Copyright © Richard Perry 2018. Copyright commencement date is 14th February 2018.
Richard Perry Versus.
Group 2 Defendants Page 2
Background to the situation and offences
How Group 2 is linked with Group 1 Defendants and evidence.
Defendants: HENRY WYNDHAM HULME HULME ARCHITECTURL FENCING Ltd BIRKDALE SALES (BJA HOLDINGS T/AS BIRKDALE ETC) JOHN NELSON ABERNETHIE ABIGAIL HEATHER ABERNETHIE International Crime corroborated and aided and abetted by Abbey Trading, California, USA and ‘Hal’ a man in their legal counsel.
1. Patent Fraud/Theft, 2. Concealment, 3. Aiding and abetting, 4. Corroboration, 5. Subornation, 6. Conspiracy etc. 7. Criminal Attempts etc. 8. Recklessness 9. Public disorder act offences. 10. Perjury; tendering of false statements on oath or otherwise
Other breaches of contract that had significant impact and that caused serious injury were that Henry Hulme refused to supply a full range of my products and deliberately curtailed trade and prevented expansion and profit, yet claimed I couldn’t contact his customers in order to sell them the full range where there was a good demand for the whole range that he refused to supply. This is proven in emails between us and customer complaints about not being able to obtain a full range of sizes of my prodyct. He also made many deceitful and false statements and told me that the industry wouldn’t pay more than 21p for my product so I couldn’t increase the price to him so that I could get my share our of it. The statements are proven to be deceitful because I was told by Kate at Fountain Timber that he had been selling the product to them at over 30p – I have their business and invoices as a witness or the invoices could be subpoenaed. Henry Hulme told me that in his opinion, if I earned 1p out of every bracket I sold it would be far too much and unfair to him, whilst he deceitfully doubles or triples his money. This is economic tort and fraudulent. During the last few years of our ‘extended contract’ orders, Mr. Hulme even demanded that he deal with the Chinese MFR directly so that I couldn’t make anything out of the agreement. I didn’t have any choice because the knock on effect from his previous law breaking was that my stocks and capital had depleted and I couldn’t even afford to place an order for my own stocks for my own business. I did offer him many chances to invest in me or my business so that we could expand it and grow it together where we would both make money out of it, but in hindsight, because I wasn’t a part of their silly Plymouth Brethren ‘we believe in zog’ group, he wouldn’t invest or even share a meal with me. This is how bitter and twisted these little losers are. Mr. Hulme declined all of these offers which was also just out of sheer greed and envy and the fact that these useless old men despise successful young men. Eventually I got fed up with this hassle year after year and I told Henry Hulme I wouldn’t be doing any more business with him and that I would not renew the contract when it expired. However, occasionally we did patch things up on a temporary basis, another couple of orders went through but I wasn’t really making anything out of it. At one time when Mr. Hulme and I were negotiating an order he even said to me ‘I’m sorry but I’m going to have to screw you’. I was deeply offended at this hideous statement and then I realised that he knew he was breaching the agreement. His solicitor later denied that he said this, even though she wasn’t even there and then offered a pittance in compensation. See below. At the time I didn’t realise that Henry Hulme’s actions were unlawful and, being too trusting, inexperienced and just starting off in this business, I just believed what he said in good faith because I thought he must have been fairly successful. You know, you respect your elders type of thing. Anyway, I did extend the contract for one year and possibly even another year on top of that but it didn’t work out. In hindsight and now shown in evidence, Mr. Hulme was only asking for one year contract extensions whilst he was developing his new counterfeit version of my patented product. This was so he could phase my product out of the market and introduce his unlawful patent infringing version, despite the fact that he knew he was infringing my patent and defrauding me. This is shown in evidence on page 1 (previous page). I suffered many substantial losses due to Henry Hulme’s law breaking and eventually demanded that he pay me damages for breach of contract. The part of patent infringement/fraud and other offences only came into the light after further events had happened between the other Group 1 Defendants in the other cases and after I had found more evidence that linked everything together: the letter of 22nd August 2016 from Collyer Bristow LLp found under Defendant Law Firms pages. Eventually I found out about this new version of my product that I allege is defrauded from my patent, but at the same time I had also begun getting into legal disputes with Henry Hulme and was demanding that he compensated me for his breaches of contract. I also had the big fight going on with the Group 1 Defendants who it turns out trade with Henry Hulme and his trading partners BJA Trading t/as Birkdale Sales. I spoke at length to his solicitor and at the time I recall that I was only asking him to pay me £25,000 which would have covered the costs of the trade shows where I had exhibited and wouldn’t have gone anywhere near compensating me for all of the losses I had suffered. At the time, I didn’t really have any idea of the true value or damages that I would have been entitled to and in hindsight my offer to him of 25k was a gift horse. I bet that looks extremely cheap now! His solicitor refused and she said ‘I think it should be £7,000’. I refused to accept such a pittance and now this situation with the other Defendants has unveiled itself I’m glad I didn’t. We then had a meeting arranged at her office so that the situation could be discussed face to face. I think at this point I still hadn’t known about his dealings with John Abernethie because if I had I don’t think I would have offered him 25k. Mr. Hulme then cancelled at the last minute. He then rearranged and cancelled the next meeting as well. He then telephoned me and told me that he didn’t have £25,000. He then tried to blame his breaches of contract on his partner ‘Stan Thompson’ and told me ‘Stan’s only a salesman’ when Stan had told me that he had been employed as a Director and that he owned shares in Henry Hulme’s company. This is true and is proven by the records held at Companies House. It is also proven in evidence that when Mr. Hulme closed and wound up his own business, he failed to disclose to the receiver that he was facing a lawsuit for substantial damages and claimed that he was retiring. The truth is he had tried selling his business to many other people who refused because his business wasn’t worth anything. This is witnessed by J. Marriot at Fenceline who became a distributor of my products after we had also met at GLEE. John told me that Henry Hulme had tried to sell his business to him largely based on the distributorship of my products, which he didn’t have any lawful right to do because it was written in to our contract to prevent him doing it. The records can be found at the receiver’s office. I believe it was around this time he began counterfeiting my product that he sold to John Abernethie at Birkdale Sales, who is trading partner of FH Brundle, Group 1 Defendant. The dispute didn’t go any further at that point because the court cases against the other Defendants had begun and I just couldn’t cope with two big cases going on and so I left it. I didn’t realise that it was all connected until after the bankruptcy order of 2015 when the evidence that arose from those proceedings and hearings started to fall into place and align with events of the second conspiracy, which is part of one large industry conspiracy to defraud me of my lifetime’s work and tens of millions of pounds of IP rights. After many breaches of contract and carrying out his unethical trading practices, Henry Hulme decided to step up his law breaking and take it to a new level. This level was a proper and serious intent to injure me where I would undoubtedly make a loss at his vast gain, and he conspired to injure me and defraud me with the help of the other Defendants. Henry Hulme made an unlawful contract with John Abernethie and sold the rights to his new product which he knew infringes and is defrauded from my patent, to John Abernethie and his Companies, Birkdale Sales and so on; an agreement that was birthed from criminal activity and unlawful. It is proven in evidence (shown below) and through the conduct of John Abernethie and events that followed that he also knew very well that what they were doing was unlawful and yet they continued to do it anyway. They advertised the buyout extensively in Fencing News Magazine. Since then of course it has now transpired that Henry Hulme knew very well that he was conspiring to injure me and defraud me by colluding with John Abernethie. These two agreed that Birkdale would buy Henry Hulme’s version of my product which without any shadow of a doubt infringes and is derived from my patent and that Birkdale would distribute it to hundreds of retailers across the country. They are still doing it now making thousands of criminal transactions because they thought they were comfortably being aided and abetted by the United Kingdom Judiciary and the corrupt Richard Hacon who also blocked any claim from going ahead against Birkdale, John Abernethie and Henry Hulme, as proven in his judgement of 25th September 2015. Having been through one set of patent infringement proceedings in the civil courts I know very well how the courts operate and determine infringement. I had written to Birkdale and John Abernethie and asked him if he would distribute my product. He then telephoned me from his mobile phone whilst he was driving somewhere and told me he wouldn’t. The conversation was short because he said he was driving. I told him I may have to come back to him on it and at the time of this conversation I didn’t fully understand what was going on and didn’t suspect any foul play. At the time I didn’t know that all of this was connected and that these firms and their owners all belong to the same religious cult and that they all trade together. I didn’t know Birkdale traded with FH Brundle until Patrick Wheeler of Collyer Bristow LLp told me himself in his letter of 2016 which Mr. Wheeler submitted to Mrs. Justice Rose. John Abernethie has since gone around the industry with Henry Hulme’s offending product telling everyone ‘it does exactly the same job and it’s 5p cheaper’. I was told this information by Lee Smith at Smith’s Fencing who had been selling my product for several years and had then stopped selling mine to sell only Birkdale’s counterfeit. The key wording as another proof of their intent and mens rea is that their sales pitch was ‘it does exactly the same job’ and the word ‘exactly’ being predominant because this is what a counterfeit does and it can’t do anything else. I had been phoning around my customers to see if I could do anything to keep my product in their stores. Almost every retailer declined and refused to deal with me because I couldn’t compete with a company with hundreds of products who could afford to give away the illegal product for free if they had to. I could not compete with multi-million pound corporations and their resources. Reducing the price is a typical Henry Hulme business practice. He doesn’t know anything about marketing or competition or trademarks or goodwill - he thinks that just by reducing price everyone will automatically ditch my product. I did manage to retain about 20 customers when I had had hundreds. This has devastated my business and completely wiped it out. I am going to ensure these loathsome little shits go to jail, especially when they are going around calling themselves ‘Christians’ and donating money to charities made from the proceeds of serious crime.
Once I’ve realised that their new product infringes and is defrauded from my patent, John Abernethie and his staff have gone around the industry telling customers that my business would ‘soon be gone’ and ‘he’s bankrupt’ due to being bankrupted by the criminal activity of his trading partners FH Brundle and the other Defendants. John Abernethie and his staff convinced the customers to continue selling his counterfeit/illegal product to continue injuring me and making vast profits for himself because he thought that he wouldn’t ever get caught and that it wouldn’t ever catch up with him. When I found out about this sickening behavior I wrote another letter to John Abernethie informing him that I knew what was going on, and amongst other things he had deliberately set up another bogus company at Companies House to make it look like his trading company wasn’t the same company as the company selling the illegal product. In 2015 he incorporated BJA Holdings Limited, Company: 09645402. He also tried to make BJA Trading T/As Birkdale Sales look like it was ‘Birkdale Sales Unlimited’ Company No. 09408920 or that ‘Birkdale’ was a separate unlimited company not connected to his previous crimes or the other registered companies or selling the infringing product. This plot is an exact replica of the Group 1 Defendant FH Brundle who in 2010 and after realising they had been caught, set up a new company at Companies House and put all their assets into it to try to ring fence the proceeds of crime. This is Companies Act fraud and serious economic crime and criminal attempts such as concealment. According to their own advertising and website, the Birkdale firm has been trading for 130 years without any other Company, and so why would you suddenly need to go and form another limited Company at the same time you start counterfeiting and defrauding someone’s patent if it isn’t to try to conceal serious crime and ring-fence or protect assets? It is because you know your crime is putting your assets at risk. However - the next few sentences show how uninformed and reckless these people are, because it used to be a wildly known practice in the UK that individuals would form Companies to do preceisly that which is ringe fence assets from punishment for fraudulent trading. In normal circumstances the reason people form Companies is for limited liability so that the investors can remain as shareholders and their personal assets are protected if the Company is closed etc. Legitimately with proper and good reason. Apart from this being a main reason for establishing a company, what these little fools don’t realise is that the law changed about 15 years ago so that Courts and law enforcement could look behind the Companies at who is running them and the purpose for forming them. These were amendments to the law to stop preceisely this type of fraudulent trading and cirme from happening. What people were doing was forming companies, defrauding people and then closing them, and they could try to argue all sorts of reasons why the business closed to avoid criminal punishment which is why we have both Defendant Groups 1 and Group 2 setting up new companies after according to them ‘150 years of honest business’ and putting all their assets into these firms once they realise they’ve been caught. This just goes to show how out of touch these pathetic little clowns are and so it doesn’t make the blindest bit of difference how they’ve tried to evade criminal punishment - it’s all there in their own evidence, forms signed at Companies House in their own words and signatures. They would have been better off not doing anything because there would have been less evidence. I’m not evan a trained prosecutor and I could have a field day with this! So basically John Abernethie and Abigail Abernethie have tried to disguise which company or unlimited firm is trading as which business or even which business is trading in which products, for the purpose of concealing crime. It is also no sheer coincidence that these other two companies have been set up around the same period of time that I had found out about this second patent theft of GB2401616 and asked John Abernethie and Henry Hulme for an explanation. Mr. Hulme refuses to respond. On 26 th May 2017 I received a letter from Birkdale Sales and John Aberenthie that stated that he refuses to provide any legal defence to the allegations of intellectual property theft/fraud, conspiracy or any of the other offences. He enclosed a copy of HHJ Hacon’s judgement and restraining order that states I could not make any claims without permission of the Court, as his reason to refuse to co-operate. He was aided and abetted by the US parent firm or operation Abbey Trading. That gives me legal standing in the USA Courts. However I asked him how he thought a restraining order in the civil courts prevented me bringing criminal charges in the criminal courts - he didn’t answer. These are not the actions of an honest person. If he had a lawful and honest defence to the alleged counterfeit product, then why not simply provide it instead of hiding behind an unlawfully obtained restraining order?? John Abernethie and his firms have deliberately concealed the offences and his new businesses have only been established as a mask or a means to throw off or prevent justice, or to pervert the course of justice. This is carefully organized criminal activity. John Abernethie knew that his unlawful activity was putting the entire established Birkdale name or company at risk as well as its innocent staff, as well as his other assets that are all connected, such as his property company. He also directs the Plymouth Brethren Church that connects most of the defendants, as shown in the Crime Web. After more events have now happened in the civil courts against the other Defendants in the civil patent infringement proceedings, John Abernethie has realized that he cannot avoid punishment due to the wealth of evidence and then goes running to Richard Brundle for protection. A fact that further proves that John Abernethie is highly involved in this organized corporate crime. His conversation with FH Brundle probably went something along the lines of ‘you told me he was bankrupt’ and ‘you said you would take care of it’ and ‘you said we would get away with it’ and ‘we didn’t have to worry’ blah blah blah - this is precisely what the evidence suggests. They probably thought that their Plymouth Brethren connections would get them out of their criminal activity, especially if there are people in Government who belong to the same cult. It should be noted that none of the Defendants or Defendant firms in this Group 2 have any patent whatosever on the product I allege is defrauded from me. In 2014/15 Henry Hulme sold the rights and customers of his Company to John Abernethie and his firms and then Mr. Hulme liquidated and eventually dissolved his own Company at the time when he realized that he had to possibly answer to criminal charges. Mr. Hulme had kept his Company dormant, instead of closing it, for several years after he had completed his part in the conspiracy and made his gain. He kept the Company dormant for the reason of putting up a limited liability defence at some later date, which is yet another criminal offence as previously explained. These silly mindless old men think that they’re clever enough to outwit the law which is precisely why these laws are in statue.
(next para. may be a repeat on othe pages). The evidence of conspiracy between Group 1 and Group 2 Defendants is provided from the very mouth of Patrick Wheeler of Collyer Bristow. In the letter to me dated 22 nd August 2016 found under Defendant Law Firms pages and, as explained on page 4 of that Group, he was trying to find another way of getting FH Brundle off the hook and was trying to bring the attention of the court to the fact that I had written to John Abernethie at Birkdale Sales who is one of the culprits/perpetrators of Conspiracy 2. I know very well and have a witness to prove that Birkdale Sales is not just a ‘customer’ of FH Brundle which was a phrase authored by Patrick Wheeler. These firms are very well connected and in are bed together, they all trade with one another and the owners all belong to the Plymouth Brethren religious cult. I didn’t know and couldn’t possibly have known that John Abernethie, his Company Birkdale and FH Brundle were doing business together, as FH Brundle haven’t ever divulged a customer list to me. As soon as I read the 22nd August letter, it all just clicked into place and this was the missing link. I immediately replied to Mr. Wheeler and asked him this question: Why would John Abernethie be running to FH Brundle with details of a potential legal claim against himself and Birkdale (Conspiracy 2) if he didn’t believe or know very well that the frauds are connected? Mr. Wheeler refused to answer. Evidence in Conspiracy 2 The fact that neither Hulme or Abernethie have their own patent yet they have a registered design, and then their conduct and actions after I had alleged infringement, clearly proves Actus Reus and Mens Rea. I know for a fact that Hulme spent considerable time investigating patents and even took advice from Graham Cooles (his intellectual property solicitor) as I had several communications with Graham Cooles about it. This proves several things: 1). that they couldn’t get a patent because they couldn’t get around my patent, when a patent only costs about £140 more than a registered design and when a patent is far stronger in terms of commercial value and enforcement; therefore it doesn’t make any commercial sense only to apply for a registered design if one can obtain patent rights, 2). they knew they were infringing my patent due to 1). above and yet continued to commercialise their infringing product and went around stealing all of my customers using the sales pitch ‘it does exactly the same job’. Had they in fact not registered a design on their infringing product, they may have had an alibi or excuse that they simply didn’t want any intellectual property and had no interest in protecting their product. They could have claimed that the cost of IP wasn’t commercially viable and then they would just be exposed to a patent infringement law suit. However, because they did take legal advice and couldn’t and didn’t obtain a patent but only registered a design, their actions prove that they couldn’t get around my patent and this proves their intent and conspiracy to injure me. They carried on and did it anyway, hoping that it wouldn’t ever catch up with them. This is reinforced by the fact that after Hulme had launched his offending product, Abernethie refused to stock my product but continued to distribute ‘en masse’ their offending product through hundreds of customers knowing that they couldn’t get around my patent and knowing that I would stil be injured and don’t have any legal defence to offer regarding counterfeiting or IP fraud. Graham Cooles Solicitors and communications between Cooles and Hulme should be subpoenaed to find further proof. I tried doing this in the civil courts in 2017 and Justice Mann blocked it to prevent any evidence being provided. Details under judicial corruption page. This judge is also a Defendant. 3). They also refused to invest in me or my product and refused to enter into any licencing agreement and thought they would get rid of my product from the market place and defraud me of my patent rights. Why not simply licence my patent and product in a lawful way? 4). Means Rea: Hulme and Abernethie have actually even copied the exact dimensions and sizes of my product. In 2003 I designed product width sizes of 32mm, 41mm, 47mm, 52mm and some larger dimensions last year. I designed these sizes by going around dozens of retailers and measuring fence panel widths of a wide range of fence panels made by a wide range of manufacturers. These are not ‘industry standard’ sizes – they did not exist in any fence bracket/fixing before I designed them for the industry based on averages that I had calculated, my own tolerances and estimations from my own research. Hulme and Abernethie have just copied the whole lot, millimeter for millimeter, and this is advertised on their own website and in their product catalogues. This proves their intent to rob me of my product because they paid close attention to every dimension and I will show more evidence of this in the evidence bundle. 5). Conspiracy, fraud and intent is proven by one simple question: why would John Abernethie go running to FH Brundle with my independent and separate letter to him alleging intellectual property fraud of the Birkdale ‘Easy Use Panel Clip’, if he didn’t know and believe that himself and Hulme were defrauding me and trying to find a way to prevent any leagl claim against them? Yet again, an exact replication of behaviour of FH Brundle who went immediately running to their London Law Firm Collyer Bristow after one letter of complaint from an individual. There wouldn’t be any reason at all for J. Abernethie to have contacted FH Brundle with details of my allegations, therefore making the situation one mass industry conspiracy and multi million pound fraud. Patrick Wheeler was desperately trying to absolve himself and the other Defendants by informing the court that I had contacted John Abernethie (‘who’s name is spelt as ‘Abernathay’) which was absolutely nothing to do with Wheeler and the other Defendants at the time. I have heard that if you ask liars enough questions, eventually they will trip themselves up and change their story because there can only be one version of the actual truth. The truth is that the Defendants have conspired to defraud me and stolen my entire lifetime’s work and business, leaving me bankrupt and impoverished and contemplating death, whilst they make millions of pounds for themselves out of my work. I’m no longer interested in their stinking laundered money – I just want to put them behind bars for lifetime imprisonment which is exactly what they deserve. There are evidence questions to follow for the Defendants including Abigail Heather Abernethie the wife of John Abernethie and financial controller of the company BJA Holdings and who has been complicit in this lawlessness. She is also a Defendant: concealment, corroboration, aiding and abetting etc. I had written to her several times and refused all communication.
The Plymouth Brethren in the United Kingdom The Plymouth Brethren is a religious cult posing as a Christian Organization. I didn’t realise Christians go around committing crimes against others for the sake of profit and then reducing tax liabilities by gifting funds made from the proceeds of crime, to charity. The Plymouth Brethren members in the United Kingdom all think that they’re better than everyone else and the average person on the street, and they think anyone and everyone is ‘unclean’ except them. They truly believe that they are the ‘chosen ones’. These people won’t share a meal and are even reluctant to shake hands with anyone who isn’t in the club and male members completely ignore or refuse to acknowledge any women outside of their cult. This is a very close community and the members are very well acquainted. It never ceases to amaze me to the degree that people will get sucked into marketing so that they can have friends and belong to a silly club despite it being run based on organised crime. I suspect that whoever is in Government that is also behind this conspiracy or who is pulling strings is also a member of this group and so I wish to subpoena a list of its members so that this person will be revealed and punished. Unless of course even members of the judiciary are connected to this group which could be another reason why I have been stone walled by the justice system. I know for a fact that FH Brundle do business with Moncaster Wire Products (who are not yet a defendant or added to proceedings). MoncasterWire Products have been involved in distributing the goods in Conspiracy 2 (stolen from my patent GB2401616) on behalf of John Abernethie and Birkdale. Mark Swaby at Moncaster Wire Products is a Plymouth Brethren member. I was told this by John Marriot who used to wholesale my products before he retired and who used to trade with Moncaster Wire Products. Mark Swaby himself (part owner of Moncaster told me that he did £200,000 worth of business a year with FH Brundle. FH Brundle do business with Betafence and are in fact Betafence’s main UK distributor apart from Britannia Fasteners Ltd who I believe are the criminal front company for Betafence, designed and put in place to keep Betafence’s hands clean. Henry Hulme is also a Plymouth Brethren member. I do not believe John Marriot or Mark Swaby are involved in this in any criminal way but they have evidence about the others. These are witnesses. John Abernethie is the Director of the Plymouth Brethren (Exclusive Brethren) Christian Church, Company No. 08175944. The very use of the word ‘Exclusive’ in their company name proves that they think they are better than absolutely everyone else and it is this sheer arrogance that has led them to believe that they could just break the law, do whatever the hell they like and made them think that they could hide behind the good name of a Christian Church to help them get away with it and conceal their organized crime. This is abominable ungodly behavior and I don’t believe that a God fearing Christian or a person who is religious and with good intent would go around acting in this manner. Henry Hulme also emailed me out of the blue with some nuisance emails revolving around the situation. Unless he knows or believes that he is involved, why would he have any reason at all to email me? I haven’t done any business with him for 5 years. This proves mens rea his involvement in this crime. Abigail H Abernethie is a Director of the same Defendant companies as her husband. There is no way that this woman didn’t know what was going on, or didn’t play any part in it, especially being a spouse. She received my letter asking for an explanation and refused to come forward or provide any response and continued concealment. So finally, here we are: all the Defendants connected both in trade and by their religious cult and who have each played a part in conspiracy and intent to injure me. Whether EVERY individual Defendant knows EVERY other individual Defendant is irrelevant – each one knows at least one or two others who have all played a part in achieving the goal of defrauding me and stealing my lifetime’s work whilst making vast amounts of money for themselves. Millions of pounds and career benefits. The laws on Conspiracy state that not everyone in a conspiracy may have knowledge of every other player’s part because this is how criminals try to keep their hands clean but as long as they commit a\or do an act that furthers the conspiracy or supports it then they are guilty of the offence with up to seven years in custody PER OFFENCE and there are thousands of transactions. Mr. Wheeler claims that all of this, and hundreds to thousands of pages of evidence, only exists in my mind. Yet that can’t possibly be the truth, can it, with such a wealth of overwhelming evidence that proves my claim, including evidence in his very own written words. None of these people, not a single one, have any success story. None of them can say how they designed their products and all the journey that goes with, like my fencebrackets story (Richard Perry Life page top menu bar). They just go around stealing and defrauding and sending their death threats and hate emails when they get caught. I wish to have these people banned from trading and jailed for life.
Plymouth Brethren Annual Meeting: Leader: I wish to thank everyone for coming and for all your donations and tithing. It has supported our group more than you can imagine, helping fund perjured legal cases etc. However I must inform everyone, that because we’re really nice people - I mean really, really nice, we’ve found that the God known as Zog is better worshipped and is better aligned with our beliefs, because Zog helps us carry out serious crime. So due to a change in our beliefs, we now ask everyone to burn the old manufacturing brochures etc and pledge your allegiance to Zog. Zog the almighty, Zog the omnipotent, Zog the all seeing eye. If you do this, IF YOU WORSHIP ZOG, you’ll be in paradise. Ordinary Member: Excuse me, I can see you’re all really, really nice people, but do you think you can give me that money back that I donated? I’ll still believe in Zog and everything, but there’s something about serious and organised crime that doesn’t seem to sit right with my Christian beliefs, so I just wondered if I could have the money back. Leader: Sorry, we can’t. Because we spent it on our new Coventry warehouse bought from the proceeds of serious crime. Crowd: (chanting): We. love. Zog, We. love. Zog, We. love. Zog, We. love. Zog…. Group Member (taps on the shoulder of the Leader and states in a low key tone): Psst, Sorry to interrupt you, there’s a group of uniformed men outside, they say they’re from the Serious Fraud Office and they want to have a word with you. They say you won’t need to bring anything…
Background In 2007 I had met Henry Wyndham Hulme who was the owner of, and directing, Hulme Architectural Fencing Ltd, Company no. 03957219 at the GLEE Trade Show. This was very early on in my business and was after only one year of my products hitting the stores across small regions of the UK. The GLEE show was a very good show for the garden and leisure industry and I have exhibited at this show for three or four years. It created awareness of my products across a good portion of the garden and DIY markets and allowed me to reach an international audience. During the show, Henry Hulme’s employee or partner ‘Stan Thompson’ noticed my business and I agreed with him that we should meet to discuss the possibility of their Company ‘Hulme Architectual Fencing Ltd’ (owned by Henry Hulme) distributing my products to a sector of the industry in which they had a lot of customers. My products fitted in well with their assortment of small line products. After meeting Henry Hulme and Stan Thompson at my workshop shortly after the show, there were one or two more meetings and I signed up a wholesale deal with Henry Hulme and his company Hulme Architectural Fencing Ltd so that they would begin wholesaling my products to their customers. The deal and each party’s implementation of the agreement actually went quite well for about two years and then Henry Hulme saw what a massive potential my products had and then his greed and envy got the better of him. Despite our contractual agreement, Henry Hulme decided to go around stealing my customers even though we had agreed we would avoid treading on one another’s toes and even had a block exemption of reserved customers listed in the agreement. I honoured the agreement and if I saw that a retailer had already ordered from Hulme Architectual Fencing Ltd I would avoid trying to get them to deal directly with me. Ethics, right? The contract with Henry Hulme and his company was not exclusive in any way; it was a non-exclusive selective distribution agreement. Nonetheless, Henry Hulme decided that it was exclusive and this is when the agreement began to fall apart. He claimed he had an exclusive contract over the entire market which he knew he didn’t and many sectors of the market were not even within the types of customers he sold to. He had a few hundred customers that were fencing specialists, a few dozen garden centres and a few larger customers that he notified me of in the reserved customer list. So he claimed that every customer I had acquired by exhibiting and marketing my products at the shows were automatically his, and he demanded that I hand over any business I had done with these customers, despite himself not paying towards ANY costs of acquiring these customers and it was extremely expensive. It was clear in the agreement that I would acquire and maintain my own customers and we agreed we would not cross customers and we would avoid cross selling and treading on one another’s toes. The result of this situation was that I was the one spending tens of thousands on marketing and advertising costs and then he was taking all of the customers and profit. As one can imagine, I soon became annoyed with this situation which was an outright breach of contract and was extremely unfair. The relationship began to deteriorate. Other issues were price and marketing strategy. Because I was starting off and eager for support from old and more experienced business people, much of what HH told me I took on board because I didn’t have a lot of idea of anything. It got to the point where I wasn’t making any profit at all because even though there was techniclly a few pence profit on each unit, (these are only low value products) because I had to meet large minimum orders, I was ending up with some extra stock but most of the profit went on marketing and logistics. Henry Hulme told me that he could only make a few pence per unit because the market wouldn’t pay more than 21p which was an outright lie becuase I was selling my stock at 28p and I also had several complaints from his customers who were telling me they were paying HH 36p. Therefore HH was doubling or trippling his money whilst I was struggling to make anything at all and had to pay all the costs; marketing, patent fees, business costs, insurances, trade show costs etc. There was even one time where Mr. Hulme had placed an order for goods, paid a deposit and then tried to renegotiate the price after the order had been manufactured and was being shipped. He refused to pay the balance on the order and thought I was going to pay for it. I refused to release the cargo and told him that if he didn’t honour the agreement for that particular order I would return the shipment to the manufacturer and he would lose his deposit. He then got his solicitor involved (Leticia Jennings) who emailed me and asked what was going on and she clearly hadn’t been told the entire truth by Henry Hulme. I explained what Mr. Hulme was doing which was at best unethical and a complete breach of contract. She advised Mr. Hulme to pay up and she held his money in escrow until the goods were landed. I then asked for payment in advance because I lost trust in Mr. Hulme. The solicitor released the payment and I delivered the goods. This situation which led to more distrust could have been avoided entirely had Henry Hulme done what he said he was going to do, but these are just greedy dishonest little losers who can’t think of anything for themselves. At some point in the relationship, Stan Thompson had decided to deal with me on the communication side of things because Henry Hulme and I were arguing over pennies about increasing the price etc. so that I could get something out of it. I arranged to meet Stan at the services on the M4 which was convenient for both of us. After a long discussion about the issues, Stan and I understood one another’s issues and positions and we seemed to be able to resolve these issues. Prior to this meeting I don’t think Stan had fully understood that Henry Hulme refused to increase the price and because of this I wasn’t really making any money out of the deal, even though my products were generating awareness in the market. At the time, that was the main reason I kept playing along because I had my construction work to support me and my products were making good headway into the marketplace. I was happy building up the business and the sales revenues were growing year on year. It was then agreed that they would not keep stealing my customers (I provided Stan with a full list) and that they would honour the agreement and the spirit of it. This actually went well for a while until Stan had some sort of injury or something and retired. I was then left dealing with Henry Hulme again and shortly after the problems resurfaced and I was losing my customers again.