Martin H Sobey & Ecotrade (EU) PLC

[blackwatch]

Is anybodey doing business with this convicted felon ?
Beware : Martin has been made bankrupt TWICE and has served time in jail for Financial Fraud.
Whatever he offers you, run away for it is going to cost you dearly.

[webhick]

Is anybodey doing business with this convicted felon ?
Beware : Martin has been made bankrupt TWICE and has served time in jail for Financial Fraud.
Whatever he offers you, run away for it is going to cost you dearly.

Can you substantiate any of this? Maybe court case numbers? Something that links Sobey to Ecotrade?

[notorial dissent]

Yes, details and background would be nice, not to mention helpful.

[blackwatch]

Here is the link Martin H Sobey to ECOTRADE (EU) PLC
You can check with Companies House if in doubt.

Director Summary
Mr Martin Henry Sobey
Short name - Martin Sobey
Director ID : 914620708
Month/Year of Birth: 05/1940

Address
1 The Plat
Strete
Dartmouth
Devon
United Kingdom
TQ6 0SE

Company Summary
Company Name Company Status
ECOTRADE (EU) PLC Active

ECOTRADE (EU) PLC
Appointment Date: 15/10/2009
Position: Director
Occupation: Retired
Company Status: Active

Address:
1 THE PLAT
STRETE
DARTMOUTH
TQ6 0SE
GB

Directors and Secretaries
Mr Martin Henry Sobey
Mrs Susan Joan Sobey

What is your case with Martin Sobey ?

[notorial dissent]

blackwatch, the Companies House info, while possibly probative in that it shows Marty as apparently a director thereof, along with his wife/cousin/niece????, means precious little else. He, and how many thousands of other people, are company directors? That and 50P, well, it won’t even get you a cup of coffee.

When someone here, or anywhere else for that matter, asks for “details and background”, that is polite speak for, “Please substantiate what you are claiming and provide us with some information so that we can see what you are talking about!!!! It’s not that we doubt you, it’s just that we’d like to play too, and if we aren’t all on the same page it isn’t any fun.”

Little things like “convicted felon”, “bankrupt TWICE”, and “served time in jail for Financial Fraud”, while titillating, intriguing and all that, tend to get you looked at in a not nice way, and also lead to people shrieking libel at the top of their, (and usually more importantly) their lawyer’s, lungs. It really isn’t polite to call a lady a whore and not give her the opportunity to either slap your face or make a profit from the advertising !

Your providing the aforementioned “details and background” negates the necessity of us having to have the usual inevitable go-rounds with sock puppets that show up in discussions like this, demanding that the base canards being perpetrated against someone be retracted, when it would be ever so much easier and so much more fun, if from the outset the conviction dates and info had been provided, plus little things like what the aforementioned is up to now??? Facts are nice, facts are helpful, facts are really what it is all about.

So please don’t take this the wrong way, we really ARE interested, but we’d really like to know what we are interested IN, it kind of adds to the flavor of the whole thing, ya know!!!!

[blackwatch]

Martin H Sobey

On or about October 1994 Martin Sobey, acting as Robert J Kelly Associates received $1.5m from a German investor for trading in MTN’s through a well placed “trader”. The “trading” was imminent, to start within a week or two. It never did.

Upon receipt of the $1.5m into his account with Barclays Bank, Martin kept the $600k and transferred the balance, $900k, to the account of the “trader” with Boatman’s Bank in St Louis Missouri.

Within weeks the $600k dried up, used for Martin’s and Susan’s personal needs.

The “trader” turned out to be Trevor Laurence Prider, a bankrupt Australian accountant. The $900k went into Trevor’s pocket.

In July of 1995 civil proceedings were filed in the High Courts of Justice in London.

During the proceedings half a dozen skeletons came out of the cupboard. Martin had defrauded other investors in Germany and Switzerland of some more millions of dollars and with Susan at his side.

On 06 December 1995 Judgment was obtained in the High Court of Justice, Queen’s Bench Division. Martin H Sobey was ordered to pay back with interest the funds to the investor. He did not. He had instead with the ill gotten funds bought a farm in Dorchester.

On 18 November 1996 Martin H Sobey was adjudged bankrupt in the Weymouth County Court. The farm was sold to pay the creditors.

On 26 October 1998 a criminal report was filed with the Fraud Squad of the Metropolitan Police.

On 18 February 2000 the Crown Court at Southwark, upon his own confession convicted and sentenced him to 12 Months Imprisonment.

While under criminal investigation, Martin H Sobey continued undettered to defraud investors through a plethora of companies.

If you care to provide a physical address I can send you copies of the Court Orders.

As for Martin and wife Susan they can scream till they are red in the face !!!

[notorial dissent]

I personally don't care if they do handstands and summersaults while dressed as taxi dancers, I just like to know what we are dealing with. Thank you. It is also much easier to tell someone to pound sand when you have a little background info to fall back on.

APN, I thought England had a career criminal statute these days. Definitely sounds like a candidate to me.

[Paul-B]

Hi everyone. I just discovered this Gem about the crook Sobey. I can give you direct experience of him.

In 1983 I was employed by a Company in Witney in Oxfordshire named Dynaparts, where I was Materials Manager covering Purchasing, Materials Control and Stores. The Company was purchased by the greater London Enterprise Board, production moved to London, and the Oxfordshire site closed down. As I didn't wish to move to London I took a redundancy payment and went seeking alternative job. Across the road from Dynaparts was a Company named Cosma Technical Services, also trading as COSMA Ltd, and I was offered a job there as a general manager, dealing with everything from recruiting through purchasing stores etc. etc., in all a general site manager position. The Company was owned and run by Martin Sobey, with his wife Susan also as a named Director. He was running a packaging line filling and marketing Cassette and VCR tapes, in addition he was acting as sub-contractor setting-up magnetic tape production and coating plants in Africa and in Sofia, Bulgaria. It didn't take long for us to run into problems, he had been using advance stage payments from Cosma to keep a previous Company of his above water for a while, and within 4 or 5 months paychecks started bouncing, and it was discovered that he had been producing fake cassette and VCR tapes. While he was away we were visited by the Police and by a Solicitor who served an Anton Piller order on me, departing with a truck full of fake tapes, labels, boxes etc. He was also negotiating with the Manpower Services Commission to become accredited as an managing agent for the then Youth Training Scheme, fulfilled all their requirements, and received large advance payments from them - the MSC people were gullible and seemed to hand out large payments without any proper vetting of the managing companies.
Of course Sobey was using these payments to stave off creditors of COSMA, and in a few months the whole company fell apart. I was left with 5 months salary unpaid, and a Company car which he had stopped paying for many months before. I was in dire straits at that time, with my mortgage months in arrears and we were living off my wife's salary as a teacher. When it became painfully obvious that this was the end of the line for COSMA my Secretary and myself called it a day, I filled my car with all his contract documents concerning the tape plants in Africa and Bulgaria into the car, my secretary packed up her Golfball typewriter and every piece of office equipment she could find, and we left the place - needless to say neither of the Sobeys had been onsite for over a week. I called his house, got no answer so left a message telling him what we had done, and refusing to return any of his documents and equipment until our back-pay was cleared. A furious confrontation at my home ensued, with Susan (not Martin, who is basically a coward). Everything was threatened, but in the end both my Secretary and myself got all our back pay in full, releasing what we had after they had cleared payment. I had a call from the car hire company demanding the car back, so took it to Sobey's house, which was rented and at the bottom of a farm track, parked it across the track and locked it up with the keys inside.
It was a horrible time in my life, at one time it looked as if we would lose our house and be made homeless. Luckily shortly afterwards I was recruited to work in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia for 5 years, so survived the Sobey experience.
I was delighted to read here that he has been jailed, well-deserved.
Anyone who deals with this pathetic crook should take a great deal of care, he is a smooth-tongued criminal who can make you believe that everything which has happened in his life has been caused through other people, he is never to blame.

[pere noel]

Funny this guy sounds like John Wilson Duffell III, who seems to have vanished off the radar.

[blackwatch]

Thank you Paul,
You just confirmed Sobey to be a proffesional crook.
It also explains the Bulgarian connection.
The Youth Training Scheme caused his first bankruptcy and we are not discussing the second one.
Martin and Susan, as of a couple of months ago, lived in an upper-middle class property in Devon.
I have not asked who paid for the property !
Once a crook, always a crook. I just hope a lot of people read this and stay away.

pere noel,
I wish John W Duffell III was indeed Martin H Sobey.