The City Boiler Room that scammed £30m that the FCA did nothing about for years, part 2 – Appbox Media

I have already dealt with the imminent demise of its sister company, One True View, where a sham £186 million bid evaporated and where the end is nigh. Now to Appbox Media, the first company set up by Polat Hassan as part of his City boiler room operation which has stolen £30m from naïve investors. The FCA was warned by me as long ago as November 2019 but natch has done nowt.

Companies House records show that as recently as September 2020 it was issuing new shares to mug punters promising them great riches. No doubt they will be promising EIS relief even though most of the folks tapped up were not suitable EIS investors and there will be no EIS relief granted as this “games developer” is just a fraud.

On September 25 2020 the company released its annual report…for the year to July 31 2018!. It was apparently signed off in late August by Polat and the same eight-man firm of auditors now doing the books for One True View. Because, as we discovered on 29 September 2020 at companies house, the old Auditors Ashcrofts had quit in July saying:

“Management imposed limitations of scope. Requests for information and explanations have not been forthcoming and we have been unable to obtain sufficient, appropriate audit evidence to enable us to form an opinion.”

So what do the 2018 accounts say?

Well the good news is that Polat reckons that as at 28 August 2020 “management aims to float the company on (sic) stock exchange in the near future”. Whatever. For what it is worth, I intend to shag Cheryl Cole next week.

And the really good news is that Polat got an “independent valuation” of the value of intangible assets, software developed, of £81.43 million. The guy is a fecking genius as they were only in the books as a result of capitalised development costs at £6.302711 million.

As for the bad news? Er the auditors are expressly and explicitly sceptical of this valuation and also flag up that there is a real doubt as to whether the company is a going concern on a 12 month view. As for the numbers:

Sales were £1.43 million up from £1.01 million. But none of that was from selling games, it was all for invoiced services and the amount invoiced to a company where Polat was a director (One True View) was £1.09 million up from £1 million.

The operating loss fell from £1.596 million to just under £500,000. But with an increased amount of development costs capitalised (£1.86 million), that is all meaningless. Let’s turn to the balance sheet.

Current assets are £356,376 of which c£33,000 is cash. Current assets fell sharply during the year from £1.343 million as One True View mugged enough punters to pay its bills.

Current liabilities zoomed from £1.15 million to £1.69 million giving net current liabilities of £1.34 million. With tangible assets of less than one hundred grand, you don’t need an MBA from Instead to work out that this company is screwed.

In October came the management changes. As with One True View, Polat Hassan scarpered and was replaced by long term employee Amanda Hussey.

By 31 July 2018, Appbox had raised £11.9 million from mug punters. More was raised thereafter right up to September 2020. That money is all gone. I have more chance with Cheryl than this company has of listing or indeed of avoiding insolvency for very much longer. Amanda will be the fall person, Polat will be long gone and, despite my numerous warnings, the FCA, again, did nothing.

Perhaps with its new woke board its approach to ignoring boiler room scams stealing tens of millions of pounds will all change?