Pretoria - A group of companies that operated in Pretoria has been labelled a Ponzi scheme that fled with investments worth over R100 million.
All Quotes Website Services, Buy Direct Website Services, Mibiz Business Online Services and Fin Group Holdings were named as respondents in court documents filed in the Gauteng High Court, Pretoria. They allegedly ran a Ponzi scheme.
According to court documents, all four companies operated under the same business address - an attorney’s office in the Menlo Law Chambers in Menlo Park.
The court application seeks relief from the court to have the assets of the businesses and its directors seized by the sheriff. The applicants also want a declaratory order that the scheme operated by these business be declared illegal.
Also, that the first eight respondents be placed under provisional liquidation and three directors flagged by the Hawks from leaving the country, pending the finalisation of the criminal investigations.
The court documents stated that the group of companies began operating between 2013 and 2016 and in 2014 began aggressively canvassing for potential investors via social media.
Advertisements from All Quotes Website Services (Pty) Ltd invited investors to invest at least R50 000 to purchase a licence.
“An elaborate system was explained as to how advertisers on the All Quotes system would pay a fee and then a part of that fee (R100) would be put into a licence partner income pool of which an investor would then receive R40 per month per regional banner advertised,” the court documents read.
The applicant, Johannes Marais, said the system was explained to him and other victims in a very convincing and seemingly plausible manner, which led to them signing a licence partner agreement.
Marais then made a R50 000 payment to All Quotes in June 2014 and began receiving healthy returns on a monthly basis. “As a consequence, during or about October 2014 I was duped into entering into a similar agreement with Buy Direct Website Services (the second respondent),” Marais said in his founding affidavit.
He said Buy Direct offered licences for R28 000 and he then purchased five licences for a total sum of R140 000. He again received healthy monthly payments into his bank account.
“During or about the end of March/April 2015 the monthly payments suddenly stopped,” he said.
When he enquired about the non-payments, he said he was told All Quotes was in the process of purchasing a patent product that would be sold to Eskom for billions and that the investors had the opportunity to either be bought out or convert their licences to shares.
Marais chose to convert his licences for 55 000 shares, but despite numerous requests and enquiries over the following months, no share certificates were issued, nor further payments received.
He said it was only when he and others received newsletters with the letterhead of Mibiz Business Online Services that they began realising they could be victims of a Ponzi scheme. “Over the past two years All Quotes has sold over 2 000 licences at R50 000 thus equalling R100 million investments.”
The court documents read that a vast majority of the victims were pensioners and people who lost their entire pension fund interests.
“Many of these people have been left destitute... while the (directors) are living in the lap of luxury,” Marais said in his affidavit.
Marais and the other victims are being represented by Christo van Niekerk, an attorney at Steenkamp attorneys from Lyttelton.
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