I See The ICFBA Are Still At It

Hi Everyone

I thought it about time I updated this as it seems the ICFBA are still sending out their emails to anyone that posts a CV on a jobs board. At the current time I guess that's quite a few. But judging by the number of people that have contacted me as a result of reading this blog it seems that at least the message is getting out there.
The blog has had over 6000 page loads, so I hope that indicates how many people have not got involved with the ICFBA.

Location

First update is on their location. It seems the American company is registered in Delaware. this is a transcript of a conversation I had with their friendly support staff.

Lora: Hello, Please hold as I review your question.
Lora: Do you have the name or file number for the entity?
Eric: Yes, one moment
Eric: 4548118 - ICFBA HOLDINGS LTD.
Lora: One moment please
Lora: The only name they have listed is Icfba (USA) Ltd
Eric: OK, does it say who owns that company then?
Lora: No, that is all they have listed.
Eric: Is ICFBA (USA) Ltd also listed with you?
Eric: yes it is, number 3967899. can you tell me who owns it then?
Lora: They do not report ownership, they have listed only one name as officer as well, Icfba Holdings Ltd.
Eric: So basically they have created a circular reference which makes it impossible to trace ownership through your records. Is that correct?
Lora: They are only required to report the officers and directors not ownership.
Eric: OK, so is it possible to get an address for an officer?
Eric: Sorry If I am asking dumb questions, I am based in the UK. In the UK companies have to register their shareholders as well as Directors.
Lora: Yes, I can give you the address, one moment please
Lora: The address is P.O. Box 55071 #6665 Boston MA 02205-5071
Eric: Is that the same address for ICFBA USA Ltd?
Lora: Yes that is the same
Eric: Thank you Lora. I know about that address. It's just a post office box, not a business premises. Is there any way to track down who actually owns an incorporation in the USA?
Lora: Unfortunately, not through our office, if you know where they are licensed you could check there.
Eric: That's the problem, they operate out of the UK and cover their tracks through this company, ICFBA Holdings Ltd. I don't think they will be licensed anywhere. But if you have a suggestion of where I should check I would be very grateful.
Lora: That, unfortunately, would be the only place I would be aware of.
Eric: OK, many thanks for your help.
Lora: You are welcome.
Lora: Thank you for contacting us online.

In Delaware it seems you do not have to list who owns the company, the equivalent of our shareholders list. how convenient. it was by discovering the actual owner of the Gibraltar company that I stirred things up for them before.
Each company lists the other as the only officer and the only address is the PO box in Boston. Clearly a company that wants to be tracked down and stand by what it does.
Remember this is the company behind them, not ICFBA Holdings Ltd registered in the UK!

Latest tactic

It seems that if you get sucked in far enough that you would like to talk to an existing member, they will now give you a name. In the past it was all far too confidential. And remember, if you just contact someone through the website, that email actually goes to the ICFBA, not the independent consultant! They will not pass on your email if they don't like what it says. They also monitor all the ICFBA emails that they give out using a master password - they actually told me that in an emal!

However the person you speak to may not be as straight forward as you think. I have been told by one, who has asked to remain anonymous, that if you subsequently joined then they got paid £500. So it was in their interests to paint a nice glowing picture so at least they could get some of their money back.

Publicity Shy

I see that Steve Ebanja and Alistair Quinlan are still publicity shy. If you go to linkedIn and search for ICFBA or the two of them, you will see that they still don't have any photos or many details about them. Very strange for the two people running a consultants network don't you think?

How do you sue a non-existent company?

Hi There
It's been a while since I added to this, but well the good old ICFBA have been stirring things again. You would think that they would want to keep a low profile, but apparently not.
It seems that they have been saying that I never actually won my case against them and that they never even contested the case. Well a few documents should set that right!

This first one is a picture of their acknowledgement of service:

What I like the most about this one is that it was actually signed by Steve Ebanja. He has even given his position as Company Director. Something he was later to deny. You will also note the date, 19th March 2008.
And it was Steve that represented the company at the hearing on the 15th of May 2008. Unfortunately for them the only defence they brought was that they didn't recognise the court's jurisdiction, because they were based in Gibraltar.
I knew that this wouldn't work, because the original contract was signed in the UK under my terms and conditions. What I didn't know is that by returning the acknowledgement of service they had actually accepted the court's jurisdiction.
But I guess they knew that they couldn't defend it based on the facts, so that was there only hope.
In the pre trial discovery I listed 5 pages of relevant documents to support my case. ICFBA Holdings Ltd listed just 5 documents that they thought were relevant to the case. So you can see dear reader I had a lot of documentary evidence to support my case, all of which they were aware of.
Anyway, at the hearing on the 15th of May, Steve was not happy to hear that he had just lost the case. I was given leave to apply for summary judgement against them, which I did.
Now according to the ICFBA, the new company was also incorporated on the 15th of May - coincidence? Hardly.
I wrote to them on the 18th of May asking for settlement. They responded by saying they were going to come back to me, but it wouldn't be until the 30th because of holidays.
They wrote to the court on the 28th of May informing them of the demise of the Gibraltar company and the settng up of the American company. Here is a picture of their letter to the court, which is now a public domain document as it relates to the CCJ.

As you can see, they thought it funny to sign off to the judge "Do have a nice day" You will also note that once again the letter is signed by a graphic. It seems nobody at ICFBA was prepared to put their name to such a letter. That seems to be their standard operating practice.
Below is a picture of my final judgement against them, which proofs beyond any doubt that I did indeed win my case against them and that they moved the company after they lost the hearing on the 15th of May, not before as they claim.

So you might be wondering why they are still bugging me. After cheating me out of my money you would think that they would just let it lie. The problem is that they are still trying to lure people into their organisation. Last I heard it was £7500 a pop. I still get phone calls from people who have been approached by them, usually through unsolicited emails.
Many potential ICFBA recruits come across this website and I am pleased to say it stops and makes them think.
One charge levelled against me in the past is that it is just their word against mine. Well, that's why I have put up these documents. The case was real and they did lose it. Having lost it they transferred all their assets to a new company. That annoyed me so I set up this blog.

Once they became aware of this blog they published their slanderous letter. The purpose of this was to blackmail me into taking down my blog. I issued them with a cease and desist, and they invited me to sue them or if I took down my blog they would remove the letter. But I have little chance of suing them directly as I cannot find anyone to sue.

I have attempted to track them down to take legal action against them, but in all their correspondence, and on their main website, they just put “ICFBA Holdings Ltd, a corporation registered in the USA”. They don’t say where they are registered or provide their registration number. The address they give is just a post office box in Boston. The assumption, given the Post Box address, is that it will be in Massachusetts but although they claim to operate and be registered in the USA, the state of Massachusetts has never heard of this company. This can be verified at the company registration page at:
http://corp.sec.state.ma.us/corp/corpsearch/corpsearchinput.asp
And as I said, they operate in the USA through a Post Office Box. They have however registered ICFBA Holdings Ltd in the UK. You may wonder why they need another company with the same name. My guess would be that it is in case I or anyone else choose to try and take them to court, then they can once again move their assets to a nice safe company. Or could it be that someone doing a quick search for them will come across the UK company and think this is them! However, their website clearly states:

"Excepting ICFBA (Consulting) Ltd., subsidiary companies do not receive payments from any source other than ICFBA Holdings Ltd. Therefore, without regard to how any service is provided, ICFBA Holdings Ltd (a corporation registered in the USA) is the sole beneficiary of any payment made to the ICFBA, no matter how processed."

So if you are thinking of joining you best be quite sure about who is getting your money! Ask who the Company Directos are. Ask about their USA registration number. You may find that they quickly lose interest in trying to recruit you!


And until they stop harrassing me by continueing to publish libelous crap about me, I will continue to update this blog.
By the way, if you ever find out who is behind ICFBA Holdings Ltd, please let me know. Unlike them, you can contact me through my website which is listed in my profile. However, in nearly three years, nobody has been able to supply me with that information.

Just When You Think It Is Over

I had thought just to let this matter drop, but obviously the ICFBA wish otherwise. You will notice that up until now I had posted nothing since May 08, the time that I won my case against them. To be honest I was annoyed. I had spent some 5 months preparing the case and having won it the company set up a new ICFBA Holdings Ltd in the states and transferred all the Asetts there, denying me the chance to get my money.

The ICFBA (the new company) has however chosen to publish an open letter about me and this dispute which is factually incorrect and actually libelous. As with all their letters however, a person has not signed the letter - it is signed by a company graphic. It seems the new company doesn't like anyone to know who is actually running it, or have any information published about it.

And that is the real reason they have published the letter - they want me to take this blog down. Now they could have just asked, or if I publish anything which is not true they could always threaten to sue me. I mean that is there style after all. Just look at what they did at Hexus.net:

http://forums.hexus.net/general-discussion/142105-anyone-heard-icfba.html

People were just trying to find out who they were because they received unsolicited emails from them.
I know they have also threatened UK Business Forums as well.

So why not threaten me? Obviously because what I am writing is actually true.

So I issued them with a Cease and Desist for their letter and threatened to sue them for libel. And here is where it gets funny, no really.

They sent me an email where they invited me to go ahead and do so but pointed out that as they were now based in the US I would have to prove the facts weren't true and "prove serious and wilful negligence to the jury."

Obviously they have not realised that I can sue them in the UK as the letter was published by them on the internet, which they very nicely admitted in their email, and is accessible in the UK.

They also suggested that, "The obvious alternative to legal action would of course be for both parties to remove any postings that the other party finds objectionable."

So it would seem that because they can't sue me for publishing the truth they decided to publish a letter full of defamation thinking that they would be safe from being sued because they are based in the US, hoping that they could negotiate with me to take down any references to what the old ICFBA did to me.

They also sent me their address for service which is a PO Box in Boston.

Now this is very strange, because according to their website http://www.icfba.biz/ their "central admin office" is in Lymington! In fact their contact page has no address for ICFBA Holdings Ltd other than the Lymington address.

And they certainly own the website and all of the ICFBA names as their Terms and conditions page quite clearly states.

It is obviously very difficult to figure out from their website who they are and who actually runs the company. And why would you call an American company Ltd. They don't have limited companies in America, they have incorporations. Maybe they want people to think at first glance it is actually a UK company, but why would they do that?

Interestingly if you search Companies House you will come across another company called ICFBA Holdings Ltd which is registered at the Lymington address. So how many companies do they need?

My guess would be that they have no offices in the states and that all mail is forwarded back to the UK. After all that is what they did with the Gibralter company and I see no reason why they would change; they haven't changed anything else.

Steve Ebanja once claimed on linkedin to own the ICFBA: http://uk.linkedin.com/pub/steve-ebanja/0/67b/872

At least that's what it said until he I pointed it out to him. He has of course now changed it as he doesn't, at least he didn't own the old ICFBA. I have no idea who owns the new ICFBA, do you?

At the time of our dispute Steve was at great pains to point out he didn't own any of it and was just a contracted consultant to ICFBA, not even a Director in the Company Law sense of the word, but he did use the title Director and still does for the new company.

If you have any dealings with ICFBA or are thinking of joining them, you may care to ask:

Who actually owns ICFBA Holdings Ltd?
Who are the legal Directors of the Company.
Why have they set up a new company in England called - wait for it - ICFBA Holdings Ltd (Company No. 06728646 registered to the Lymington Address)
What relationship does it have to the American Company?
What position do Steve Ebanja, Alistair Quinlan and Gary Lewis hold in the company and why does Steve Ebanja insist he doesn't write their emails and correspondence but refuse to say who does?
Why does ICFBA Holdings Ltd sign off their letters and emails with a graphic rather than an identifiable company employee like most reputable companies do?

For an organisation that wants to create "a community of trusted advisors" they are not very transparent in my opinion.

But this is not half the story. Some of the underhanded tactics used by ICFBA Holdings Ltd against me during the court case you will find completely unbelieveable. As I mentioned I had decided to put the whole matter behind me until they pulled this little stunt with no provocation from me for over a year. Now my mind is to document everything that the nasty Gibralter company tried to pull; and I have documentary evidence of it all, so I have no fear of any libel action - indeed I would welcome it.

Take Care.

Staking Your Claim

Before I go any further let me make it clear that I am not an expert. This is the first time that I have taken anyone to court. My clients are generally very happy with my work and I have never before had such a problem to get paid. What I am giving you is my experience with the system when using it to try and get my money out of ICFBA Holdings Ltd.

The first place you have to go is Money Claim Online This is the Online service for the HM Courts. The main website contains lots of useful information and is the source for all of the Civil Procedure Rules. These CPRs as they are known are how civil cases are managed. If you are thinking of taking someone to Court these are what you need to read. You also need to read the Practice Directions attached to each CPR as these give further instructions or interpretations of the CPRs. As it turned out, the ICFBA hadn't bothered to read them and made a couple of fundamental mistakes in defending their case.

At first glance Money Claim Online seems a bit daunting. However read the notes of what you have to do and it really is much easier than you think. There is also a link on the main page to PD 7e which tells you about how to use Money Claim Online. The main things that you need is the Defendant's address - that's the person that owes you money - and a brief outline of the case; oh yes and a way of paying online. The fees vary depending upon how much you are owed, but for me satisfaction was more important than the money.

The court will then send your debtor a notice of issue. This is called "serving". A strange term, but it simply means that you send the papers to the defendant. Or rather the court will. You will get an acknowledgemet through the post that it has been "served" and the debtor then has 28 days in which to file their defence or an Acknowledgement of Service. If they send an Acknowledgement of Service, they then get 28 days from that to file their defence.

So now I was in the system. I had filled my case, it had been served and the ICFBA had acknowledged the claim. So let battle commence.

Get Everything in Writing

So I had my agreement of how I was to get paid. This agreement had come about because of previous late payments that the ICFBA owed me. At one point they owed me £16,000 but that amount was coming down as they honoured their agreement to pay me back. The one problem with the agreement was that they expected me to keep on working for them while they paid it back, or at least that's what they said. Because after cancelling my contract in December they then said that they only agreed to pay me if i carried on doing work for them and as they had cancelled my contract the other agreement was now void.

And here is the problem, the agreement I made was verbal with only a few notes to back it up. Indeed quite a few verbal alterations had been made to my contract over the previous two years, but why worry. After all I was dealing with a company that wanted to create a community of trusted advisors; surely they wouldn't try to screw me over, would they?

It seems so. After several discussions and letters I made them an offer to settle for £5,000. Imagine my surprise then when the very next day they produced an invoice for money that they said I owed them and tried to take that amount off the £5000 and then offer to split the difference - honestly, you couldn't make it up. Needless to say I declned their offer and threatened to take them to court, which I did.

It was then that I entered the world of County Court Judgements and Civil Procedure Rules.

I had never done this before and so I turned to the internet to figure out where to start. And that is what I will tell you about next.

You've Got a Debtor

Let me start by saying it is never fun to have to chase a debtor. You do work for someone in good faith and hopefully they pay up, but not always. I hope that my story will help others work their way through the legal system that is there to help you get your money back, but often can't.

I am a Business Performance Coach and I have been delivering consultancy services for a company variously known as ICFBA, International Confederation for Business Advancement and their real name ICFBA Holdings Ltd. Everything was going well until December 2007, when I had an inkling that something was wrong. They cancelled my contract two days after I had just done some work for them and at the time they owed me £6000.

I was a little concerned, but I had an agreement in place with them of how they were to pay off their debt so I hoped that as they are an organisation accrediting the ethical standards of independant consultants that their ethical standards would ensure that I got paid. However it appears that their code of ethics only applies to others, not those running the organisation.

The people that I was dealing with were Steve Ebanja, Alistair Quinlan and Gary Lewis. At the time I thought they were Directors of the Company; I was to find out much later that they were not. It seems that they were only consultants employed by the company while the only real Director lived in the West Indies; but I am getting ahead of myself. Anyhow, these were the people that I had to negotiate with to get my money back.

My next post deals with the initial negotiations.