Bradlodge Corporate Trading: Yet another scam company cashing in on carbon credits

A company called Bradlodge Corporate Trading is cold calling people who have been scammed into buying carbon credits as investments. Bradlodge Corporate Trading’s boiler room conmen tell people that their company can sell their carbon credits. For an advance fee, of course.

Several people have written comments on REDD-Monitor explaining that they have been contacted by Bradlodge Corporate Trading (here, here, here, here and here). In addition, a couple of people have sent emails asking about Bradlodge Corporate Trading.

One of the tales that the company’s conmen spin is that the UK government is going to freeze carbon credits soon. Bradlodge Corporate Trading claims to be able to sell the credits before the government freezes them. Both parts of the tale are nonsense. The UK government is not freezing carbon credits and Bradlodge Corporate Trading cannot sell them – not least because there is no secondary market for voluntary carbon credits.

Let’s see what we can find out about this company. On its website, the company displays a series of logos: London Metal Exchange; Metalor; The Royal Mint; World Gold Council; and DueDil. Clicking on the DueDil logo takes us to a company called Bradlodge Ltd.

Bradlodge Ltd was registered in November 2009, by Ceri John who was its sole director until 21 October 2013, when Lukasz Matula took over. Ceri John has had a lot of directorships, 78 of which are active, 13 closed, and 878 retired.

In June 2014, Matula registered the website bradlodge.com. So far though, the website doesn’t give us any information whatsoever.

A search on Open Corporates for Bradlodge Corporate Trading gives no results:

Bradlodge Corporate Trading’s website (bradlodgecorporatetrading.co.uk) was registered in October 2013, by someone called “christian ocean”. There is no mention of either Ceri John or Lukasz Matula on the website.

Bradlodge Corporate Trading lists two members of its team on its website: Peter Denninson and Rupert Wilkinson. Neither of these two is a director of Bradlodge Ltd, the company whose Company House records Bradlodge Corporate Trading links to from its website.

When Bradlodge Ltd was registered, the company’s name was P Denninson Consultancy Ltd. That, of course, doesn’t prove anything. The name on Bradlodge Corporate Trading’s website could easily be made up.

The description of Denninson’s experience on Bradlodge Corporate Trading’s website is a pack of lies. Denninson claims to have been an Executive Director with Man Group, but there is no mention of his name on the Man Group website and a Google search for “Peter Denninson” and “Man Group” brings up three results – two from LinkedIn and one from Bradlodge Corporate Trading.

The same three search results appear in a search for “Peter Denninson” and “Lehman Brothers”, which is where Denninson claims to have worked from 1995 to 2005.

Denninson also claims to have an honours degree in Banking and International Finance from Cambridge University. Which is funny, because Cambridge University doesn’t offer a course in Banking and International Finance.

And Denninson’s photograph on the Bradlodge Corporate Trading website is actually of Anders Palmgren, who is Head of Corporate Finance at a Swedish financial company called Catella.

The photograph of Rupert Wilkinson, supposedly the executive director of Bradlodge Corporate Trading has a very similar background to that of Denninson (also known as Palmgren), suggesting that the photograph is also someone who worked at Catella (although a search on Google Images didn’t bring up any matches).

Wilkinson claims to have worked for Standard Chartered Bank for 15 years and “was responsible for all operations from the Lebanon to Bangladesh”. But guess what? A Google search comes up with no evidence of this 15 years of high-powered work.

Wilkinson says he has an OBE. Guess what? A Google search reveals nothing about this. Wilkinson claims to have been awarded “a Dato’ship (a kinghthood) from the King of Malaysia”. And guess what? Google can tell us nothing about this.

Bradlodge Corporate Trading’s website is all about selling gold as an investment. A company brochure explains a concept called “Interception Trading”, which is a “propriety trading strategy exclusive to Bradlodge, developed and tested since 2002”. Which is impressive for a company that claims to have been registered in 2009 and that has only had a website since October 2013.

In fact, another company offers “Interception Trading”. It’s called Wenware Trading and its website is remarkably similar to that of Bradlodge Corporate Trading. The text of whole sections is identical.

You can read about some of the reactions to Wenware Trading’s cold calls (and Bradlodge Corporate Trading’s) here and here.

REDD-Monitor’s advice if you’ve handed over any money to Bradlodge Corporate Trading (or Wenware Trading) is to contact Action Fraud. And if either of these companies calls you, just put down the phone. Then contact Action Fraud: