A government pensions adviser was involved in five rogue retirement schemes that destroyed hundreds of lives, the Mail can reveal.
Victims accused Stephen Ward of ‘making millions from other people’s misery.’
The 64-year-old father of two lives with his wife Carol in a Costa Blanca villa with pool and views of the Mediterranean. He also boasts on Facebook of a £1million Florida real estate empire and further properties in Spain.
Meanwhile victims of the pension schemes he helped promote and administer fear losing their homes and spending their old age in poverty after losing their nest eggs because they trusted the ‘reckless’ financial adviser.
Stephen Ward, pictured with his wife Carol, was involved in five rogue retirement schemes that destroyed hundreds of lives
Many also face huge tax bills after he encouraged them to sign up to schemes that broke HMRC laws.
Mr Ward was an introducer and promoter of one of the Ark schemes, one of the first pension liberation scams in 2010-11. He was later involved in transferring victims’ funds to the Capita Oak and Westminster schemes in which hundreds of people lost millions of pounds.
He went on to become a trustee of the bogus London Quantum scheme.
More than 90 workers invested £6million in retirement funds in London Quantum and most lost the lot.
Mr Ward was banned from being a pension scheme trustee two years ago after the regulator ruled he was behind a ‘series of extremely serious failings’ and showed a ‘lack of integrity’ by putting London Quantum pension funds into high risk investments which bore ‘all the hallmarks of being scams’.
Members, most of whom have lost all their cash, believed they were transferring their nest eggs into low or medium risk investments when they joined the scheme. Instead their money went into Brazilian eucalyptus farms, hotel rooms in Cape Verde and car park bays in Dubai.
In a damning ruling, the Pension Regulator said: ‘Mr Ward’s conduct was reckless in all the circumstances, and amounted to turning a blind eye to a significant issue and failing to ask obvious questions.
‘It is difficult to believe that Mr Ward was unaware of the risks that his actions and failings posed to members and the likelihood that they breached the requirements of pensions legislation.’
Mr Ward had previously boasted to the financial press that his scheme was ‘completely above board’, stressing that it was registered with HMRC.
The 64-year-old father of two lives in a Costa Blanca villa (pictured) with pool and views of the Mediterranean
Incredibly, his disastrous role in the London Quantum scheme came at around the same time that he was an adviser on the 2014/15 Taxation of Pensions Bill, having previously been a Government expert on other financial matters.
Mr Ward also wrote the Tolley’s Pension Taxation manual – described as the bible of the pensions industry – for 2015/16 and 2016/17 and contributed to pension textbooks for the Institute of Financial Services.
This is despite him previously having been involved in four other retirement schemes in which members lost all their savings.
In 2010/11 he made £350,000 in fees after introducing 176 members to the Ark scheme which was later ruled by a judge to be illegal and a ‘fraud on the trustees’ powers’.
Mr Ward was not a trustee of the scheme but hosted seminars promoting Ark around the UK, including Surrey golf clubs where he assured attendees there were no tax liabilities on pension schemes.
In fact most victims not only lost all their cash but are now facing tax bills because the scheme broke tax laws.
Sue Flood has endured years of hell after she and her partner lost £125,000 through trusting Mr Ward’s advice on the Ark scheme and is also facing a potential £60,000 bill.
She said: ‘He made a big thing about being a Government pensions adviser.
‘If the Government listens to them why the hell shouldn’t I? But I am the one facing a huge tax bill from the Government after being cleaned out because I trusted a Government adviser. Where is the justice in that?’
He denied any wrongdoing, however, and the Pension Regulator later ruled that there was ‘not sufficient evidence of Mr Ward having actual knowledge of, or turning a blind eye to, the illegal nature of the activity of the Ark Schemes’.
It also did not find a lack of honesty or integrity on this issue.
But it added: ‘Mr Ward ought to have gained knowledge and experience from a close involvement with a pension scheme that was found to be a vehicle for pension liberation and had such grave consequences for members.’
But in 2012 his company arranged transfers to two other pension liberation schemes, according to documents obtained by the Mail from victims who lost their savings in the schemes.
Premier Pension Transfers, for which Mr Ward was the registered secretary, director and sole shareholder, was named in letters administering the transfer of funds to the Capita Oak pension scheme, including those that lost their cash in the rogue scheme now being investigated by the Serious Fraud Office.
It also appears on letters organising the transfer of pension funds to the Westminster scheme which an Insolvency Service investigation later found in 2016 had misled the 79 members who invested over £3.3million.
Mr Ward also advised savers and helped some of the transfers into the now defunct Continental Wealth Management in which hundreds of people lost up to £25million after putting their money into high-risk investment schemes that paid huge commissions.
A police officer whose £112,077 pension disappeared in the London Quantum scheme, said: ‘It’s very frustrating that it was allowed to happen time after time especially by someone advising the Government on pensions.
‘It was very glossy brochures and HMRC regulated, so from the point of view of the man on the street you assume you’re quite safe.’
The officer, who does not want to be named because he is still serving, is the only individual known to have won an ombudsman’s appeal against his pension provider for agreeing to the transfer.
He has had his money reinstated. He added: ‘I know many others, including other officers, who have lost it all and are suffering terribly. It does seem unjust that their futures have been torn apart by this while the people behind it have been able carry on for such a long time with very little real action being taken against them.
Mr Ward did not respond for request to comments.
Vanished, salesman who claimed taxman’s approval
A salesman vanished after helping to convince hundreds of customers to transfer millions of pounds into scam schemes by boasting they were ‘UK-government approved.’
Stuart Grehan ran two call centres with up to 20 staff in each that cold-called victims and misled them about their expertise and experience.
They falsely offered ‘guaranteed’ returns so their targets would move retirement savings into the schemes, the Insolvency Service said. In fact, most of the cash went into unregulated investments in storage units which did not yield the level of returns promised. In many cases, members lost everything.
Stuart Grehan vanished after helping to convince hundreds of customers to transfer millions of pounds into scam schemes
Many of the victims are also facing large tax bills from HMRC because – by moving their cash from existing schemes – they had broken tax rules.
Victims who were targeted in 2013 and 2014 said he successfully tricked them by – correctly – stressing that the schemes registered with the taxman.
One of Mr Grehan’s companies, Jackson Francis, boasted on its website that it was a ‘UK-government approved personal pension scheme, which allows individuals to make their own investment decisions from the full range of investments approved by HM Revenue and Customs.’
Two of the main schemes, the Henley Retirement Benefit Scheme and Capita Oak Pension Scheme, were also registered with HMRC.
Letters from the company to potential clients prominently displayed the registered number from HMRC, which many victims saw as a ‘veneer of legitimacy’.
But after signing up and transferring their cash, victims heard nothing from the company. When they tried to contact staff, the line went dead. Mr Grehan, who was then using the surname Chapman-Clarke, disappeared in 2014 and his exact whereabouts are unknown.
He posts pictures on Facebook of him enjoying himself with his family in the Portsmouth area.
Two relatives agreed to pass him the Mail’s request for comment but he did not respond. In a ruling last year the Insolvency Service said Mr Grehan admitted making false and misleading claims about his company’s level of expertise and experience and false claims about the range of investment products and promises of providing ‘unbiased advice’.
The only product that was actively promoted was the unregulated investment in storage units that his companies had an interest in.
There was no evidence that Mr Grehan knew the two schemes were acting fraudulently.
He agreed to a nine-year voluntary ban from working as a director following the probe. Karl Dunlop, of Imperial Trustee Services Ltd, and Ian Dunsford, of Omni Trustees Ltd, agreed to voluntarily bans of seven and nine years respectively for failing to act in the best interests of pension members and subsequently failing to ensure investments were adequately diverse.
The investigation centred on the conduct of directors connected to a Gibraltar based company, Transeuro Worldwide Holdings Ltd.It helped to fund Sycamore, an introductions company that Mr Grehan owned.
A villa in the sun for boss of £21million scam
The director of a rogue pension scheme that abused millions of pounds of savers’ money is living in luxury – while victims struggle to pay the heating bills.
Sara Moat, 43, was the director of ‘unscrupulous’ Fast Pensions which used cold-calling and misleading claims about retirement funds to persuade 520 individuals to transfer their pension savings worth £21million into one of its 15 schemes in 2012 and 2013.
Many investors have since lost all their retirement cash and, as one victim put it, had their ‘future robbed’.
Sara Moat (left), the director of a rogue pension scheme that abused millions of pounds of savers’ money, is living in luxury with her husband Peter (right) in a two-bedroom Spanish villa
Fast Pensions and five related firms were wound up this year after an investigation by the Insolvency Service under Project Bloom, a cross-industry taskforce involving Government departments, regulators and police.
Investigators found Fast Pensions misused funds, misrepresented the schemes and that its advisers failed to disclose the high risk and illiquid investments they made or the benefits members would be entitled to.
At least £4million was used to pay commissions and the remaining funds were largely used to make loans to companies and other entities that appear to be connected with Fast Pensions and trustees of the schemes, a report said.
Fast Pensions failed to keep adequate accounting records or cooperate fully with the investigation, making it impossible to determine the full value of the members’ funds that have been lost.
Neighbours told the Mail that Mrs Moat lives with her husband Peter in a two bedroom villa with a pool in the upmarket Spanish town of Denia on the Mediterranean.
The home is listed in Mr Moat’s mother’s name. Mrs Moat is also named with her husband as an executive of the firm Deyse Investments.
By contrast, Maria McCulloch, from Kilmarnock in Ayrshire, south of Glasgow, turned 65 in March and had planned to retire after 43 years work but cannot because she had £65,000 of her savings in Fast Pensions.
When she moved her pension in 2012 she was told by an ‘independent consultant’, who charged her a £1,000 set-up fee, that she would receive £80,000 at retirement. ‘There was a lot of paperwork and it all looked legitimate, but now the money’s gone,’ she said.
Mrs McCulloch has been forced to stay on three days a week as an administrator in the procurator fiscal’s office.
‘It’s incredibly frustrating to think that those behind this scam are still living the good life while I am struggling on,’ she said.
‘I know I’m not alone. A lot of people caught up in this scheme have been robbed of their future.’
David Hope, chief investigator for the Insolvency Service, said ‘unscrupulous’ Fast Pensions had paid ‘scant regard’ to members who had worked long and hard to put money away for their retirements.
‘They used unsavoury tactics to attract members and failed to paint the full picture as to what would really happen with their savings.’
Mrs Moat did not respond to requests for comment.