Avoiding Fraudulent Professional Trustees: Universal Wealth Preservation
Rachel Roche LL.M. TEP ??
Multi-Award Winning Law Firm Owner || Entrepreneur || Author & Speaker || Solicitor || Passionate about Business Building and Trying New Things || Always Thinking || Goldman Sachs 10KSB ??
It’s not always easy to know where to turn for advice when making plans for your financial future. There are all sorts of professionals on the market who have positioned themselves as experts in this area, but not all of them are who they say they are. ?
Though it’s not a common occurrence, we have unfortunately worked with a number of clients who’ve been caught out in the past by fraudulent professional trustees. ?
One of the highest profile incidences of this was in 2017, when a company trading as Universal Wealth Preservation was brought into the spotlight for fraudulent behaviour. The company had encouraged their clients to appoint them as professional trustees as part of the service they offered. Many of these clients later discovered that their trusts were being mismanaged. ?
Universal Wealth Preservation was run by Steven Peter Long, who was also associated with companies trading as Universal Asset Protection Ltd and Universal Trustees Ltd. The company entered into involuntarily liquidation in 2018 and, later that year, Mr Long was sentenced to a prison term. In more recent years, it has been reported that Mr Long has been trading again via a website called howtokeepitinthefamily.co.uk.
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What services do these companies offer?
Though Universal Wealth Preservation is one of the best known of these companies, it is not?the only one. These kinds of companies often prey on older people who are worried about having to sell their family homes in the future in order to cover care home fees. This is a complicated legal area, and these companies often rely on this confusion to misdirect their clients into legal arrangements that aren’t as beneficial as they are being led to believe.
These companies generally operate by setting up trusts to hold the client’s homes, with the intention of protecting them. However, the companies usually require clients to appoint them as professional trustees, meaning that the ownership of the properties in question has to be transferred to them. The clients or their families will then not be able to...Read more
Private wealth specialist | Director and Country Head - Guernsey at HIGHVERN | Trust lawyer turned trustee | Chair of Guernsey Association of Trustees
2 年Thanks for sharing Rachel! It’s incredible that this goes on.
Owner and Managing Director of Howarths l Chair of Trustees of The Howarth Foundation I Empowering 1000+ businesses to achieve greater success through their people
2 年Very important and useful Rachel, thank you