The UK regulator FCA announced it has obtained a court order allowing it to distribute £3.4 million to victims as compensation for series of unauthorised deposit-taking and collective investment schemes.
The schemes were run by Samuel and Shantelle Golding through their companies Digital Wealth Limited also known as Digital Wealth Society (DWS) and Outsourcing Express Limited (OEL) also known as Kerchiing.
The FCA alleges that from 2015 to 2017, the schemes involved the online purchase of wholesale goods from China and onward sale. The offer promised unrealistically high returns, up to 100% of the investment amount in some cases. The scheme relied on the flow of new investors to fund the returns for existing investors and no significant trading was actually conducted. Samuel and Shantelle Golding have admitted they were involved in the scheme to the Court.
The scheme raised more than £15 million from more than 1,000 individual accounts. The UK watchdog took action against the schemes to prevent disposal of the remaining funds, however, there was still a shortfall of £3,285,413 in the DWS deposit-taking scheme and £834,402 in the OEL collective investment scheme.
The FCA was able to recover £3,428,612.42, from different bank accounts where the profits were held. They will now be returned back to 356 qualifying investors in the DWS scheme and 250 investors in the OEL scheme.
Mark Steward, Executive Director of Enforcement and Market Oversight at the FCA, said:
Mark Steward
The FCA took action as soon as it became aware of these illegal schemes, preventing further losses to future investors who would be unable to exit the scheme before it inevitably collapsed. In this case, we managed to save some money for investors: too often it is too late. These firms were not authorised by the FCA and as we always say to consumers, if a scheme looks too good to be true, do not invest.
We have worked very hard to identify people eligible to receive compensation from these schemes and are pleased to have been able to recover and return some of their money.
Other recent warnings from the FCA can be seen below:
Experienced writer and journalist, working in the global online trading sector, Steffy is the Editor of LeapRate. She has previous experience as a copywriter and has been with the company since January 2020. Steffy has a British and American Studies degree from St. Kliment Ochridski University in Sofia.
