The dealer that cannot be named

Ambers Echo said:
Various ways to make money:

Taking lots of payments for the same horse. Say 3 for a £10,000 horse = £30,000
Repeat for say 5 horses a week = £150,000 a week. Not being held in escrow but in her own accounts earning interest.

Then there is the delaying phase - needs shoes, suddenly being funny about X,Y,Z, vet coming for a cut, actually not sure he'll suit after all etc etc

Wastes a few weeks that way. Eventually horse arrives with new owner.

Then moves on to the trying to return phase. Some people are told they are outide the 7 days so tough. (Even though dealers have to offer 30 and also on one post a person said the trial ended the day after the horse arrived! So no option to return though she will 'sell for you' and no doubt makes a chunk on top.) Plus more delaying tactics with lots of alternative horses suggested - dragging out the whole process yet further. Others will keep the horses because they feel sorry for them and can't bring themselves to send back.

For the rest she takes months to pay back. Some will just give up. The FB page suggets she owes over £300,000!

So a combination of selling, refusing refunds, re-selling and interest seems to keep her going.
Click to expand...
Iirc I think she also has sales liveries? I'm sure I saw a post from someone saying they considered using her for that, but didn't like the idea of their animal being shipped here there and everywhere on trials
 
A couple of sales livery complaints I saw as well, struggling to get their horses back from goodness knows where when they got wind.
 
I am surprised anyone would put their horse on sales livery with somewhere that encourages you to have the horse on 2 week trial rather than to try it, knowing it could be shipped about a lot (and some seem to have had previous not great dealings with her)

I wonder if this escalate due to covid, buying unseen became more normalised so someone offering a 2 week return period (yes re actual regs but it looks good to offer it outright) seemed a better bet.
 
Ambers Echo said:
Various ways to make money:

Taking lots of payments for the same horse. Say 3 for a £10,000 horse = £30,000
Repeat for say 5 horses a week = £150,000 a week. Not being held in escrow but in her own accounts earning interest.

Then there is the delaying phase - needs shoes, suddenly being funny about X,Y,Z, vet coming for a cut, actually not sure he'll suit after all etc etc

Wastes a few weeks that way. Eventually horse arrives with new owner.

Then moves on to the trying to return phase. Some people are told they are outide the 7 days so tough. (Even though dealers have to offer 30 and also on one post a person said the trial ended the day after the horse arrived! So no option to return though she will 'sell for you' and no doubt makes a chunk on top.) Plus more delaying tactics with lots of alternative horses suggested - dragging out the whole process yet further. Others will keep the horses because they feel sorry for them and can't bring themselves to send back.

For the rest she takes months to pay back. Some will just give up. The FB page suggets she owes over £300,000!

So a combination of selling, refusing refunds, re-selling and interest seems to keep her going.
Click to expand...
Nail on head there.
Also, how the hell does she reconcile books for tax purposes?🤔🤔
 
canteron said:
I wonder if she is registered for VAT. A tax or VAT investigation off the back of the info on the fb site would be interesting.
Click to expand...
You would think that with all the coming and going of horses that the money coming in would be more than 90K but I don't know how it works if you are also refunding a lot of the money.

Also, if it was a limited company there would be some hint of problems in the accounts, but I can't find it on companies house. Outstanding debts of £300K would be a concern for a business with limited assets. I assume she's a sole trader.

It does look something like a Ponzi scheme which will collapse if there are no more people coming in at the bottom to pay those further up the chain who are waiting for refunds.
 
I very much doubt that she is properly registered in any way, or that her taxes are fully declared. She tends to claim to be a sales agent. I don’t believe the buying in from Ireland was ever disclosed to buyers and possibly she was a sales agent rather than a dealer even for these sales.

Presumably as an agent, her percentage of the achieved sales would have been a lot less than the actual sales price. It would be pretty easy to hide revenue/profit alongside the cost of running a yard, so her tax liability might be very low.
 
Admin posted today saying they had spoken to L , who has promised to refund everyone. And they were suspending the posts. But I can’t find it now …….
 
A friend sent her mare to be sold by this dealer a few years ago. Advert for the mare was nothing like reality, she wasn't dangerous but she needed a confident rider.

She went on 2 trials and was sent back, dealer suggested sending her to a friend who hunts for less money. My friend didn't want the horse keep being shipped around so got her home.

Mare came back with a cough, her decent bridle and rugs she went with missing and rubbish returned in their place. She also had a nice livery bill to pay.

I suspect most of the horses are actually sales liveries

On the flip side when this dealer first started out another friend bought a lovely pony from her - she was 13.2 instead of 14.2 as advertised but she's lovely
 
racmun said:
I suspect that by the trials stopping that there won't actually be enough money to refund everyone.

I would imagine she's taking the money from 'new' customers and using that to pay off the ones waiting for a refund.

As someone else said robbing Peter to pay Paul.
Click to expand...

Yup, its incredibly sad, hopefully it puts a stop to her antics, but I cant imagine anyone with money owed is getting paid back at this point.
 
I’m pleased to see she’s no longer offering trials at least. I can’t believe anyone can trade like this, I can’t imagine the stress of it all.

I’m really embarrassed that I ever defended her.

The majority of her horses were/are sales livery, I know of at least 3 horses who were sent to her by friends who obviously had no idea about any of this.

I spoke to her a number of times about potentially selling Miles for me, she sent me the sales agreement which outlined either “free” livery until horse is sold and then a 20% cut would be taken, or £150 per week and then the full sales amount would be given to owner.
 
IrishMilo said:
I’m pleased to see she’s no longer offering trials at least. I can’t believe anyone can trade like this, I can’t imagine the stress of it all.

I’m really embarrassed that I ever defended her.

The majority of her horses were/are sales livery, I know of at least 3 horses who were sent to her by friends who obviously had no idea about any of this.

I spoke to her a number of times about potentially selling Miles for me, she sent me the sales agreement which outlined either “free” livery until horse is sold and then a 20% cut would be taken, or £150 per week and then the full sales amount would be given to owner.
Click to expand...
The latter option is bizarre - no incentive for her to sell. Plenty of incentive to send out repeatedly on trial while still charging for the livery, though.
 
Just caught up on this and had a look at the group. It’s insane, I really feel for those who have been stung by her this person.

What I can’t wrap my head around (and not just with this person, with anyone who does this whole scamming/lying etc) is how on earth they think they will simply get away with it all? Especially now in this day and age with social media, you cannot hide from anything it’s bonkers! I suspect though with regards to money owed they will probably declare bankruptcy and it will all be forgetting about. I’m not sure if that’s entirely how it works though
 
Abacus said:
The latter option is bizarre - no incentive for her to sell. Plenty of incentive to send out repeatedly on trial while still charging for the livery, though.
Click to expand...

She’s had horses in for 6+ months, she’s local to me so I see their adds. There are downsides to each model but the problem with the free livery option is that if your horse is there for 3 months and not selling and you want it home, you then have to back pay 12 weeks of livery to get it back, so owners get stuck in a loop.
 
IrishMilo said:
She’s had horses in for 6+ months, she’s local to me so I see their adds. There are downsides to each model but the problem with the free livery option is that if your horse is there for 3 months and not selling and you want it home, you then have to back pay 12 weeks of livery to get it back, so owners get stuck in a loop.
Click to expand...
Which is mad, as the point is that she sells the horse, and you aren't getting what you have paid for if all you get is expensive livery for a few months.

I wonder if she has treated horses differently depending on which package people have bought. If they are on a commission basis she would want them sold to get her 20%. If they are on the sales livery package, it would benefit her to have multiple trials going on for a while, at the same time making the weekly livery fee.

Also - it has been suggested on the FB thread that she hasn't always been honest with the owner on how much the horses actually sold for and has kept the difference. I haven't seen any definite proof of this but it is a question being asked.
 
Hopefully the police and trading standards will continue to investigate. Another sales agent I know who declared bankrupcy rather than pay back money he owed after getting a ccj against him just carried on exactly as before! Same relatively luxurious lifestyle, still up to exactly the same tricks. If all your significant assets are held in someone else's name you have nothing to lose.

It's disgusting for those people who have lost money in all this but if the dreadful accidents that have been caused by this business can be prevented in future than at least that's something. I really hope she doesn't just get her financial situation reset back to zero and then start up again when this blows over.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top