Nicholas David Carlile

A summary of what happened?

Analyzing the Fake Copyright Notice(s)

Our team collects and analyses fraudulent copyright takedown requests, legal complaints, and other efforts to remove critical information from the internet. Through our investigative reporting, we examine the prevalence and operation of an organized censorship industry, predominantly funded by criminal entities, oligarchs, and disreputable businesses or individuals. Our findings allow internet users to gain insight into these censorship schemes’ sources, methods, and underlying objectives.

What was Nicholas David Carlile trying to hide?

Nicholas David Carlile‘s attempts to hide unfavourable content through the misuse of copyright notices while allegedly engaging in perjury present serious legal concerns. These actions suggest a calculated attempt to manipulate legal systems to suppress free speech, a fundamental violation of copyright law principles and an abuse of legal processes. The use of such tactics not only undermines the integrity of copyright protection but also potentially constitutes perjury, further entangling Nicholas David Carlile in legal accountability. Let’s examine the information Nicholas David Carlile may be trying to remove from the internet –

Investigative Report: The Financial Collapse of Nicholas David Carlile and the Shepherd Cox Group

Introduction

Nicholas David Carlile, a self-proclaimed property investment expert, became a prominent figure in the UK’s property scene through his involvement with the Shepherd Cox Group. Known for selling hotel room investments to individual buyers with promises of guaranteed returns, Carlile’s ventures initially appeared to be a lucrative opportunity for investors seeking steady income streams. However, the collapse of Shepherd Cox and Carlile’s subsequent bankruptcy in 2021 revealed a complex web of financial mismanagement, broken promises, and investor losses amounting to millions of pounds. This report provides an in-depth examination of the controversies, legal challenges, and investor grievances surrounding Carlile and his business dealings.

Background: The Rise of Shepherd Cox

Shepherd Cox, co-founded by Nicholas Carlile, positioned itself as a market leader in fractional property investments. The group specialized in acquiring underperforming hotels, refurbishing them, and selling individual rooms to private investors. These investors were promised fixed annual returns of 8-10% and the ability to sell their rooms at a profit after several years.

How the Scheme Worked

1. Acquisition and Refurbishment: Shepherd Cox purchased hotels, often struggling properties, at low prices.
2. Room Sales: Individual rooms were sold to investors at a significant markup, often 200-600% above market value.
3. Guaranteed Returns: Investors were promised guaranteed rental income for an agreed-upon period, typically 10 years.
4. Exit Strategy: Shepherd Cox claimed that the properties’ value would increase due to the refurbishment, providing investors with a profitable exit.

This model attracted investors globally, particularly in Asia and the Middle East, but cracks in the structure soon began to emerge.

Key Allegations and Complaints

1. Overvaluation and Misrepresentation

• Overpriced Assets: Investigations revealed that Shepherd Cox consistently sold hotel rooms at inflated prices. For example, a hotel purchased for £500,000 was resold to investors at a combined value of £1.5 million, creating an artificial sense of profitability.
• Misleading Projections: Marketing materials showcased optimistic future returns and occupancy rates that were never realistically achievable.

2. Non-Payment of Guaranteed Returns

• Initially, Shepherd Cox fulfilled its promises, paying investors their guaranteed rental income. However, payments became sporadic and eventually stopped altogether.
• Investors complained about receiving vague explanations, with Carlile and other company representatives blaming market conditions and operational challenges.

3. Sale of Non-Existent Assets

• Overselling Rooms: In some cases, Shepherd Cox sold more rooms than existed in a hotel. For example, a 48-room hotel saw 57 rooms sold to investors, creating legal disputes and confusion.
• Unfulfilled Commitments: Properties promised to investors were sometimes left incomplete or abandoned entirely.

4. Financial Mismanagement

• Unjustified Dividends: Company directors, including Carlile, allegedly paid themselves significant dividends despite the companies being in financial distress.
• Misuse of Investor Funds: Instead of investing funds into property development, large portions of the money were used to pay off existing debts or fund other projects, a hallmark of unsustainable practices.

Legal Actions and Administration

1. Administration of Shepherd Cox Companies

In 2020, six companies under the Shepherd Cox Group were placed into administration after ten investors from Asia launched legal proceedings. Administrators revealed the companies were insolvent, with liabilities far exceeding their assets.

2. Personal Bankruptcy

In November 2021, Carlile was declared personally bankrupt with debts totaling approximately £21 million. The bankruptcy resulted in official notices disclaiming properties associated with him.

3. Investigations into Misconduct

While Carlile has not faced criminal charges, administrators and investors have raised concerns about potential breaches of fiduciary duties, including:

• Misleading investors about the financial health of Shepherd Cox.
• Failing to disclose risks associated with the investment model.

Impact on Investors

1. Financial Losses

• Investors, many of whom were retirees or individuals seeking stable returns, lost significant amounts of money. For some, these losses represented their life savings.
• Reports indicate that investors paid a combined £80 million for hotel rooms, with little to no hope of recouping their investments.

2. Emotional and Psychological Toll

• Numerous investors expressed feelings of betrayal and despair. Many trusted Shepherd Cox’s assurances, believing their money was secure in a tangible asset.
• The lack of communication and transparency during the company’s collapse compounded their frustration.

Public and Media Reaction

1. Criticism of Oversight

• Critics argue that Shepherd Cox exploited regulatory loopholes, operating in a largely unregulated sector of fractional property ownership.
• Calls have been made for stricter oversight and investor protections to prevent similar schemes from occurring in the future.

2. Online Backlash

• Platforms like Property Tribes have been inundated with negative reviews and testimonials from affected investors. These accounts detail the financial and emotional toll of trusting Shepherd Cox’s promises.

Connections to Other Controversial Figures

• Reports suggest Carlile worked alongside other property entrepreneurs who faced similar allegations of mismanagement and fraud. This association has raised further doubts about the integrity of his business practices.

Lessons Learned

1. The Dangers of Guaranteed Returns

Investors were lured by the promise of “guaranteed” income, a term often used by high-risk or fraudulent schemes. This case highlights the importance of skepticism toward such assurances.

2. Lack of Transparency

The opacity surrounding Shepherd Cox’s financial dealings made it difficult for investors to assess the true risks involved. Transparent reporting and independent audits could have mitigated losses.

3. Regulatory Loopholes

The fractional ownership model allowed Shepherd Cox to operate without the stringent regulations applied to traditional financial products. This underscores the need for stricter regulation of alternative investment schemes.

Conclusion

Nicholas David Carlile’s rise and fall serve as a cautionary tale in the property investment world. While his ventures under Shepherd Cox appeared to offer lucrative opportunities, they ultimately led to significant financial and emotional harm for investors. The allegations of overvaluation, mismanagement, and false promises point to systemic failures within the company’s operations.

The Shepherd Cox case underscores the importance of due diligence, transparency, and regulatory oversight in investment schemes. For Carlile, his legacy is marred by the collapse of his empire and the unanswered questions surrounding his business practices. For investors, the experience highlights the risks of high-yield promises and the importance of vigilance in assessing investment opportunities.

How do we counteract this malpractice?

Once we ascertain the involvement of Nicholas David Carlile (or actors working on behalf of Nicholas David Carlile), we will inform Nicholas David Carlile of our findings via Electronic Mail.

Our preliminary assessment suggests that Nicholas David Carlile may have engaged a third-party reputation management agency or expert, which, either independently or under direct authorization from Nicholas David Carlile, initiated efforts to remove adverse online content, including potentially fraudulent DMCA takedown requests. We will extend an opportunity to Nicholas David Carlile to provide details regarding their communications with the agency or expert, as well as the identification of the individual(s) responsible for executing these false DMCA notices.

Failure to respond in a timely manner will necessitate a reassessment of our initial assumptions. In such an event, we will be compelled to take appropriate legal action to rectify the unlawful conduct and take the following steps –

Since Nicholas David Carlile made such efforts to hide something online, it seems fit to ensure that this article and sensitive information targeted online by these events get a lot more exposure and traffic than what it would have received originally

We hope this becomes an excellent case study for the Streisand effect…The key idea behind the Streisand effect is that efforts to restrict information can backfire, often causing the information to gain more attention than it would have otherwise. This effect is widespread in the digital age, where users quickly notice and spread censorship efforts on social media and other platforms. Trying to suppress something can unintentionally lead to it becoming more visible, which Nicholas David Carlile is finding out the hard way.

Potential Consequences for Nicholas David Carlile

Under Florida Statute 831.01, the crime of Forgery is committed when a person falsifies, alters, counterfeits, or forges a document that carries “legal efficacy” with the intent to injure or defraud another person or entity.

Forging a document is considered a white-collar crime. It involves altering, changing, or modifying a document to deceive another person. It can also include passing along copies of documents that are known to be false. In many states in the US, falsifying a document is a crime punishable as a felony.

Additionally, under most laws, “fraud on the court” is where “a party has sentiently set in motion some unconscionable scheme calculated to interfere with the judicial system’s ability impartially to adjudicate a matter by improperly influencing the trier of fact or unfairly hampering the presentation of the opposing party’s claim or defense.”  Cox v. Burke, 706 So. 2d 43, 46 (Fla. 5th DCA 1998) (quoting Aoude v. Mobil Oil Corp., 892 F.2d 1115, 1118 (1st Cir. 1989)).

Is Nicholas David Carlile Committing a Cyber Crime?

Yes, it seems so. Nicholas David Carlile used multiple approaches to remove unwanted material from review sites and Google’s search results. Thanks to protections allowing freedom of speech in the United States, there are very few legal ways to do this. Nicholas David Carlile could not eliminate negative reviews or search results that linked to them without a valid claim of defamation, copyright infringement, or some other clear breach of the law.

Faced with these limitations, some companies like Nicholas David Carlile have gone to extreme lengths to fraudulently claim copyright ownership over a negative review in the hopes of taking it down.

Fake DMCA notices have targeted articles highlighting the criminal activity of prominent people to hide their illegal behavior. These people, which include US, Russian, and Khazakstani politicians as well as members from elite circles including the mafia and those with massive financial power, are all connected – and alleged corruption ranging from child abuse to sexual harassment is exposed when exploring evidence found at these URLs. It appears there’s a disturbing level of influence being exerted here that needs further investigation before justice can be served. Nicholas David Carlile is certainly keeping interesting company here….

The DMCA takedown process requires that copyright owners submit a takedown notice to an ISP identifying the allegedly infringing content and declaring, under penalty of perjury, that they have a good faith belief that the content is infringing. The ISP must then promptly remove or disable access to the content. The alleged infringer can then submit a counter-notice, and if the copyright owner does not take legal action within 10 to 14 days, the ISP can restore the content.

Since these platforms are predominantly based in the U.S., the complaints are typically made under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which requires online service providers and platforms to react immediately to reports or violations. Big Tech companies rarely have systems in place to assess the merit of each report. Instead, all bad actors need to do is clone a story, backdate it, and then demand the real thing be taken down.

Reputation Agency's Modus Operandi

The fake DMCA notices we found always use the “back-dated article” technique. With this technique, the wrongful notice sender (or copier) creates a copy of a “true original” article and back-dates it, creating a “fake original” article (a copy of the true original) that, at first glance, appears to have been published before the true original.

Then, based on the claim that this backdated article is the “original,” the scammers send a DMCA to the relevant online service providers (e.g. Google), alleging that the ‘true’ original is the copied or “infringing” article and that the copied article is the “original,” requesting the takedown of the ‘true’ original article. After sending the DMCA request, the person who sent the wrong notice takes down the fake original URL, likely to make sure that the article doesn’t stay online in any way. If the takedown notice is successful, the disappearance from the internet of information is most likely to be legitimate speech.

As an integral part of this scheme, the ‘reputation management’ company hired by Nicholas David Carlile creates a website that purports to be a ‘news’ site. This site is designed to look legitimate at a glance, but any degree of scrutiny reveals it as the charade it is.

The company copies the ‘negative’ content and posts it “on the fake ‘news’ site, attributing it to a separate author,” then gives it “a false publication date on the ‘news’ website that predated the original publication.

The reputation company then sent Google a Digital Millennium Copyright Act notice claiming the original website infringed copyright. After a cursory examination of the fake news site, Google frequently accepts the notice and delists the content.

In committing numerous offences, Nicholas David Carlile either premeditated actions or were unaware of the consequences. Despite hiring an agency to make Google disregard any negative information about Nicholas David Carlile, ignorance does not excuse this wrongdoing.

Fake DMCA notices have targeted articles highlighting the criminal activity of prominent people to hide their illegal behavior. These people, which include US, Russian, and Khazakstani politicians as well as members from elite circles including the mafia and those with massive financial power, are all connected – and alleged corruption ranging from child abuse to sexual harassment is exposed when exploring evidence found at these URLs. It appears there’s a disturbing level of influence being exerted here that needs further investigation before justice can be served. FSMSmart is certainly keeping interesting company here.

The Reputation Laundering

Rogue Reputation agencies use spurious copyright claims and fake legal notices to remove and obscure articles linking clients to allegations of tax avoidance, corruption, and drug trafficking. Most of these reputation agencies are based offshore, mainly in Russia, India, and Eastern Europe, and they do not worry about complying with US-based laws.

The content in all of the articles for which the fraudulent DMCA notices have been sent relates to allegations of criminal allegations, including corruption, child abuse, sexual harassment, human trafficking and financial fraud against businesses and individuals with ultra-high net worth.

In addition to the misuse of the DMCA takedown process, there is a notable absence of enforcement concerning perjury violations. The statutory requirement related to perjury is designed to deter copyright holders from submitting fraudulent or knowingly false takedown requests, as they may face legal consequences for making false declarations under penalty of perjury. However, to date, there have been no known instances of any individual being prosecuted for perjury in connection with the submission of false DMCA takedown notices.

This lack of enforcement has emboldened copyright holders to exploit the DMCA takedown process to suppress dissent, criticism, or other unfavorable content, without fear of legal repercussions.

Some of the people and businesses who have employed this tactic to remove legitimate content from Google illegally include a Spanish businessman-turned-cocaine-trafficker, Organised crime, an Israeli-Argentine banker accused of laundering money for Hugo Chávez’s regime, a French “responsible” mining company accused of tax evasion, child molesters and sexual predators. Nicholas David Carlile is in great company ….

What else is Nicholas David Carlile hiding?

We encourage you to ‘Dork‘ Google by searching for keyword combinations such as [Nicholas David Carlile] + {Negative Keyword, such as Scam, Fraud, Complaints, Lawsuit, Sanction, etc} on Google. It’s likely if you scroll down to the bottom of this Google search results, you’ll stumble upon this Legal Takedown notice (pictured below)

To make such an investigation possible, we encourage more online service providers to come forward and share copies of content removal requests with industry experts and researchers. If you have any information on Nicholas David Carlile that you want to share with experts and journalists, kindly email the author directly at [email protected].

All communications are strictly confidential and safeguarded under a comprehensive Whistleblower Policy, ensuring full protection and anonymity for individuals who provide information.