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Bombshell – emails sent to Winnileaks show Julie Meyer MBE lying and committing fraud to raise cash for ACE Fund

By Tom Winnifrith | Monday 18 June 2018


 


I have been contacted by a man persuaded by Julie “lingerie on expenses” Meyer MBE to invest £23,000 into her ACE Fund in September 2016. I have in my possession emails sent by Ms Meyer to the investor and it is clear that she told two very blatant lies and has defrauded him. I have urged the individual to take this matter straight to not only the FCA but also to the City of London Police as this is slam dunk fraud. 

Meyer had been “grooming” this man for twelve months but in September of 2016 she made him an offer he could not refuse but warned him that he had only one week to complete the paperwork or this opportunity would be gone. 

Meyer insisted that her fund was “in realisation mode,” that is to say it was making no new in vestments and just selling up those it did have to return cash to shareholders. In her email Julie stated she was “projecting 11x returns” from then current valuations. 

As we now know the fund has, in fact, made zero realisations since then, it is really valued at not much more than £2 million (down from £7.6 million so our investor has in fact lost cash)  and is begging for £2 million more to keep going as you can see HERE.

But maybe things have changed fast in 21 months? So maybe Julie really believed what she was saying back in September 2016 making her deluded but not a liar?  But there are two points where she clearly did lie. 

The proposition was that an existing investor had ponied up £10,000 of a £33,000 commitment but had welshed on the remaining £23,000. Julie was thus able to offer to “friends” on a “first come first served basis” the chance to pay £23,000 to get £33,000 worth of units in the fund (on a £7.8 million valuation). Given that the fund was “ in realisation mode.” This seemed like a good deal. Julie pushed hard via email and the deal details were confirmed in an email from Ariadne colleague Peter Hale. 

The existing investor was said, by Julie, to be reneging because of “a tragedy in the family”. So what are the lies and the fraud?

Firstly the investor who was walking was tracked down by the new investor, after the event. He has suffered no “tragedy in the family” but was merely disgusted by the bloated management fees and abject performance of the fund. He thus wrote off his original investment ( a multiple of £10,000) and walked. It was his unfulfilled commitments that Meyer parcelled up and resold. 

So lie 1 from  Meyer is about why the original investor walked. Incidentally, he is not the only original investor to have opted to do this and the others cite the same reasons for walking. 

Lie 2 is more serious.  With the deal done Julie Meyer re-emailed the new investor to make the key point again stating on November 16 2016 “The £10k free money that you acquired puts you in the money on that investment which I’m glad.”

But in February 2017 Meyer sent out a fund report with a statement of the account at December 31 2016. And guess what? The value of the investment was not £33,000 in fact it was not even £23,000 but was just £21,000. Is it conceivable that the fund had fallen in value by more than 33% in just over three months? It is not. Nor does that tally with fund valuations offered by Meyer. What is clear is that the investor had paid £23,000 nor for units worth a supposed £33,000 as he was promised by for units worth a supposed £23,000 ( which then fell by another c10%). 

And that makes the sales emails by Meyer slam dunk lies and that means that she has defrauded this new investor. I very much doubt this was a one off.

The email evidence is now being passed to the City of London Police and has already been sent to the FCA. This is such an open and shut case that, even though Meyer has an MBE and partied with Dave Cameron and Vince Cable, surely nothing can save her now.

 
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