A wine merchant has been wound-up in the High Court after the company misled investors and failed to deliver customers’ orders.
Dow And Jones Limited was made insolvent on 17 March 2020 in the High Court of Justice. The Official Receiver has been appointed as liquidator, according to the Insolvency Service.
The current recorded director of the company is Anthony Collins.
At the petition hearing, the court heard that Dow and Jones was incorporated in September 2015, with a registered office in Sidcup, Kent, and a trading address in central London until May 2019.
The Insolvency Service conducted confidential investigations into the firm having received complaints about its trading practices.
Details
Investigators discovered the company sold wine to members of the public as an investment opportunity.
However, Dow and Jones “usually sold the stock to those investor customers at double the normal retail price, making it unlikely that investors would ever get their original capital back or make a profit”, the Insolvency Service said.
Sales staff working for Dow and Jones “falsely claimed” to investors that additional purchases were required to ensure that a portfolio of wines could be sold quicker and at a higher price.
Dow and Jones also “failed to honour customer orders going back to 2016”, with the company also having filed inaccurate accounts at Companies House.
Vulnerable investors
Irshard Mohammed, senior investigator at the Insolvency Service, said: “Similar to boiler room operations, Dow and Jones used sales scripts from previously failed companies, which assisted salesmen to convince people, including the vulnerable, to invest their money in unregulated investments.
“Even those customers who received the wine they had paid for lost a sizable proportion of their investment, as the wine was materially overpriced.
“The courts recognised the unscrupulous nature of Dow and Jones when it wound-up the company and our advice is always to reject unsolicited investment offers that sound too good to be true.”
