On 23 July 2026, in the New York Southern District Court, Renwick Haddow, the scammer behind the Bitcoin Store and Bar Works Ponzi schemes, was sentenced to 54 months in prison and ordered him to pay more than US$58 million back to the victims of his scams.
REDD-Monitor first wrote about the Bar Works scam in January 2017:
I had been following Haddow’s career as a scammer since August 2013. He was the ringleader behind a UK company called Capital Alternatives and involved with a large network of scam companies. In a 2015 article, investigative journalist Khadija Sharife made a “conservative estimate” that the fraud network had extracted a total of US$180 million from retail investors “using a number of fabricated alternative investments”.
Two of the companies in the Capital Alternatives network were African Land and Capital Carbon Credits. African Land was incorporated in the UK in July 2008 and Capital Carbon Credits was incorporated in the UK in December 2010. Capital Carbon Credits and sold carbon credits from Sierra Leone, Brazil, and Australia to retail investors. On its website the company promised a “full money back guarantee” and “Returns in excess of 50%”.
Both companies were fraudulent and victims lost a total of £16.9 million.
Haddow was first banned as a director for eight years in November 2008 for his role as finance director in Branded Leisure, a scam company.
In February 2018, Haddow was banned again as a director for 15 years following an investigation by the Insolvency Service. “This is fraudulent conduct of the nastiest kind,” deputy registrar Baister commented.
The case against Haddow
The sentencing submission from the US attorney for the Southern District of New York includes a detailed background of Haddow’s scams.
In 2014 and 2015, Haddow ran a boiler room operation in Manhattan that sold more than US$600,000 investments in Bitcoin Store. He used “fabricated financial statements and fictitious management executives” the sentencing submission states. Haddow did not use the money raised for investing in Bitcoin.
In 2015 and 2016, Haddow launched a “new massive international Ponzi scheme in a coworking space company called Bar Works”. The Ponzi scheme ran until June 2017. 800 victims worldwide lost more than US$57 million.
Haddow was charged in June 2017. He fled the US before he could be arrested. In July 2017, he was arrested in Morocco. He was imprisoned for one week in Tangier Prison. Then he was moved to Sale Rabat for four months, followed by five months in Argent I Rabat.
The prisons were infested with rats and cockroaches. Haddow shared a small cell with about 20 other men. In Argent he injured his leg in a fall but was denied medical care.
Initially, Haddow contested extradition to the US. But while in prison in Morocco, he agreed to cooperate with the US government’s investigation. He was extradited in April 2018.
He spent almost two years in the Metropolitan Correctional Center, New York. In April 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Haddow was placed under house arrest, allowed to leave his apartment twice a week to buy food and other necessities. From June 2021, he was allowed to work, with an 8 pm curfew, which was lifted in December 2022. He lived in Far Rockaway, New York.
On 23 May 2019, Haddow pleaded guilty to charges of wire fraud and wire fraud conspiracy regarding the Bitcoin Store and Bar Works scams. Since then, he has cooperated with the US government investigation, including giving nine hours of evidence against James Moore, his co-conspirator in the Bar Works scam.
In July 2024, Moore died in prison.
Several of Bar Works’ victims lived in the United Arab Emirates. One of these, Jocelyn Houghton, spoke to The Nation before Haddow’s sentencing. She worked in Dubai as cabin crew for Emirates airline. She saved US$50,000 to put towards buying her first home. She lost everything when she was conned into putting the money into Bar Works.
“I genuinely believed it was all legit,” Houghton told The Nation. “Then the money disappeared.” She said her life after Bar Works became “a complete nightmare”.
“I had a total loss of confidence, and felt a complete failure. I rebuilt my life because I had to. I had no choice. There’s not a day that I don’t think about Bar Works. We are still waiting.”
The UK scams
“Prior to launching Bar Works, Renwick Haddow led multiple widely-publicized Ponzi schemes in the U.K. in which investors lost money,” the sentencing submission from US attorney Southern District of New York notes.
Haddow acknowledged at trial that he had a “very bad reputation in the U.K., for a number of financial misendeavors which was covered on the internet, and it meant that I couldn’t really operate further in the U.K.” He moved to the US for a “fresh start”.
The sentencing submission states that Haddow testified at trial, “that the carbon credits investments generally, and his scheme in particular, were all ‘scams’ and what ‘worked’ in that scheme was that ‘[i]t was very successful in terms of selling to investors.’”
As part of the cooperation deal with the US government, Haddow described his UK scams. Under the “rule-of-specialty” Haddow could only be tried for offenses in the extradition proceedings — the US case against Haddow therefore excludes the UK scams.
Here’s what the sentencing submission states about Haddow’s UK scams — James Moore was also involved in the Room to Invest scheme:
As testified to by Haddow at trial, Haddow participated in various U.K.-based schemes that raised investor money typically through misrepresentations and omissions, and usually resulted in investor losses. These included his operation of an investment company called Catalyst Investment Group Ltd beginning in 2001 which raised money for about 20 companies, including some controlled by Haddow or a family member. One such company was Branded Leisure, which Haddow controlled and that operated bars, restaurants and beauty stores. On December 10, 2008, the U.K. Insolvency Service issued a news release announcing Haddow’s disqualification as a director for eight years due to misrepresentations made to investors in Branded Leisure. Haddow agreed to a stipulation that said that he caused or allowed Branded Leisure to make an inaccurate and misleading announcement as to the progress of the company’s building work, sales performance of the company, and the financial performance of the company, causing investors to lose £500,000.
As Haddow also testified at trial, in approximately 2009, Haddow and Moore partnered on a hotel investment scheme called Room to Invest. Room to Invest offered investors fractional interests in hotel rooms. Investors would buy these interests and then receive returns supposedly from customers using their hotel rooms. During the trial, Haddow testified that Moore wanted Room to Invest to sell interests in a hotel in Barbados, even though Moore had not actually built the hotel and thus would have no way of paying investors returns for a long time, if ever. Haddow turned down selling the Barbados property but invited Moore to partner up with him to sell investments in two real hotels in Slovenia and Morocco. Moore agreed and helped to restructure the investment to make it more attractive to investors by adding a guaranteed return for buying multiple units. Moore also brought in agents to actually solicit investors. In return, Moore received half of Haddow’s profits from the operation. Room to Invest solicited about 300,000 to 500,000 pounds after Moore partnered with Haddow, before collapsing, resulting in investor losses.
As mentioned above, from 2009 to 2013, Haddow participated an African Land/Carbon Credits scheme in which he and others raised approximately £16.9 million in part through fraudulent misrepresentations to investors. Haddow was the main architect of these schemes.
The British authorities, of course, could have prevented the Bar Works scam had they conducted the necessary investigation and taken appropriate action before Haddow moved to the US in search of a “fresh start”.
It remains to be seen whether the British authorities will now take any further action to recoup the money from Haddow’s multiple UK scams.