The UK closes the crypto advisory firm due to fraudulent investment schemes

The UK government’s Insolvency Service has declared the shutting down of a London-based crypto advisory firm that provided investment advice in cryptocurrencies.

Crypto firm shut down

The London High Court ordered Amey Finance Academy Ltd. to close on April 30. The company’s only owner and leader, Desmond Amey (42), previously claimed himself a specialist in wealth creation and assured customers that their cryptocurrency investments were safe.

Although Amey assured that customers did not lose money in their investments, on Monday, customers’ statements showed that the contrary was true. This negative return on investment inevitably provoked suspicion. In July 2022, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) was the one that came out.

The financial watchdog, the UK’s authority on whether Amey Finance Academy is offering financial services or products to the public, identified Amey Finance Academy as an unauthorized provider of financial services or products in the UK and instructed the public not to deal with it.

The individual who founded the firm, Amey, did not reply to Cryptonews’ request for comment by press time. Created in December 2018, Amey Finance Academy proclaimed itself through social media as “an established and successful independent consultancy providing many financial services.” The company also expressed its operation of a leading education institute within the industry, the Insolvency Service said. Nevertheless, Amey gave out wrong guarantees to one of the customers, who later lost all their money in the investment and assured that his investment would not go below 90%.

Misleading investment claims

In the reviewed Whatsapp messages, Amey to another customer said that the investments were 100% sure, and he urged him to “trust me, bro.” For example, Amey Finance Academy also pushed the cryptocurrency schemes conducted by other firms like HyperFund, which raised over $1.7 billion from investors globally. In addition, Amey put a video on YouTube in Oct. 2023 stating that the office was still there at 1 Canada Square in Canary Wharf, London. Nevertheless, he had just been evicted in January of the same year because of the unpaid rent.

Mark George, the Insolvency Service’s chief investigator stated “Amey Finance Academy was the means used by Desmond Amey to insistently and recklessly convince people to invest in cryptocurrency schemes and to lie to them about the risks of doing so,”

He also stated that the service could not illuminate the company’s activities, assets, and liabilities. The CSE’s inability to further investigate the handling of £5m ($6.2m) from Oct. 2019 to March 2022 due to insufficient accounting records and a lack of transparency was not admissible.

George said that the public needs to be protected from companies trading in an opaque and objectionable manner, so we requested that Amey Finance Academy be closed down.

On the other hand, the UK’s National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (NFIB) recently shut down 43 websites thought to be used for crypto phishing scams. The NFIB investigation discovered a fake email address used to trap Blockchain. Com customers. The fake address aimed to exploit security weaknesses and rob the cryptocurrency.