cruse and associates hk investment fraud
DESCRIPTION
A real-life testimony about how Cruse & Associates managed to sell me a truckload of shares from non-existing companies. Please note that they operate under 'The Haney group' as well (www.thehaneygroup.com)TRANSCRIPT
CRUSE & ASSOCIATES (HK)
“Financial wealth specialist”
Fraud
Company overview• Web page is very flashy and looks professional (www.cruseandassociates.com)
• They present themselves as an off-shore financial broker company in Hong Kong
• They have a suite in a fancy office building (Bank of America Tower) in Hong Kong
• The contact persons are all English and have very English names: Richard Chambers, Jeffery Harrington, Marcus Ferris, Michael Richards, Michael Jacobs are the ones I have spoken with but there are documents with Peter Smith, Richard Lewis, Mark Pennington, Jonathan Knight, Richard White, James Hughes, Jason Strummond, Jason Stratton etc.
• But • They are not registered in the Hong Kong’s government registry (www.icris.cr.gov.hk/csci/ )
• They are not registered with the HK SFC (see mail on next page)
• They have no official approval from any government in the world to offer financial services. In some countries (like Norway) they are even blacklisted.
• They only have one public phone number, if you call this number you always get an answering machine so you cannot call anyone directly
• When they call you, you never see their real number, only the country code (eg +00 852 000)
• You will not find any information on the contact persons that can link them to Cruse or even HK (like LinkedIn). The names are probably fake.
• Each person has an email address <firstname><lastname>@cruseandassociates.com but in fact there is only one mailbox [email protected]. The name in front of @cruseandassociates.com does not matter at all. Even your own name will not bounce.
• They are mentioned on fraud sites like www.economicfrauds.com
Company overview Mail from HK Securities and Futures
Commission (http://www.sfc.hk/web/EN/ )
Please note that the firm named “Cruse & Associates” does not appear on our Public Register of Licensed Persons and Registered Institutions, which details the licences of securities, futures and leveraged foreign exchange intermediaries (including persons and organisations). Therefore, we cannot provide any information of the company at this point.
We strongly advise that until you ascertain whether an individual or corporation qualifies to be exempted from obtaining an SFC licence, please refrain from dealing with an unlicensed intermediary soliciting you about investments in securities, futures and leveraged foreign exchange in Hong Kong.
How it all started
Atlantic International Partnership (AIP), based in Madrid (Spain) does a cold calling campaign and somehow they end up at my cell phone. I finally get convinced to invest a small amount (4000 Euro) in May 2011 to buy 1500 shares in SHZ (Chinese company making electrical batteries) at $3,92 with a promised ‘quick’ sell period of 3 months maximum with a good profit. Electrical batteries are booming business!
My position in SHZ is sold at $6,80 and replaced automatically by 3400 shares NANO (www.e-nanolabtec.com) at $3,0 in August 2012. On paper I made a profit but nobody asked me if this exchange was OK… I would have preferred to cash-out instead!
Atlantic International is bought (or did they just change name ??) by Cruse and Associates in Feb 2012. I am a ‘sleeping ‘ account until I am picked up in July 2012. My journey with Cruse and Associates starts…
My transaction history in 18 ugly steps (1-8) July 17, 2012 : 8100 extra NANO shares to reach 11.500 shares. 8.500 shares would be added by Cruse from their margin account to reach total of 20K shares. This would be enough to sell them to client as part of total package of 100K shares with 2 other clients (one with 10K shares, one with 70K shares)
Aug 16, 2012: 10000 extra NANO shares to take over the shares from a client in my 100K allocation that went bankrupt.
Aug 25, 2012: 21.500 NANO shares were converted to 18.428 shares ECOX (at $3,5) because NANO deal did not happen (some problem found with NANO). Client was converted to ECOX. What did Cruse do with all those NANO shares??
Sep 11, 2012: 50% more shares to be bought because total share volume increased from 10M NANO shares to 15M ECOX shares.
Oct 4, 2012: the 8.500 NANO shares that originated from Cruse margin account were not accepted by ECOX client: to be taken over from Cruse
Oct 15, 2012: security bond deposit of 18.75% needed for total value of sale (at $11.37). Security bond deposit can be bought as extra shares.
Oct 25, 2012: increased sales value ($21.83) so increased security bond deposit, again bought as extra shares
Nov 15, 2012: client with 2M shares is bankrupt: shares to be taken over by the remaining 23 clients (86.956 shares). 33K shares assistance from Cruse so 53.956 left. Assistance from Richard for 60.000 USD (17.142 shares) leaves me with 36.398 to buy.
My transaction history in 18 ugly steps (9-18) Jan 14, 2013: ‘Someone’ found out about assistance from Richard. Had to buy the
17142 extra ECOX shares myself. Jan 31, 2013: Again security bond deposit on the extra shares=18.595 extra shares. Mar 1, 2013: Suddenly 180.000 shares are needed, to be added with 320.000
shares from another client to reach 500.000 shares. Extra 24.251 to be bought. Mar 26, 2013: Again security bond deposit on the extra shares=13.569 extra shares Cruse ‘loans’ 20.000 shares so total is 213.569 shares. 70.000$ to be paid later… Apr 25, 2013: Shares and money at clearing house but buyer does not want shares
anymore: shares are converted to 175.880 shares KD OIL by Cruse (at $4,25) Apr 30, 2013: 6120 extra shares needed to reach 186.000 shares, to be added to
314.000 shares to reach 500.000 shares. May 30, 2013: Client wants ‘upgraded’ shares, fee of $0,5 per share June 21, 2013: Defend against hostile takeover of KD OIL: 1/3 (60.000 shares) to be
bought at reduced price of $1,25 July 24, 2013: 33.000 shares extra shares to be bought to reach 275.000, the
minimum for allocation 2. Other broker would have completely taken over allocation 1 (below 275.000). Cruse offered assistance for half (16.500 shares)
August 9, 2013: Auditors rejected the Cruse assistance. 16.500 extra shares to be bought as well.
August 13, 2013: Trade confirmation of 16.500 shares. After that: silence from Cruse until they contact me again with a lame excuse that my contact made a mistake. More shares need to bought to sell to someone else. That was enough for me.. I stopped.
How do they make money? What they claim
They claim to make money with a 1% fee on every transaction (buying or selling shares). On several occasions they will waive this fee when you buy shares, claiming they make most money when you sell shares.
In reality If they would really sell shares from ‘real’ companies
You have no information on the actual buying price. They sold me shares at $4.75 but there is no way you can find out if they might not buy these shares themselves at $0.75.
You have no information on the actual selling price. They tell you that they found a buyer who buys your shares at $10 eg but they might sell the shares at $15 and only pay you $10.
You have no information on the deal itself. On two occasions they told me that the deal did not happen and they converted all my shares to a new company.
But… the companies are all fake and your money goes directly to their Taiwanese and Chinese hidden bank accounts…
Real or fake companies ?
First company (www.e-nanolabtec.com) does not even exist anymore. They claim it went bankrupt.
Second company (www.ecoexploration.com) still has a web page and so does their investment partner (www.aptpartners.com) No public information can be found on this company Company is not registered in Chili Press releases are found on prlog.org
Everybody can put their press release there, nobody checks them
12 press releases in the period from July 24 2012 to March 25 2013, coincidentally ending exactly at same moment as my ECOX ‘period’ ended. Nothing before that, nothing after that…
See http://pressroom.prlog.org/ecoexploration/
Real or fake companies ? Third company (www.kdoil.com) also has a web page
and so does their investment partner (www.amspartners.com) No public information can be found. Not even sure if they
have oil fields in South China Sea… Company has HQ in Beijing but address is just a mailbox,
not a single desk to be found there although they claim to have held press releases there (see below).
Company registered in HK but since April 2013 only. Press releases are again posted on prlog.org
6 press releases in the period between March 08, 2013 and August 05, 2013. This again exactly matches the period that I bought shares from this ‘company’. No press releases before that date, none after…
See http://pressroom.prlog.org/keystonedeltaoil/
The Cruse way of operation1. They create a fake company with dummy website and regular dummy press
releases for a very short period. There is always an ‘investment partner’ in between you and the company to answer questions. Also these people speak perfect English by the way…
2. There is not a single shred of financial information of the company from which you buy shares. It’s all ‘confidential’…
3. Again and again they make promises that they will sell your shares if you just buy this small amount more or pay this security bond deposit. Always something happens the week after you bought your extra shares. It happened to me 18 times and I still did not manage to sell my shares.
4. They don’t give any information on the actual deal with their client. They hide themselves behind NDA’s but this means you act in blind faith.
5. At a given moment in time they will switch you to a new broker (if you run out of patience with the current one). This new broker is a vice president or similar and will solve your problems because it is unacceptable what is happening to you…
6. At a given moment in time they will switch you to a new stock in a very promising sector like gold, oil, electrical batteries etc. They never ask your approval, they just do it out of their good will.
7. They will never pay you. At this moment I have 275.000 shares of KDOIL with a value of over 1M dollar and I am completely stuck. They don’t pick up the phone anymore or answer emails.
The Cruse way of operation
Everything they put on paper is worth nothing !
Conclusion
Don’t engage with Cruse and Associates, they take your money and run!
If you want to get in touch: contact me at