Fake Investor John Bernard Sinks Norwegian Green Shipping Dreams
Summary: A Norwegian company called Freidig Shipping, formed in 2017 to raise about USD $100 million for a fleet of 30 green offshore service vessels, was fleeced of an estimated NOK 15 million (~USD $1.67 million) by a man posing as Swiss billionaire investor John Bernard. Bernard is a pseudonym for John Clifton Davies, a convicted UK fraudster and fugitive living in Kyiv, who claimed to have secured $99.25 million from six investors including The Weeknd, Uber founder Garrett Camp and Norilsk Nickel owner Vladimir Potanin, and who ran the due diligence firm Inside Knowledge that received the company's money.
What you should know: Davies' Bernard persona has taken an estimated $30 million from dozens of technology companies, and the Freidig co-founders and their families borrowed $1.5 million of their own to send to his due diligence firm - while investor Guy Devos is now suing co-founder Nils-Odd Tønnevold for $750,000 over the transfer.
Read the original at Krebs on Security ↗
- Topics
- Data Breaches
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