When I cast my mind back to the dark days of 2017 when Darren Reynolds was sourcing leads for his advice from Celtic – one fund appeared on the SIPP statements of steelworkers we met which I had never heard of. The manager was Newscape and the fund options were called 5alpha and both versions of the 5alpha funds offered terrible value for money.
If you want to read about how you go about fractional scamming , read this blog
Concerns over the money invested though Active Wealth (UK) Ltd
I concluded then
Clear links exist between Celtic Wealth, Active Wealth, Vega, Newscape and Gallium. There are links here to other failed ventures such My Workplace Pension and through this master trust to Strand Capital.
Taken together I see considerable danger of failure .
There is insufficient evidence of controls in the Supplement and insufficient track-record of the fund to justify anything other than a highly speculative investment. I don’t think this is what the members who used Active Wealth Management had consciously chosen to invest in.
Where are they now?
This is my second reprise of this band of ne’er-do-wells. You can read a progress report produced this time last year here.
Active Wealth Management and Celtic Wealth collapsed as soon as the FCA arrived in Port Talbot.
Now – more than five years later , I hear that this shambolic outfit that fronted Newscape Capital has handed back its permissions to the FCA and is being wound up by the custodian Caceis .
Its CEO (to this day) ,Stephen Decani is now mining bitcoin in Texas for “stealth”. Stephen hit the headlines in 2017 to being drunk in charge of his £150,000 sportscar. His defence for being two times over the limit was that he’d just vomited before getting into his car.
Its CIO in the heady days of 2017-18 when it managed £300m was Charlie Morris who is now selling Bitcoin in Australia
The wonder is that Newscape lasted so long and that the associated parties appear to be still at large.
Vega Algorithms, a research and technology company that advised Gallium Fund Solutions on its portfolios, was an Authorised Representative of Gallium . Gallium, which offers both mainstream and alternative investments, has been authorised by the FCA since 2008.
Gallium continues to offer a client portal for Newscape’s Vega Algorithms and a mysterious “Vega pensions” – not that the I expect “clients” would see anything if they entered it.
The architect of the Vega algorithms ,Steffen Hoyemsvoll is now a partner at Ecommerce Accountants “the UK leading accountancy practice focusing on ecommerce businesses – a tech lead firm, selling time and stress savings.
His colleague Hamilton Keats is “currently building something cool for the next wave of financial services” – there’s no mention of their association with Strand Capital, Vega or Newscape.
Other players such as Neal Griffiths of the Optima Wealth Group are harder to trace as is Darren Reynolds and the affable Clive Howells.
Though they represented the most obvious threat to steelworkers during “Time to Choose”, they have survived as fractional scammers can, because you can live on the periphery of the FCA’s regulatory perimeter for as long as you like. Newscape’s final chapters are chronicled by Citywire’s James Fitzgerald
Ironically, Newscape are still promoted on CityWire’s Outsourcing Investment Centre, a sign that financial promotions on the web go up a lot more readily than they come down!
Advisers who are now paying redress may be asking just what has Newscape put back into steelworker’s pockets.
