John Sothern – Serial con artist, alleged human being, Options4Families & other scams

  So, a recap – I’d applied for a Job on Universal Jobmatch, attended the interview with the affably evil John Sothern in Manchester and been offered the place, however I had to pay £65 for a DBS check which never took place. The company – Options4Families- doesn’t exist, John Sothern is not a trained counsellor with a tragic work background, those sexually abused children are fictional devices to sell his scam. For that full post, please click here

Also, I’m unsure of the etiquette of naming people in blog posts – so I’ve refrained from doing so, aside from John Sothern himself of course. However, I couldn’t have found out what I did, without social media and the people willing to name and shame John Sothern for his fraudulent activities. So here we go…Mr John Sothern, this is your life!

“Won’t someone please think of those fictional children?”

Options4Families

It didn’t take long for doubt to set in after I’d sent off the payment. On a whim I searched Facebook for any other employees of Options4Families. Sure enough, there were none, which is always a bad sign. I also searched Twitter, where I found almost no mention of them –you’d think an organisation that counsels children and doesn’t ask for a fee would gain some attention.

However, I did see one tweet concerning Options4Families, from a woman who had also been contacted for interview by Sothern – however when she arrived at Manchester One she discovered Sothern had left the premises with the police not far behind him.

At this point, I rang the number supplied by the Options4Families site, immediately I heard a dead dial tone.  I really can’t describe how I felt at this point, I’d always thought I was pretty sharp when it came to con artists (see my post about Asha Solanki and her alleged lover Carl Wright), but Sothern had beaten my senses with his personable talk and seemingly frank attitude.

At my next Job Centre appointment I told my advisor about the situation. Her reaction was best summed up as a shrug and a ‘better luck next time’ – which perhaps isn’t the best image to give out when it was a Government website that allowed John Sothern to advertise his scam. Needless to say, the DWP are not going to get out of this situation easily – Iain Duncan Smith has already been contacted by my MP Andy Burnham to find out how something like this can happen repeatedly.

Oh yes, I said repeatedly, as it turns out that the DWP knew Sothern was a con artist since early December – after he was allowed to hold interviews within the Birkenhead Job Centre branch under the name of Options4Families, for yet more jobs that didn’t exist. However, despite this, he was still able to post his fraudulent advertisements well into January, when many others and myself applied.

Digital Donna

I did a little digging with the invoice supplied to me by ‘Donna Phelps’, the address listed in the fine print belongs to a ‘Digital Office’, which in itself is a shady avenue. Digital Offices are set up in prestigious addresses – in this instance London- and can be hired out to companies who want to appear a little bigger and important than they actually are. Or in Options4Families case, a little less fictional. At these Digital Offices, for a fee, the workers will answer correspondences with customers, posing as your employees. Whether the Digital Office was actually in on the scam is unknown, it’s possible Sothern simply used their address and –like many things- conjured the phone number out of thin air. The same could be said of Donna Phelps, there’s a slim chance it was some unwitting worker at a Digital Office taking care of emails for Options4Families – although I find it far more likely that it was Sothern himself.

Burnley & Pendle Children in Need; A Disturbing Trend

As an aside, the phone number featured on the Options4Families site appears in one other place on the internet. Another –presumably- fraudulent site called Burnley & Pendle Children in Need, it would appear Mr Sothern likes to use disadvantaged children to his advantage.

Serial Checker, Or, How to Fail at Marketing

For all his attempts to cover his tracks, John Sothern had made the mistake of appearing in the Burnley Express claiming to be an entrepreneurial victim of burglary who had since invented an app to track stolen goods. The news article from October last year –since deleted after people, including myself contacted the paper- claimed that Sothern was looking to recruit 15 young people to work various roles within his ‘business.’ It’s not a wild leap of the imagination to assume that these roles never materialised. If one takes a look at the apps somewhat lacklustre Twitter feed it’s obvious that Sothern’s business sense isn’t as sharply tuned as his ability to scam people. He resorted to spamming celebrities – particularly footballers for some reason- claiming that people were absolutely flocking to this app and it had received amazing feedback from the public and police. Serial Checker went under soon after and this twitter feed is now the only remnant of it on the internet.

It’s also worth noting, that the image of the Serial Checker website, featured in John Sothern’s now widely circulated picture (see above) suggests that it was exactly the same layout and colour scheme as the Options4Families website – apparently Sothern believed he’d found a winning formula, and stuck to it. Which leads me nicely onto the next segment…

Life In…Magazines

Digging further through John Sothern’s past, one finds themselves in the somewhat odd area of ‘Life In..’ magazines, where he is listed as the managing director and editor of the companies Cheshire publication, see here.

John Sothern; Happier, More Pixely, Times

Of course, it is exactly the same layout and colour scheme as the Options4Families site and long deceased Serial Checker. There is also a Mr John Parks listed as the senior sales executive, this is a name multiple people have confirmed that Sothern operated under while interviewing for Options4Families. Also, tickling my suspicion that none of these people other than Sothern actually exist, one of the people listed as working at the company is a Suzanne Blurrgh – did he run out of ideas for last names?

Like every other site set up by John Sothern, the Life in Magazines features a handy Google Maps widget which pinpoints exactly where the office is supposedly located. In the case of this company, it appears to be a car park in Birkenhead. Likewise, the Birmingham branch of Options4Families also apparently doubles as a Bar & Grill, while the London office seemingly shares space with a Chauffeur company. Also, the Burnley branch of 24/7 Cash for Gold should really be commemorated for helping children in need from the Burnley and Pendle area. 

I found one issue of Life in Cheshire, from 2012, available to read online, featuring a poorly written editorial courtesy of John Sothern himself. The rest of the magazine appeared to be written by young freelance writers desperate to get a foot in the door. Unfortunately for them, it appears John Sothern is only interested in helping himself. When I discovered the Life In… website, I’d wracked my brains trying to work out what con he could have been angling for. It was eventually made clear to me on the 10th of Febuary -oddly enough, the day I was supposedly due to start work at Options4Families. Apparently, when not undergoing more fake interviews -his latest being at the beginning of February in London- John Sothern has been finding the time to contact businesses in Cumbria and offering to sell them advertising space. He seems to accomplish this by playing off peoples familiarity with the County Life range of magazines – it could be an easy mistake to make over the phone. However, this has come to the attention of Cumbria Life’s editor, so hopefully that will be yet another scam abandoned by John Sothern.

I hope through the duration of this rather long post, you’ve come to realise that the man known to many as the rather personable John Sothern (or indeed, John Parks) is a serial con artist, of an almost compulsive nature. It’s evident he has little in the way of conscience, as it seems all too easy for him to conjure up young and tragic victims…of whom, of course, he is the saviour.

Despite garnering three articles from the Liverpool Echo, and one victim of his cons sending every person on his Facebook friends list (the profile now deleted of course) a link to the aforementioned news stories, John Sothern has continued to travel the country, ripping off the vulnerable and hopeful. However, not for much longer; the MP’s for Birkenhead and Leigh are both contacting the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the Police and Fraud Squad know all about his actions. Just this evening I spoke to a reporter from the Manchester Evening News who is eager to interview me, and some of his other victims have already spoken to their local papers.

Undoubtedly John Sothern’s time will come, because, as he will soon learn, it’s impossible to get away with anything in the age of social media. And unemployed people tend to have a lot of time on their hands…

 

 

 

‘The Man Who Lied About Sexually Abused Children;’ the John Sothern & Options4Families Story – Pt 1

(Firstly apologies for the length of this post, there is a lot of information to convey. So much in fact that I’m splitting the post up into two parts, the first detailing my interactions with John Sothern, the fictional Donna Phelps and Options4Families. The second will focus on the fallout of the incident)

There’s an old adage that states “if something seems too good to be true, it probably is” but desperation makes fools of us all.

This was certainly the case in the first days of this year when I applied for the role of Child Therapist on Universal Jobmatch. I’d recently made a resolution to ‘help more people’, so the prospect of aiding young children through difficult experiences appealed to me greatly. I knew it would be a difficult, emotionally draining job. However, my interest was piqued even further when I read the job specification which stated “training will be provided, at no cost to yourself.” In hindsight, this should have been my first warning sign, you can’t just become a therapist -especially one dealing with children- after a short course, however, as mentioned above, desperation had blinded me to the con. As I’m sure many long term unemployed people know, dual feelings of hope and dread take over when clicking that ‘apply’ button. Hope, that this may be ‘the one’ and dread that odds are you’ll never hear anything from this job ever again.

Then the next day I received an email.

It was from the company’s HR Manager, the -presumably- fictional Donna Phelps. She told me that I’d been considered for the job and I would receive details of an interview in the following days. Sure enough the next day I received another email from ‘Ms Phelps’ telling me I’d been booked for an interview at Manchester One on that Wednesday – the 8th January. It was at this point I checked out the site; http://www.options4families.co.uk/ (still available as of this blogs posting…though probably not for much longer.) Again, hindsight is a wonderful thing, it’s a very poorly put together site, especially if a company is trying to gain the trust of prospective clients. The sections on each different issue that a child may face -for example, smoking, drugs or sexual abuse- are slap-dash copy and paste jobs accompanied by an embedded Youtube video. But in my optimism, I missed all this.

The ‘interview’ took place on the 11th floor of Manchester One. Upon leaving the lift, I was met by Mr John Sothern -although it escapes me whether he actually introduced himself as this. He took me to a tiny room that barely qualified as a cupboard, let alone a suitable interview environment.

Image of Sothern, taken from the Burnley Express’s now deleted article on his ‘Serial Checker’ App

Straight off the bat, Sothern asked me if I had children, I joked that I was too young and poor. He nodded, sagely and told me of how he’d once been a therapist for children who had suffered sexual and physical abuse. However he’d transferred to the recruitment side of the company after “[he] found it hard to look [his] kids in the eye at night after hearing all these horrible things people could do to children.” Sothern lied about helping physically and sexually abused children, then brought his own children into the lie – all to sell the scam.

Throughout the interview, Sothern was friendly and charming, disarmingly so. It was very easy to imagine yourself chatting to him at a bar, rather than in a stuffy room full of chairs and Styrofoam cups. His next choice of topic was the pay, this was something I genuinely didn’t know about, as I’d apparently missed it on the job specification, starting pay would be 18.5K. I think my jaw actually hit the floor – no doubt his intended reaction. I was told of how initially, as well as receiving this magical training course that would make me a qualified counselor/therapist in less than a year, I’d also be shadowing another therapist. Sothern then informed me that this was a very difficult part of the induction process, and just recently two girls had left a session pale faced never to return. Of course, this was all lies. He buttered me up with talk of another fictional woman, Alison, who traveled the country offering her services at 50p per mile and was going home with a comfy 54k a year.

No doubt you’re forming the opinion that I’m somewhat naive, or stupid, however, for the last year I’ve been living off £53 per week, even national minimum wage seems like a luxury to me, never in my wildest dreams did I think I’d score an entry level position at 18.5k. I’m fairly certain this is true of all the jobseekers that Sothern targeted. The interview came to an end, during the customary ‘any questions?’ finisher, I asked Sothern two key questions. Where would the job take place? And how did he think I’d done?

He informed me, without hesitation, that the job would be on this very floor in Manchester One. A quick Google of this floor of the sought after address tells you that this portion of the building is owned by no business, it can however be rented out for a period of time – which is what Sothern had done for the two days he was conducted interviews. Of course, there were no signs of any business taking place on that floor, especially not counseling or therapy. It was a very bland, tight series of corridors.

In answer to my second question, Sothern gave me a knowing smile -which I mistook for friendliness- and he told me “If it was up to [him], [I’d] definitely have it. However [he’d] have to send [his] findings to Donna Phelps…and she’d get in touch with [me] by eight o’clock tonight.” Another knowing smile and Sothern added “but if [he] were me, [he’d] expect an email tonight.”

On my way out of the room, Sothern complained that he’d be interviewing all day, and couldn’t wait to get back home. I offered my sympathies and wished him a quick day. He then went onto tell me that he’d only been ‘given’ a half an hour dinner break, which meant he’d only had time for one pint, which was now “running straight through [him].” This did strike me as odd, I’ve been to many interviews, and not once has an interviewer referred to bodily functions before. However, I was too caught up in the moment to care.

Below is an image of the email I received the next morning from ‘Donna Phelps’;

Needless to say, I immediately emailed ‘Donna’ copies of everything ‘she’ wanted, as well as paying the requested £65.60, because if you dangle a job in front of the long term unemployed they’ll bite your fingers off. It wasn’t until a few days later, when I came down from the ‘I’m finally employed’ high, I came to the slow creeping realisation I’d been had. Unfortunately -yet also thankfully- I wasn’t alone…

Part Two Coming Soon

Carl Wright’s new companies, SMD Exchange & ACD Training Academy target the unemployed.

(This entry is mostly a draft statement to be sent to my local branch of Job Centre plus, however I am posting it on the Internet as well in the hopes that someone out there will do their research and give none of the individuals or companies the time of day)

This statement is to catalogue the events and attitudes I observed while on a Pre-employment training course that was marketed to the Job centre and myself as a gateway to ‘ACD apprenticeships.’

The apprenticeship was to be overseen by a Ms Asha Solanki, the alleged head of the company we were to be working for at a rate of £90 per week. From the outset Solanki was rude, aggressive and sparse with the facts. During our first meeting she never revealed the name of her company, nor gave a real indication to what they do. The word ‘finance’ was thrown around occasionally, but that was it.

Throughout the meeting, Solanki went out of her way to bully and cajole everyone present. She mocked people who had chosen higher education, “degrees don’t mean shit, certainly not to me.” And seemed to take pleasure in singling people out based on their past times or history. One boy -17- was mocked cruelly because he’d never had a paying job – apparently Ms Solanki was unaware of the mass youth unemployment and recession.  She also seemed to enjoy the fact that one of our number was visibly terrified of speaking in front of groups of people – thus making it her mission to single him out to talk at every opportunity. However, she did not conduct herself in a way that would promote confidence in the boy, instead it served to leave him a shaking and stuttering even more.

In my time I have both learned and worked beneath ‘firm’ and ‘tough’ authority figures. Ms Solanki was neither, she came across as nothing more than a bully who inspired no respect from the group, only the fear of making eye contact. The majority of the initial meeting was spent being told how amazing she was and that she’d worked hard for all her money (but more on that later.)

During the two training weeks, we were under the tutorage of Manchester College, however we took the course in Solanki’s office, where she would make frequent visits to undermine both the tutor and the efforts of the group. For the most part I cannot criticise Manchester College, nor the staff from there who worked with us, the course was certainly useful, any and all negativity came from Solanki.

If we were undergoing a presentation, Solanki would seat herself in the centre and –for lack of a better word- heckle the groups. She was also heard making inappropriate and unprofessional personal remarks concerning group member’s appearance, for instance, saying that one boy looked like “a donkey.”

During the meeting and her visits Solanki spoke to the group like dirt, the inference seemed to be that unemployment made us lower than criminals. She seemed convinced none of us had any skills worth bringing to the table, other than for use in the call centre. She was even overheard telling a tutor that; “they have these wild and wacky ideas of what they’ll be doing if I take them on.” At this point no one had expressed any particularly ‘wild and wacky’ ideas, save for some of us wanting to work in different departments, e.g. I.T. and Data Processing – two areas which were advertised on the information sheet.

The sheer lack of productive communication was evident during our first day. We were asked by the tutor to do a presentation on the company and what we knew of it. This exercise promptly fell apart as it was evident that no one knew anything about the company, other than its name (which in due time we discovered wasn’t wholly accurate.) Even the tutor revealed that she knew nothing about the company or its practices.

It was only from our primary tutor, David that we learned the ‘real’ name of this company, SMD Exchange. David should be commended for his professional yet honest attitude towards the situation. He told us that he disagreed with Solanki’s methods which he described as “tearing you down bit by bit…she obviously enjoys it.” He explained to us that if it were up to him, Manchester College would have nothing to do with SMD Exchange, however Solanki is friends with a local councillor.

Curiosity got the better of me and I looked up SMD Exchange, within fifteen minutes I had enough information to be suitably outraged by this company and its practices. Formerly known as Cartel Client Review (CCR), the company was run by Carl Wright

 

Wright is known throughout the financial world for being a conman who leaves a trail of destruction in his wake – yet always manages to leave with a large pay packet. CCR was shut down by the Ministry of Justice for demanding £500 upfront from customers, yet rarely – if ever sticking to their end of the bargain. However, the company made roughly £20 million, yet claimed to be unable to refund its clients.

After CCR came to an end, Grass Roots Financial (GRF) sprouted in its place. Literally – it even occupied the same office as CCR (which can be seen in the above image of Wright, that office is now the SMD Exchange headquarters). In no time, GRF was under investigation too. The company now had acquired the habit of not paying employees as well as customers, one person went three months without being paid. A spokeswoman for GRF strenuously denied that Carl Wright was even involved. Who was that spokeswoman? Carl Wright’s P.R. guru, Ms Asha Solanki.

Reading the history of these companies showed Solanki was not the ‘self-made business woman’ she claimed to be. She had ridden the coattails of a con-artist and now served as a front for his latest company, SMD Exchange. I am well aware that is a serious allegation to make, as Carl Wright has –once more- denied being involved in his latest company, with due reason. No one with any knowledge of the financial world will touch his myriad businesses with a barge pole. However, Carl Wright was sighted on two separate occasions in the office, hiding in a glass walled meeting room.

By this point, any fear I had for Solanki had dissipated. However, her unprofessional conduct continued throughout the course. On the penultimate day, she laid hands on a member of the group. During one of her ‘personal grooming’ rants, Solanki stood next to a boy and grabbed him by the face, jerking his head towards her to ‘inspect’ him for facial hair.

During many of her speeches Solanki bragged she had a ‘95% pass rate’ for her apprentices. (Meaning that percentage stuck around for 12 months.) However, what Solanki neglected to mention was that the last time the course was run she only had 3 apprentices – from a group of 20.

The rest were either repelled by Solanki’s behaviour, or disgusted when they discovered the true identity of the company.

However, an even sadder aspect of this story lies squarely in the Job Centres corner. All of us were there under threat of sanction. Yes, that’s right, if any of us were to show a sliver of self-preservation and leave SMD Exchange’s venomous office space, we would be kicked off of Job Seekers allowance for a period of at least three years. ACD Training Academy, Asha Solanki and Carl Wright and whatever company name they choose to operate under are taking advantage of desperate people, both on the customer side and the unemployed of Greater Manchester

Order Received; Introductions

At the time of writing, I’ve been jobless for nine months. 

Nine months of endless hoop-jumping, box ticking and demonisation. 

This blog will be my attempt at ‘serious’ posting – so no adolescent moaning about girls or gifs of cats falling off stuff. Instead, I’ll be focusing on my experience as one of Britain’s 2.56  million unemployed. Perhaps you could call it dispatches from the front. 

I’m currently on Jobseekers Allowance – or JSA as it’s best abbreviated – however, that has recently been suspended for reasons best left till a later blog entry. During my time on JSA I have seen a lot of ignorance on both sides of the fence. You can’t go a day without reading something in the papers about how the unemployed are all secretly slackers eager to live the high life on benefits “paid by the hard working British taxpayer.” And yet, the same people who are demonised will swallow lies about immigrants – or ‘foreigns’ as I heard one person refer to them yesterday – being responsible for their plight. 

I’d also like to make it clear, in no way do I see myself as ‘hard done by’ or suffering the most. I’m quite fortunate -not to mention grateful- to have a wonderful support system of family and friends. However, that being said, even I have struggled recently, so I can’t help but wonder how much people without that luxury are put through. 

For the most part, job centre staff are helpful, friendly and willing to admit the system is far from perfect. However, there are times when you’ll find yourself talking to a brick wall or have the strange sensation that you’re going around in a perpetual loop. 

That’s not to say all my frustration lands solely on the front step of my local Job Centre Employers and politicians have a lot to answer for, particularly in a political landscape which seems to have taken a subtle lean towards social Darwinism. You are forced to take soul destroying work placements for no pay, then told to be grateful for such a privilege.

Quite frankly, I can’t wait to find a job.