Last time I came across self-proclaimed money guru Des Amey he was plugging a crypto investment called Hyperverse.
Now his company Amey Finance Academy Ltd has been added to the warning list of danger firms published by the Financial Conduct Authority.
“This firm is not authorised by us and is targeting people in the UK,” the watchdog states.
So what have I since found Amey doing? Only plugging more of his crypto trash.
But before the new venture, it’s worth catching up on Hyperverse.
I exposed this debacle in an article published on February 17 after emailing Amey to ask how many people he’d persuaded to join it, how much money he’d made as a result, and whether he had a message for those investors now saying they’d lost everything.
Amey never replied directly but instead put Manchester law firm JMR Solicitors on to me after the article was published.
They told me in a letter dated April 14: “Our client demands an apology for your defamatory comments.”
The letter went on: “Our client strongly believes that the Hyperverse project is an incredible opportunity and he has no regrets with promoting the same. “
By this point, the Hyperverse token value had collapsed from a high of $7.74 to just under one dollar. Now it is worthless.
Amey seems undeterred by this disaster or the FCA warning, judging by the fact he’s moved on to promoting a crypto venture called PLC Ultima, speaking at public events including the one I joined in Wembley, North London.
Amey introduced himself by saying: “I’m the managing director of a wealth-creation company”, funnily enough without mentioning that it’s now on the FCA’s warning list.
He told the audience that his bullish advice for recruiting new investors was: “A ‘no’ is never a ‘no’, it’s just a ‘not right now’.”
He went on: “My vision is to make 100,000 families completely financially free through this opportunity.”
A speaker from something optimistically called the Infinity Income Team went even further. Terry James, who called himself a stage hypnotist by profession, told the audience: “We’re on the way to creating one million millionaires.”
He insisted: “We are currently the second most valuable crypto currency asset in the world.”
Really? Crypto data site CoinMarketCap ranks PLC Ultima at 2,916 and its price fell to below $4,000 this week, which is grim news if you bought when it was over $100,000 in April.
James described the media and even friends and family as “the forces of evil” that might try to dissuade you from putting your savings into what he insisted was “the best opportunity in the world”.
The founder of PLC Ultima is a German called Alex Reinhardt.
In May, before its value collapsed, he posted on Facebook a picture of a woman clutching wads of money and “earning massively”, saying: “You can only make it when you’re bold enough to take the risk.”
Previously he's pushed PLC PLATINCOIN, which is down from a high of almost $58 in April 2019 to around 25 cents today, and before that there was Swisscoin, which has sunk without trace.
I emailed to ask if he wants to reply to numerous online accusations that PLC Ultima is a Ponzi scheme but he has not replied.
I also asked:
Is PLC Ultima regulated by any financial authorities and, if so, which ones?
If it is not, what safeguards do investors have in the event of PLC Ultima collapsing?
PLC Ultima is a trade name of PLC Technology Ltd, why have you registered this company in Cyprus?
Does PLC Ultima have any source of income besides the money paid into it by investors?
Fair questions, you might think, that any potential investor might ask, but all went unanswered.
As for Amey, when I approached him at the Wembley recruitment session he told me: “I’ve nothing to say to you”, before scuttling away saying: “I’ve got to go to the toilet.”
Which, judging by its downward trajectory, is where PLC Ultima is also heading.
investigate@mirror.co.uk
