Britain’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO) has launched an investigation into entrepreneur Gavin Woodhouse over suspected fraud and money laundering relating to care homes and hotels.
Woodhouse raised more than £80m from amateur investors over several years to build care homes and buy and refurbish hotels, promising generous returns. His business dealings were revealed by an undercover investigation by the Guardian newspaper and broadcaster ITV News.
“The conduct currently under investigation by the SFO relates to investments offered in care homes and hotels between 2013 and 2019,” the SFO said in a statement on Monday.
According to the news organisations joint investigation, many of Woodhouse’s projects were incomplete, several years after they were due to be operational, while the businessman’s firms had a multimillion-pound black hole.
Woodhouse said the cash would be used to build care homes and buy and refurbish hotels and gave investors the chance of buying a room in a care home, a hotel or another form of holiday accommodation.
He typically promised 10 yearly dividends of about 10% – paid out of the rent the room would generate – plus a commitment to buy the room back after a decade at 125% of the purchase price.
At the time, several investors, who in some cases had paid hundreds of thousands of pounds into Woodhouse projects, said they had not received promised annual dividends.
The SFO said it has asked UK-based investors in the suspected fraudulent schemes to complete a questionnaire by September 30.
It said the information provided “will help us to establish the circumstances of the investments offered, to identify and pursue new information, and to progress the investigation as quickly as possible”.
In summer 2019, some of Woodhouse’s creditors took the entrepreneur to court, seeking to place his businesses into interim administration, the Guardian reported.
The West Yorkshire-based businessman subsequently lost control of several of his companies after a high court judge ruled that his business model appeared to be “thoroughly dishonest” and a “shameful abuse of the privileges of limited liability trading”.
