Peter of England: A REal guru.

[PeanutGallery]

"Hello there everybody" is how Peter of England, whose real name is actually Alan Peter Michael Smith and who not only offers his own legal services but also his own non-fiat currency bank.

Freeman legal services which claims an unbeaten court record, that is itself based on not understanding the finer points of a verdict (ie that getting yourself escorted out of court so that the court can continue doing it's work without you being allowed to lodge irrelevant documents is not a 'win'). A short video on YouTube proclaims this as a success, even though in the video Peter himself is unsure of whether or not it will work. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfEGo2R ... jtgPZbjDBg

Of course Freeman Legal Services (which I feel should be called Freeman Lawful Services (possibly with a silent and invisible L) considering how up most Freeman are about the difference between Lawful and Legal isn't Pete's only pot. He's also planning a reform of the whole financial sector through the new currency known as the RE and a Debt Assumption service.

Yes folks Peter wants your debt. So he can magic it away. His magic bank has already got £1 trillion of US debt that he "absorbed/took on/bought" from the US treasury department. You heard it here first America, you owe Peter BIG. Peter plans to use this debt to cancel out other private individuals debts. Sort of like two wrongs making a right only with financial voodoo, hokum and generally using big made up words like "unlegal" to obfuscate matters. More on Peter's fantastic acquisition of debt is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OFzpeZ ... jtgPZbjDBg

Of course getting rid of debt isn't the only function of the WeRE bank http://www.werebank.co.uk. It's stated aim is

To Free Mankind From The Paralysing, Restricting, Fear-based Monopoly and Control Agenda of “money – scarcity” Which The Global Ruling Elite Have Imposed With “ruthless and vicious” Determination Upon All Peoples Of Earth.

Which is a smorgasbord of Freeman crazy.

What is the RE? Well thats a good question. You see it seems to be based on Einstein's theory of relativity because physics and finance are such obvious bedfellows. The notion however is perhaps a little bit more marxist crazy, namely the RE works by rewarding the individual for the time they have put in to a piece of work. Once thats been done WeRE bank will magic up the money, which is what banks do, so why should you care where the money comes from. So long as the bank is allowed to keep printing money nothing bad will ever happen, hyperinflation is only a thing that happens in Zimbabwe right? It's all explained here: http://www.werebank.co.uk/how/what-we-offer/.

The reason why I haven't posted this before is because Peter seems to have gone quiet for the past couple of months. He's logging into YouTube but not putting up any videos. Maybe he's quit the whole guru game, maybe his legal services have gotten him locked up (either in a jail or a mental health ward, I don't know. But his video's and YouTube legacy live on and are being quoted and shared around the OPCA portion of the internet in the UK.

[The_Nidhogg]

That video is great Peanutgallery- Bravo!

Do you think that the whole roman civil court waffle was just his standard incantation or was it modified in light of Scotlands hybrid civil law tradition?

i also liked "dismissed the court with extreme prejudice" what does that even mean?

[JamesVincent]

i also liked "dismissed the court with extreme prejudice" what does that even mean?

Well, I can tell you what it means in the military when you are told to execute a mission with extreme prejudice. It means you kill anything that gets in the way.

[The_Nidhogg]

Aye I know that sir, but what does it mean when a sov says it and is escorted from court claiming a 'victory'?

[PeanutGallery]

I like to think "Extreme Prejudice" is Pete's way of referencing that much loved and popular Keanu Reeves film that has fueled so many Freeman beliefs. "Bill and Teds Excellent Adventure" I'm reasonably sure that in that motion picture they used words like "extreme" to describe the various things they had done.

A little detail I noticed in the video, after Pete's left the court and is updating us on his win, you can see a friendly policeman standing right outside the door. Why do I have a suspicion that he's only there to make sure that Pete stays on the outside of the building.

[Arthur Rubin]

When I saw the website name, I was thinking were-bank should be analogous to were-wolf. Probably, if either existed, the former would be more dangerous....

[PeanutGallery]

One wonders if they would share the same aversion to silver.

[JamesVincent]

As long as it isn't a wolf-were.

[littleFred]

Back in September, I thought this was a harmless nutter with a daft idea.

I now fear this may be a serious scammer. In the last few months, he has appeared with the leading lights of the UK SovCit movement. They lend an air of credibility (even though most of them have failed, in their various ways), and his presentation style is far superior.

He says he expects his first delivery of 100 chequebooks next week, from the same printers who print chequebooks for the major banks. This may be true.

To open a bank account, punters need to pay £10 per month, plus £25 for the cheque book (containing 50 cheques), plus a promissory note for £150,000 payable within a ten year anniversary of joining, or on demand. See The WeRe Bank "Triple A" Chequing Account (pdf).

The cash payments are to made out to Peter, personally:

BANK DETAILS ARE
NATIONWIDE BUILDING SOCIETY
108 High Street, Newcastle-under-Lyme ST5 1PZ
SORT CODE: 07 44 56
ACCOUNT NUMBER: 31970417
NAME: APM SMITH

(PeanutGallery says Peter's real name is "Alan Peter Michael Smith".)

He has a video showing what he wants on the PNs. Send your PN to "WeRe Bank, 83, DUCIE STREET, MANCHESTER, M1 2JQ, ENGLAND". He says he will negotiate (ie sell) these PNs.

This is serious stuff. I'm not a lawyer or anything, but I think someone making out such a PN could be ordered by a court to pay it. In other words: you might give one of these to Peter, who sells it for (say) £100,000 to a bank. The bank then comes to you and says, "Here is your promissory note. Give us £150,000." You say, "No, it was just a joke, I never thought I would have to keep my promise." They take you to court, and win. Meanwhile, Peter has skipped the country with £100,000 in his pocket.

But would he succeed at selling any PNs? I don't know. He presents himself well. Obviously, his WeRe bank wouldn't pass any test of being a "real" bank. But a "real" bank might be convinced/conned to give him a PN for £1,000,000 in exchange for ten of his £150,000 sucker notes. Then he takes this entirely genuine £1,000,000 PN and finds another bank to swap it for £750,000 cash.

In the video, Peter is entirely open: he intends to negotiate these PNs. That's the first rule of scamming: be open and say what you are going to do, so the suckers don't complain when you do it.

However, the suckers may encounter problems when they try to use WeRe checks. Nobody will take them. Or will they? Perhaps he will persuade some small traders, with some of the £750,000 as a sweetener. If the idea gets any traction at all, more suckers will join the fold. But we can be certain, at some stage, the bank will collapse.

But I'm just being my usual cynical self. Peter assures us he has a mandate for this stuff:

FLS [Freeman Legal Services] HAS A MANDATE FROM VARIOUS OFF-PLANET AS WELL AS OTHER CONCERNED BEINGS WHO WISH FOR YOU TO BE ABLE TO BEGIN TO LIVE AND CONDUCT YOUR AFFAIRS OPENLY ...

Is this the groundwork for an insanity defence?

EDIT: typo.

[ArthurWankspittle]

83 Ducie Street is a "mailbox" or forwarding address. There are over 100 companies listed at that address.

[notorial dissent]

OK, confused here, seriously confused in fact. Does England not have a central clearing house for checks and financial transactions, and is not each bank assigned a separate unique id that goes on their checks along with the actual account number of the issuer? If so, how did this nutbar get his hands on a number to put on the bottom of the “checks”? At least I’m assuming he’s putting something down there, and I have a hard time imagining a check printer doing that without having a valid number or checking on the “bank” in question, although I do know of cases of them pulling it off here. Is it possible he had his own acct info printed on the bottom of the checks?

[littleFred]

Does England not have a central clearing house for checks and financial transactions, and is not each bank assigned a separate unique id that goes on their checks along with the actual account number of the issuer?

"Yes" to all those. The bank number is six digits, formatted like "12-34-56".

The video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrKwhPXtK1E at 1m39s has a reasonable image of a cheque. The bank number (top-right) looks like "00-00-00", which I suppose isn't a valid bank number. But this might be a specimen cheque.

I can't read the address of the "WeRe Bank" top-left, but it may be the Manchester address I quoted above.

Does the clearing house ensure the bank really exists? I don't know. In theory, they merely pass on all the cheques each day to the correct banks. The bank itself (such as WeRe) either accepts the cheque (and sends money accordingly) or dishonours it. Peter of England may be quite wealthy, and able to pay out tens of thousands of pounds as seed money for a scam. I have no inside-knowledge of banking procedures, so I don't know if this would work, or for how long, or what offences might be committed. Perhaps someone with inside knowledge could pull it off, for a while.

Banks seem to be regulated by the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000, the Banking Act 2009, and probably many others. But to Peter of England, regulations like car insurance are ignored.

He doesn't say what eventually happens to the promissory notes. (The video says £100,000 but the more recent PDF has £150,000.) A sucker would only get value if they bought a house or something. But I expect Peter would put a limit on the amounts for cheques: monthly mortgage payments are okay, but paying off a mortgage isn't.

Sure, it may all be kosher. Peter may be a secret billionaire who is happy to pay off the debts of loads of people. But then he wouldn't need the promissory notes.

Nope, I'm afraid something is very rotten with this scheme.

[notorial dissent]

Littlefred, sorry, my questions were probably more just a little on the rhetorical side than not, since I know from my own acct that they they use a six digit number routing/sort code, and I have located a site that you can validate the codes on.

What I wasn't able to track down is how/who assigns the numbers. Here the Comptroller and the Fed Reserve handle it. In England, I would assume it was through BofE or some subsidiary, but I haven't been able to find the exact info. I just know it works.

In any event, unless our felon to be just made them up I don't see how he either got one or got it past the check printer. When I have checks done, I not only have to have the bank routing verified by the printer, but the acct number as well. Of course, if you are printing your own you can get away with anything, which is what some of our fraudsters here were doing off and on, got really expensive for some financial institutions who didn't verify large check deposits.

This on the other hand sounds like out and out fraud. Here I'd just call the Comptroller's office and report it, in England I don't know who you'd call.

[littleFred]

No apologies needed; your questions got me thinking a little deeper. I came to much the same conclusion as you. I have emailed the Prudential Regulation Authority, which is part of the Bank of England. If they are not the right people to be told, they will know who is.

[littleFred]

The first GOOFer has fallen for the scam, or will benefit from this wonderful scheme (delete as appropriate).

[Hyrion]

I figure the most obvious situations that occur will be:

A: Merchant refuses to accept and requests a different form of payment

B: Whoever accepts will end up being the triggering point that eventually results in charges for Cheque Kiting

Before I used any of those cheques, I'd follow up and make sure the "bank" is duly registered with the appropriate authorities (which I seriously doubt this "bank" is).

[notorial dissent]

Or just flat out fraud, which it really is.

Note to Littlefred, were I able, I would drop a note to Peter's bank since he has so kindly provided that information, and advise them that he is using his account and their bank in a bank fraud scheme, and might also drop a note to paypal since they are being used to further a fraud as well, and they take a very dim view of that.

[Hyrion]

Or just flat out fraud

If an innocent that doesn't realize it's a scam on the banking system and themselves gets involved, then yes I'd agree it's fraud from the perspective of the person who bought into it.

Otherwise I'm of the humble opinion it should be considered a conspiracy fraud between the individual who "created the were-bank" and those who intend to use it to acquire goods/services without ever having actually (or even intending - my personal belief) to pay.

Much like those DD clawbacks - sure, one person started the idea, but from what I've read on the goof forum they're pretty much all consciously and deliberately involved in fraud - my humble opinion and one that should/would disqualify me from being a Jury member for any of their trials.

[PeanutGallery]

I would concur with Notorial Dissent. I'd also think that the police would or should be interested in Peter's antics by now. We know he has at least one sucker on the hook and we have also seen that sucker providing encouragement to others to join Peter's party.

I would say that the requirement to pay £10 a month subscription to the bank, in return for access to the imaginary money, shows that Peter intends to milk the Goofs. However it's a classic con format, you get the mark to do something sort of sketchy to prevent them reporting it to the police when it turns out to have been a con.

I think it's time for the authorities to be properly informed about this, if only to protect the gullible goofers from getting grifted.

[notorial dissent]

As I see it, and having spent a portion of my life dealing with this type of nonsense, what Peter is doing constitutes fraud on several levels, against those he is selling the program to, and against the businesses and individuals who will eventually get taken by it. The fact, and I sincerely believe that many/most of the goofers really are that stupid/gullible/naive, they will use the checks thinking they are legitimate won't really excuse them from being part of the fraud. The courts, and businesses, will look upon it in the context that they should have known better, unutterably concomitant stupidity is just not a viable excuse.