Tony Hetherington is Financial Mail on Sunday’s ace investigator, fighting readers corners, revealing the truth that lies behind closed doors and winning victories for those who have been left out-of-pocket. Find out how to contact him below.
Mrs C.F. writes: My husband had a traffic accident on a narrow lane when he stopped but the vehicle coming towards him hit his car head on.
He notified AA Insurance but his dashcam corrupted video footage of the crash. A specialist firm recovered this at a cost of £270, but AA Insurance wanted him to accept 50/50 blame for the crash.
My husband was not responsible for the collision and wants to reclaim the £270 as well.
Big ask: The insurer suggested going 50/50 with the guilty party on the claim
Tony Hetherington replies: At first, AA Insurance told me: ‘When dealing with the claim, the third party initially denied liability, but eventually accepted full responsibility without evidence.’
The insurer added it had no idea your husband was having the dashcam repaired and that, as the other side had already admitted liability, there was no need for the footage, so the other driver’s insurer could not be expected to foot the bill.
This did not quite add up though. The dashcam footage was recovered and supplied to AA Insurance exactly two weeks after the crash. On the following day, AA Insurance told you it had been passed to the other driver’s insurance company.
An AA official thanked you for the footage, but added: ‘Personally, a fair outcome would be 50/50 to manage expectations of a possible dispute, but I will be pushing this as a no-fault.’
There was no suggestion that the footage was not needed, or that the other driver had accepted liability.
A conversation with AA Insurance a fortnight later showed nothing had changed, with no mention that the footage was unnecessary. It was not until three months later that AA Insurance told you that the claim had been settled in full, with the other side accepting complete responsibility. You even received a cheque for £100 as a refund of the policy excess.
Whether or not it was the dashcam footage that persuaded the other insurer to back down is impossible to say, but it does seem likely.
It was well worth the £270 bill, but that does not mean you should have to pay this.
Without that evidence, it is highly likely that AA Insurance would have accepted less than a full settlement, and equally likely that your next insurance premium would have gone through the roof.
I am glad to say that AA Insurance has seen the injustice in this.
It now says that in paying for the recovery of the crash footage: ‘Mr F acted in good faith, and we have refunded him the cost of repairing his dashcam.’
By the time you read this, you will have received a cheque for £270.
How was I signed up to these clubs?
Ms D.P. writes: In April, I placed an order with catalogue company Easylife.
Since then I have had sums ranging from £18 to £60 taken from my credit card. I only have the state pension to live on, so am not happy.
I know Easylife offers membership of clubs for things like motoring, but I have not signed up for any.
Unwanted: Ms D.P. signed up for more than she thought, including Easylife’s magazine
Tony Hetherington replies: You signed up for more than you thought. Easylife offers trial membership of various schemes, but if you do not cancel in time your trial ends and you are fully charged.
Easylife tells me you joined its Travel Club, subscribed to its lifestyle magazine Perx, and became a member of its Gardening Club, all with regular payments. Easylife has cancelled these and taken you off its mailing list, and is refunding a total of £173 to your credit card.
WE’RE WATCHING YOU: ‘I’m open to a knighthood,’ says scammer back in Britain
What’s in a name? Not a lot, according to Aaron Banks. This is not the same person as Arron Banks, the millionaire businessman behind the Leave.EU campaign. No, Aaron Banks – with the slightly different spelling – used to be known as Mark Brewer.
Five years ago, I warned that Brewer and his wife Kendall Twigden had come to Britain from New Zealand, bringing a scam called WiseFX, investment software marketed for up to £20,000 a time. It was said to make automated foreign exchange trades, with a success rate of over 50 per cent. Fronting for them as director was Jonathan Chubb from Dublin.
Sowing confusion: Mark Brewer is behind two new schemes
Chubb is no normal forex dealer. He has 27 convictions, including at least 12 for theft and fraud, while his brother is a leading member of an organised crime gang in the Irish Republic and his father was jailed for manslaughter.
In New Zealand, Brewer has been declared bankrupt in 1997 and 2010, though this was reversed when he paid his debts. He was a salesman for an investment software company registered in Twigden’s name until advertising watchdogs condemned it for making false claims, and it collapsed owing £1million. Twigden is banned from acting as a New Zealand company director.
Not surprisingly, WiseFX’s advertising claims in Britain were also false and investors lost heavily. After being exposed in The Mail on Sunday, the pair left Britain. Now they are back, having arrived from Ireland and moved into a £2million house in Bath. Rent has not been paid for months, but the tenancy is in the name of Blockchain Innovation Ltd. Its sole director is CarolAnne Greening, from Gloucester.
Last year a county court judgment was registered against her at the Bath address. Her firm stopped paying rent because, she says, it wants the landlord to carry out repairs. She refused to say when she first knew that Banks was in fact Brewer, but added: ‘He has invested time and money into helping me do something I believe in.’
So what does Blockchain Innovation do? According to Banks (let’s call him that for convenience), he is chief executive of Global Investor Group, which invested up to £2million in two Blockchain Innovation projects.
The first is Medi-Cert, a scheme that allows employers to check an individual’s qualifications. The second is Credyts, offering ‘digital accounts’ representing gold.
Global Investor Group is said to be a Singapore firm. But there is an established British financial publisher of the same name and, curiously, a list of its staff on LinkedIn includes ‘Aaron B.’ as ‘co-founder’. Will Browne, general manager of the London publisher, confirmed it had no connection to Banks and he was certainly not its founder.
Confusion also surrounds MediCert. According to Banks: ‘MediCert now enables the right people to be connected with the right jobs.’ But Greening says: ‘Medi-Cert does not now, and has never, traded.’ And there is a genuine firm called Medicert Ltd in Falkirk, with no connection to Banks or Greening.
As for Credyts, Banks claims to have been an investor for more than two years. He says: ‘The team at Credyts now offers a token which is one-to-one backed by hard gold stored in a client’s name securely in global vaults.’ But Greening says it is just ‘a concept that Blockchain Innovations briefly explored’. She added that ‘it does no trading’.
When I questioned Banks, he pointed me to a website called The Jolly Capitalist, where he writes: ‘I was once Mark Brewer. I am now Aaron Banks. Tomorrow – who knows. I’m open to a knighthood, or I may ‘identify’ as a mermaid.’
So, a man who sold dodgy investment software now uses a name like that of a multi-millionaire, has founded a business with the same name as a long established firm, has invested in a scheme whose name is like that of an established company, and who puffs up a project promising investors a digital wallet stuffed with real gold held in a vault somewhere. Oh, and he might decide to be a mermaid. What could possibly go wrong?
If you believe you are the victim of financial wrongdoing, write to Tony Hetherington at Financial Mail, 2 Derry Street, London W8 5TS or email [email protected]. Because of the high volume of enquiries, personal replies cannot be given. Please send only copies of original documents, which we regret cannot be returned.
