ‘his club’ in Victoria, called M Restaurants (one of a chain owned by restaurateur, Martin Edwards). M Restaurants can be best described as a ‘steak house’ with an air of luxury and finesse. The steaks are supposedly good, and the ambience can be busy at times. James took us through to a private area, the entrance of which was behind the bar in the basement and mentioned that he wanted to grow Beacon and wanted access to my contacts.
I told him that contacts aren’t traded, and he replied, ‘That isn’t quite true, and I would be happy to share our many family office contacts, as we only obtained them from a data platform before GDPR came in.’
James certainly wasn’t going to get access to any of my contacts, unless I could see some value to them and formal introductions only. With all that was going on, I was sensitive to people making false claims.
I was also aware of what was felt like dark forces, lurking in the shadows. As we continued our conversation, James dropped many names of importance from the City of London and the Little Ship Club, which was the premier private members club in the City, where the leaders and Masters of the livery companies would converse.
I had been introduced to many people in the City of London, yet the names he dropped had to be of standing, otherwise they would not have commanded their positions in the City of London: the business capital of the world.
We finished our drinks and I was introduced to Chakra Browne, Account Manager of M Restaurants, who invited me to join their club’s chain. I thanked her and asked for more details, as clearly James was trading more information than his City trader mind-set would normally allow. I asked to meet with his bosses, after which I would reply to Chakra.
No sooner had I arrived at my next meeting than I was invited to meet with Robert Rigby Hall, Director of Beacon Global Group, to discuss matters further. Beacon wanted access to new American expatriates that had relocated or were staying in London for a fixed period, as he saw them as potential ‘new customers’. Robert and I communicated via James, who was even more keen than ever to be connected to my contacts.
James and I met again, and he told me he had a long list of rugby players ‘in a league of their own’ who would be interested in joining The Home Club . I kept feeling he was trying too hard: if in fact he was just being an eager City trader with another commodity to trade, and his commodities had value, then I would have been interested in taking matters further. I wasn’t convinced: my gut feeling was not as relaxed as it should have been.
There wasn’t anything I could put my finger on that suggested James wasn’t upstanding and a man of good character; it was the trade he was offering that was of concern to me. I wouldn’t want my contacts to miss an excellent opportunity – and it is ultimately my role in the Club to carry out all due diligence, as I can’t on the one hand dish out bans on bad introductions if not doing applying even more of the same to myself.
Therefore I am so forensic about the people I allow into The Home Club : it’s not about the amount of money required to enter The Home Club . The reality of this world is that once tested in trust, people are people. Some people appear upstanding and yet are false, doing all they can to stop their neighbours from having more than them – or even the same amount. The Home Club addresses this issue with ease, and this is subject to ongoing review.
I was learning so much about private members clubs, and how they try to entice new and existing members. In addition, I was also learning about the levels of trade opportunities occurring behind the scenes, even when it came to trading family office contact lists and the high net-worth families within.
The Home Club addresses all of this for its members, automatically and globally in its new platform (launch date TBC), but first I needed more information and understanding of the private members clubs – as this is where most of traditional introductions had taken place. This was a risk to my contacts as, other than knowing two current members of a private members club (as is the usual criteria, along with the admission and annual fees), anyone could rub shoulders with high net-worth people and offer them anything – and, if able to collate enough contacts, then trade their details. I understood their business practices to this point: along with the luxury hotels trying to launch their own versions of being private members club, I agreed that things had to change. The Home Club was about to completely disrupt the market, by limiting connections only between the most trusted brands and people.
I had often heard about the trade in high net-worth information and exchanges of important contact lists being used as a trading currency. I was often asked to sell my company, along with my contact book. Not only did I refuse these requests, I excluded those that asked by imposing the ban.
One such email I received tried to impress me and open my door to trade in such commodities: it included attachments to over 800 family office contacts, names, emails, mobile numbers and addresses: in summary, the lot. How can I do business with people who will sell out their contacts for money and put them ‘at risk’? I decided to research the source of this batch of information. I was fortunate to discover that the reputable data company, Preqin, was referenced as the company from which the information had been initially obtained.
I was also lucky because Preqin’s CEO and founder, Mr Mark O’Hare, also shared personal information of the email correspondence about his enquiries with the head source of the ‘shared data’: namely, Mr Robert Rigby-Hall, President of Beacon Global Group.
In his email dated Friday, June 15 2018, Mark O’Hare wrote to Robert Rigby-Hall,
‘Dear Mr Rigby-Hall, Mr Floyd,
It has been brought to our attention today that an email(s) containing attached files of investor information, and claiming to be Preqin data, has been sent to third parties from email address purporting to be yours (robertrigby***@beaconglobalgroup.com and james****@beaconglobalgroup.com). These emails have the files with what is claimed to be Preqin data attached, and offers this data in exchange for further data from the third party (i.e. the recipient of the said email(s).)
If these emails have indeed come from you (and / or others in your organisation or associated organisations or agents), then I am hereby informing you that this is serious misuse of Preqin data, violation of IPR, violation of GDPR regulations, and is causing material economic and reputational harm to Preqin.
I therefore must insist that you cease and desist from these actions. Furthermore, as your organisation is not, and has not been, a customer of Preqin, I must insist that you remove all such Preqin data from your computer systems, keep no copies or records of such Preqin data in any format, and confirm to me within 48 hours that you have done so.
If these emails have not come from you (and/or others in your organisation or associated organisations or agents), then I am hereby informing you that this may have been the result of fraudulent activity by a third party that is causing material harm to Preqin, and may potentially also cause material economic and reputational harm to Beacon Group. In this case I would urge you to confirm that this is the case, and to cooperate with Preqin’s data security team to investigate and resolve the matter to protect both our interests.
Can you please confirm whether you and/or others in your organisation or associated organisations or agents have sent emails as described in the first paragraph above?
Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter.
Sincerely,
Mark O'Hare
Chief Executive’
In his reply email, on 17 June 2018, Robert Rigby-Hall proceeded to try to cause me financial damage,
‘Mark:
Thank you for your email.
I have followed up with James to understand when and how he acquired these files.
They were in fact purchased in the Spring of 2017 from an individual who claimed to have personally compiled them while working as a placement agent. The data claimed to be up-to-date as of the end of 2016. James was responding in haste to Darren Payne’s strange emails on Friday night and his response was incorrect as it pertains to Preqin being the supplier.
I have confirmed with Brook Green Marketing Services that they had a subscription to Preqin in excess of five years ago and downloaded data in line with that subscription. The data still resides in our CRM, and they believe this to be permissible based on the original subscription to download, although it’s now very out of date.
Brook Green Marketing Services take data security and privacy seriously and they would be happy to coordinate with the Preqin data security team to make sure we are in compliance with Preqin’s data privacy.
In addition, I would encourage you to do some research on Darren Bolger.
We will not be doing any form of business with him given his reputation.
Thank you.
Robert’
Entrepreneur, Author, Artist, Connector
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