“AllAfloat.com”
Draft Allegations of [...]
concerning
the Directors of Global Activity Holidays Ltd., namely Mr Christopher Longmore and Mr Michael Peters
Table of Contents
Summary 3
Chronology 4
Initial booking 4
Reservation form 4
Payment of deposit 5
Payment of balance of holiday cost 5
Confirmation that GAHG was “in financial difficulties” 5
Contact with Mr [ ... ], agent in Turkey 7
Our holiday 7
Hotel [ ... ] payments 7
Payments to Mr [ ... ] 8
Statement by Mr [ ... ] 9
Allegations of criminal activity 10
Continuing to trade whilst insolvent 10
The website at first defaced, then repaired; i.e. they continue to trade with probable intent to commit further theft 11
My records 12
Some contact details of Global Activity Holidays: 12
Summary
We assert, inter alia and without prejudice to any other assertions which may be made in accordance with English Law, that the directors of Global Activity Holidays Group (“GAHG”), a UK registered company:
owe us € 7,925.49, equivalent to approximately £5,300.00, in respect of a holiday to Turkey which we paid for but never received;
are engaged (past and presently) in an internet fraud scam in the UK related to the private chartering of yachts, gulets and similar craft, and associated holiday services such as taking money for hotel bookings which are subsequently not paid for nor delivered; and
are continuing illegally to operate a UK business registered under the UK Companies Act 2006 and websites registered in England (through English registrars) which they know to be insolvent, fraudulent and with intent to commit theft.
We intend to pursue a claim against GAHG in the UK Courts for the money we have lost. We would meanwhile ask HM Police to make further investigations with a view to protecting the public from the activities of the Directors of GAHG which we allege to be criminal activities.
The directors of GAHG are the following individuals:
Mr Christopher Baron Longmore, Director
Address Carrer de la Font 3-5 , Begur , Glorona 17255 , SPAIN Date of Birth 28 Nov 1940
Nationality British Occupation Director
Date Appointed 18 May 2006
Mr Michael David Peters, Director
Address 2a Plock Court , Longford , Gloucester , Gloucestershire , GL2 9DW , UNITED KINGDOM
Date of Birth 03 Jan 1957 Nationality British Occupation Sales Director Date Appointed 09 Nov 2006
Wd & B Co Services Ltd, Company Secretary
Address 143 High Street , Rowley Regis , West Midlands , B65 0EA , UNITED KINGDOM
Date Appointed 18 May 2006
This company is a division of “Woodall Davies & Bache Ltd” (Co. reg. in UK) at the same address.
Chronology
Initial booking
On 29th May 2007, I booked a holiday with Global Activity Holidays Group Ltd.
Re RE Allafloat
information Request. FW Client Price 6006.msg
Attachments 1 and 2: Email exchanges of 29th May 2007
I contacted them through one of their websites, http://www.allafloat.com, and negotiated and booked the holiday by email and on the telephone with a Mrs Linda Peters. The email embedded below gives details of our initial communications:
At the same time as booking, I briefly checked out the company at Companies House and with a credit reference company because Global Activity Holidays was not ABTA or ATOL registered. I copied the below files to my computer for reference; they are embedded below:
global_activity_coy_details.pdf
coy_house_gah.pdf Sorvec.pdf
Attachments 3, 4 and 5: Copies of Companies House records and others
From these checks, I established that the website www.AllAfloat.com was operated by Global Activity Holidays Group Ltd., a UK company based in the West Midlands with Company No. 05727575 (“GAHG”), and that their accounts were apparently
up-to-date. It seemed that Mrs Linda Peters was the wife of a Director of GAHG, Mr Michael Peters. I further established by browsing the internet that GAHG operated other similar websites, notably www.Costa-Brava-Homes.com, www.Global-Activity-Holidays.com, www.Global-Yacht-Holidays.com, www.Global- Yacht.com and www.LateAfloat.com.
Reservation form
Reservation Form 0733.zip
Attachment 6: Reservation form
On 3rd June 2007, I received a Reservation Form (embedded below).
Payment of deposit
On 7th June 2007, my wife paid a deposit, as requested, of EUROS 1,574.00. This amount was paid by Lloyds Bank Visa Debit Card using GAHG’s online payments system, and she filled in and returned the Reservation Form by email. We received a confirmation email and an invoice by email dated 28th June 2007, as below. Also, our bank account records will definitively confirm that the payment was made:
C:\Julian's Docs\
holiday_turkey\Invoc RE Booking no 070733AA.msgAttachments 7 and 8: Confirmation emails of deposit payment.
[ suppressed for confidentiality reasons ]
Payment of balance of holiday cost
On 5th July 2007, in response to a telephone call from Mrs Linda Peters, we paid the balance of €6,351.49 to GAHG. I recorded the telephone numbers from which my telephone indicated the calls were being made; these were from Spanish telephones as follows: +34 664 252 040 and +34 972 303 063. We received the below email in confirmation, and again our bank records will reconfirm the payment. The email stated as follows:
“Dear Amanda, Thanks for the payment which we have received. Our charter vouchers etc. Will be sent to you 14 days prior to departure. Best regards, The Global Yacht Team e mail: admin@global-yacht.com”.
RE Booking no 070733AA.msg
Attachment 9: Confirmation email of payment of €6351.49
In total, we made payments to GAHG of € 7,925.49, equivalent to approximately
£5,300.00.
Confirmation that GAHG was “in financial difficulties”
During July, we repeatedly called GAHG on their UK telephone number 020 7193 1676. We spoke with Mr Christopher Longmore and with Mr Michael Peters. We were personally assured that everything was all in hand and that vouchers and holiday details would be sent out “immediately”.
By the beginning of August, we became increasingly worried that GAHG would not perform against their contract and obligations to us.
On 9th August, having repeatedly tried but failed to contact Mr Christopher Longmore, we eventually spoke with Mr Michael Peters. Mr Peters said that GAHG was in “financial difficulties” and that he and his wife Mrs Linda Peters had left the company to set up their own (very similar) business to be known as “justgulets.com”.
On 10th August, we sent the following email to GAHG and to Mr Peters:
“Email for Mr Michael Peters. Dear Mr Peters, You personally promised on the phone this morning to confirm that the boat "Posseidon" is paid for and all OK, and you promised you were going to send me the details by email today. And you promised to contact the [ ... ] Hotel again and confirm that also. I now note that all your telephone numbers (e.g. the AllAfloat one we phoned you on this morning 0207 7193 1676) have gone dead, but the websites are still online so that's something I suppose! Please, please, please could you get in touch by email and/or phone and let me know what you advise.”
On 11th August, we received the following reply:
“Dear Julian, I am sorry we did not get this to you yesterday – there was a prolonged power cut here. The contact point in Bodrum is: Contact: [ ... ]..
Having spoken with [ ... ] at length yesterday he has been assured by Christopher Longmore that your holiday will have been paid for before you arrive. I know that Michael intends to keep some pressure on Mr. Longmore to ensure that this happens. The boat you are booked is called “[ ... ]” and will be moored at the town quay between the castle and the Marina in Bodrum. You are entitled to airport transfers in Turkey and if you could let me have your flight details I’ll pass these onto Necip to make sure that the transfers occur. I hope that this helps, there is little more that we can do at the moment.
Warmest Regards, Linda Peters, Director of Sales. www.justgulets.com. direct diel +44
(0) 207 193 2868. e mail: linda@justgulets.com”
RE Please help us.msg
Attachment 10: Email from Mrs Linda Peters
On 11th August, I again called the GAHG telephone 0207 193 1676 (which recently was not being answered), and listened to a recorded message in which Mr Longmore stated (my transcript from a hand-written note), “Thank you for calling Global Yacht. Further to major accounting irregularities, Global Yacht has ceased trading. [...] The directors are unable to enter into any further discussion. An email will be sent out today”. I did not receive any email.
From the above, we concluded that we would not be able to go on our holiday without paying for it twice. As my wife and three young children were so looking
forward to our holiday, we decided to go anyway and if necessary pay twice and attempt to recover the money paid to GAHG on our return.
Contact with Mr [ ... ], agent in Turkey
On Sunday 12th August, I spoke with GAHG’s agent in Bodrum, Turkey, Mr [ ... ], having received his contact details from Mrs Peters (see attachment 10).
Mr [ ... ] said he had received an email from GAHG stating that they couldn’t (or wouldn’t pay) for any further of the holidays booked through GAHG. He also said that we were not the only ones in this situation. He said that one party of nine had turned up on the quayside in Bodrum on a recent evening with babes in arms and that he had had to put them up at his own expense. Mr [ ... ] confirmed that he had made reservations forn us at the [ ... ] Hotel and for the gulet “[ ... ]” (as booked through GAHG), and he asked if GAHG wouldn’t pay for the holiday, would we be able to pay again? We said yes, if necessary we would have to.
Our holiday
We took our holiday in Turkey between 15th And 29th August 2007. As expected, we had to pay for everything again.
Below, please find copies of invoices and receipts attesting to the payments made, and also a statement from Mr [ ... ] to the effect that we had to pay for everything again.
Hotel [ ... ] payments
We made three payments to the Hotel [ ... ] by Debit Card in respect of our accommodation and extras. In total, these payments amounted to 6,866.79 New Turkish Lira which, at an exchange rate of 2.46, amounts to approx. £2,791.00.
Copies of the invoices and credit card payments are given below: [ ... ]
Payments to Mr [ ... ]
We paid the sum of €3,900 to Mr [ ... ], partly in cash (Turkish lira) and partly by bank transfer (from my company ED&F Man), as attested below:
[ ... ]
Statement by Mr [ ... ]
At our request, Mr [ ... ] confirmed that he had taken the booking for our holiday as GAHG’s agent, but had not received any payment from them (as agreed by GAHG) and that we had to pay twice. Mr [ ... ]’s statement is given below:
[ ... ]
Allegations of criminal activity
Continuing to trade whilst insolvent
Coincidentally, my wife’s sister, Mrs [...], who resides in Monaco, contacted Mr Longmore about the possibility of a charter in Italy. Mr Longmore offered Mrs Munn a boat and conducted negotiations by email and phone on behalf of GAHG on 14th August (just after we had been told by Mr Peters and by recorded message of “serious financial irregularities”), as attested in the email below:
[ ... ]
The website at first defaced, then repaired; i.e. they continue to trade with probable intent to commit further theft
On our return on 29th August, we phoned GAHG on their usual telephone number (see website below) and received the same recorded message as referred to above (section 2.5). However, today it seems it would be possible to book a holiday using this phone number.
We accessed their website “allafloat.com” on 3rd September 2007 which was defaced as below:
Website accessed on 3rd September (left) and accessed on 1st October (right)
This “defacement” has since been repaired, as may be attested by visiting the website today.
The Directors of GAHG continue to this day to operate a large number of other similar websites. These websites include the following (as may be attested by third party websites including “aboutus.org”):
Costa-Brava-Homes.com Costa-Brava-Homes.co.uk Global-Activity-Holidays.com Global-Yacht-Holidays.com Global-Yacht.com LateAfloat.com JustGulets.com
Vacaciones-En-Velero.com VacationsAfloat.com ShortBreaksAfloat.com Vela-Global.com
Voile-Globale.com
... and no doubt others.
My records
I have good records of all email and some telephone conversations. These are, of course, all available on request.
Some contact details of Global Activity Holidays:
From invoice (and confirmed at Companies House): GLOBAL YACHT HOLIDAYS
VAT Registration Number 889 9015 59
A Division of Global Activity Holidays Group Ltd Reg No: 5727575 UK 143 High Street, Rowley Regis, Warley, W. Midlands B65 0EA sales@allafloat.com
From http://www.aboutus.org/AllAfloat.com
Apartado de Correos 19
17255 Begur, Girona 17255 SPAIN
GLOBAL YACHT CHARTERS Ltd
+34 972 624548, Fax: +44 115 8770213
Telephone numbers recorded on which we were contacted
+34 664 252 040
+34 972 303 063
+34 972 612 404
