Thomas "Tom" Hanley, Robert "Rob" Trumpy and Tim Walsh are perpetuating a scam by telling clients they will provide a $350M loan to job creation businesses by raising a bond securitized by life settlement policies. The policies are purchased for 10% of face value (ie $100M for a $1Bln bond offering), they reserve 40% to service the premiums on the life insurance policies (ie. $400M for premium payments to keep policies active), 15% for fees/transaction expenses and 35% (ie. $350M to you as a loan) to you.
They requested I pay them $250,000 to split legal and origination expenses as well as travel expenses to Europe to fulfill on the bond placement. They also said they expect to place $10Bln over the coming years. Our bond would be one of many and the next one to go.
I gave them a portion of the $250,000 as an initial payment to review the bond offering documents as they would not provide me any documents, other than generic ones, claiming intellectual property.
Once I paid them Rob Trumpy sent me a bogus bond document with typos and inconsistencies throughout. I made corrections to it and had to help him clean it up. This made me very uncomfortable not to mention my company was not named anywhere in the document. I pressed Tom Hanley to explain what was going on and he said he didn't want to stir up more questions with investors as they are really just interested in the life settlement policies for collateral and my business serves to satisfy Irish/US tax policies for tax free treatment of job creating asset investments.
As the fund raising went on, I got very generic emails that seemed like mass emails about how successful things were going in Europe and what they were doing next. It was all a hoax, any time I asked Tom Hanley a question he would go off on a tangent about what was going on in the European market or some other nonsense. Rob Trumpy gave very evasive answers like, you have to speak to Tom about that, I don't know that is Tom's side of the business, Tom is traveling, call him for clarification. Needless to say, I refused further payment. True to form Tom said, "Well I guess you won't be getting your bond money, you are just going to have to wait till after the others..."
After a year, I asked for my money back which he agreed to return. I have yet to see that money and am promised it after the next close. I have insisted that it be returned immediately, I don't care what is going on with the raise and I get the same story about how the raise is going and that it is coming.
This is a sophisticated scam preying on CEO's trying to get much needed funding to grow their business. These guys are playing a charade, they are either using your money to line their pockets, pretending to be raising funds and lining their pockets, or misappropriating your money pretending to be raising bond funds. Either way, they will not show you where your money is going, which bond is yours that they are supposedly raising and won't give you a straight answer despite having nice offices, and claiming the best lawyer in the business, Tim Walsh (former Reagan White House Staffer, etc.).
Also note they go by several names:
Clayton Advisory Group LLC
Clayton Advisors Group LLC
Clayton Collateral Partner, Inc.
There are a couple others I found. Shamrock Ltd
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