Duped in Dubai

V Sami fixassa ei haluta. Sami huu! Mäinä talomestaareko! Suju k噐ing Sato! Huokra, elämä, latitude. Saatopisteviality Kato! Änti tungot nhàä, mitä sä teet! Huokrasin kodin ahaaa Suju kuu, sato! Suokra, elämä, sekoti. Sato! Piste! Suomessaan on tullut kautta. Suomessa on tullut kautta. Sato, mitä sä teet! Tämä on tullut kautta. Investus 10 favor funs launna tullut kautta. Mike Superviichi on tullut kautta. Mike says his accelerator program has helped launch more than 900 ventures. Investors can make big returns taking risks on the right person. They have to have something that makes them uniquely qualified to be able to overperform and do this. So maybe they are a scientist and so when a bunch of biotech founders pitched in this idea, they are able to discern between whether this has the potential to be a real business or not. Another example could be that they themselves are like a network leader that just draws lots of interesting founders to them that they can be able to pick from and that gives them an edge. Participants in Mike's four-month VC Lab program get advice from Silicon Valley experts. There are no guarantees. The program is free, but it's really, really hard. You have to hit certain milestones, you have to do things the right way. So you don't guarantee investment, right? Yeah, it's impossible to do that. If anyone claims that by definition, your spidey sense should be very high. For an organization to be able to find the perfect investor that matches this very specialized thesis of this individual that can then also trust that this individual is going to manage their money very well in a long time that they don't know and be able to do that in some sort of programmatic way. It's pretty hard to do that. But Cheyenne was under the impression that completing the Dubai program would deliver such an investment. So in July 2025, she embarked on the Orkta accelerator course, Orkta, meaning increased in Latin. It was devised by British businessmen Simon Davies. He's a bit quirky and odd, but he seems maybe that he has good intentions. Cheyenne had spoken to members of earlier cohorts of the program, who vouched for Simon. Once she got to Dubai, she got to meet him for herself. He's very friendly. He kisses you on the cheek. He makes you feel like you're his niece or something. He compliments you. He's very charismatic. Cheyenne has agreed to speak on the condition that we don't use her real name. She says she's worked hard to get where she is, and is worried about her career being harmed. My parents came from the global south. They worked really, really hard. And so that kind of embedded in me this idea that I can control as much of my reality as possible through my own outcomes. Attending Simon's course in person wasn't compulsory, but Cheyenne actually moved to Dubai because she thought it would help. It's a disability, right? Like you need to be able to show that you're in the region that you care. For over 30 years, I've travelled the globe, searching for funder-corns. Like Cheyenne, Simon Davies isn't afraid to travel to get a deal over the line. Investment Management Industry Founders capable of building multi-billion dollar assets under management businesses. His LinkedIn videos for the Ork to Course see him pop up in numerous countries, including Switzerland, South Korea and Germany. I'm in Munich, Germany. Deep in autumn 2025, you're going to see some of the colours on these beautiful trees. He's really slick, very professional, dressed really well, expensive watch, expensive shoes, staying in a really nice hotel in Munich. Mark Witten was impressed when he met Simon in person. Like Cheyenne, he then paid an £18,000 fee to sign up to the programme. All of us were very excited. Fund managers are quite competitive people. We all wanted to do well. We all wanted to put our best foot forward. Mark participated remotely. As did Judith, who joined an earlier cohort, hoping to secure investment for her sustainability fund. I've been in the investment industry for over 40 years and I wasn't necessarily expecting to learn very much from the course. Like Cheyenne, Judith is fearful of the negative consequences of speaking to us, so we've agreed to change her name. Like others, she's worried about the professional consequences. We're trying to break into probably one of the most competitive industries on the planet to get into. Joining the same cohort as Judith was ex-US Marine Andrew Mueller, who was launching a carbon project fund. Across 2025, these participants worked on their business plans, attending weekly calls, coaching sessions, and submitting homework. You would be given some sort of homework to do. You would maybe get a call one-on-one, maybe once a week, with the guest lecturers. It felt like a lot of them were promoting their businesses. The course was really just a weekly series of service providers. Täällä on tullut, että se on tullut. We had two different specialists on LinkedIn. Big focus was on LinkedIn, posting lots of content, lots of videos, almost building a story. It was just building a brand, so anybody could have taken it really. It wasn't really tailored towards fund managers. Although Andrew Mark and Cheyenne weren't overly impressed, other participants told us they found some of the sessions useful. Cheyenne says there was one reason she was willing to put up with it. The whole experience was quite amateur, to be honest, but the promise of capital towards the end was intriguing. But to graduate and get that capital, the participants still had to work up their plans for their funds. This is kind of like in the apprentice, where the candidate's final proposals are scrutinised. While in the Orc to course, it's Simon deciding if they're investor-ready, and if they are. Mark was keen to press Simon on the full details of the investment on offer. He would also then help you build out investment into your fund by limited partners, basically investors. Mark's contract states. "Meges of the programme will, subject to satisfying the information requested, be offered seed and staking capital. A amounts of a spoke to each participant and graduation is not guaranteed." So, an offer of an unspecified amount should they graduate. Experience fund professional Judith was keen to get to the bottom of whose Simon had lined up to invest in their funds. "One of the backers, he claimed to be somebody high up in the Minister of Finance of Abu Dhabi, which is one of the Emirates, that they were a big thunder of the scheme, would be putting money into the managers." We think this refers to a government official, also listed on a brochure for the Orc to programme. In it, the official is listed as an advisor to Simon. We've also seen the same official post comments on LinkedIn in reply to Simon's weekly newsletter called Fundacorn. "If somebody associated with the government or a government sovereign wealth is prepared to back you, then a lot of private investors will see that as a recommendation in a sense. So, that was an important aspect." Like Judith, another person interested in the course was keen to learn more about Simon's financial backers for the programme, so they get on a call with him. They've shared a recording of that call with us and have asked to remain anonymous. Their conversation gets a bit technical, but it seems important. Simon offers a breakdown of the amounts on offer to graduating fund managers known as General Partners or GPs. "So, think of a package of 4 to 6 of which a million dollars would be a GP, top-come, stake." Simon seems to be saying that there's up to 6 million dollars in investment available. Should this person graduate? Part of that would come from underlying investors into their fund known as Limited Partners or LPs. "Then let's go off and just build a business together. The ticket in the AUM is not going to change your world therefore, but it is enough to start being able to talk about it publicly and unlock those other LPs, not just in the Gulf, by the way. You know, it opens a lot of doors really to know that there's a proper institutional player in with obviously not a sovereign, but in fact some of the money we deploy is sovereign, so there's some quite nice story around that. And the idea is just to get you in the game in the Middle East." Simon then elaborates on where that investment would come from. "So 5% of the pool comes from my family, 60% from the **** family, which is a public private exposed Gulf family, very, very powerful. And his family are in everything." "We're not naming the government official because we haven't seen any evidence he was actually involved in the course or had offered any funding. But his background in finance means he's exactly the kind of name a fund manager would want to hear. With reassurances from Simon like the ones you've just heard, the participants continue with their courses, despite their reservations. And after 12 weeks, it's time for the graduation event." "It's in person, it's in Dubai. And he's doing it at reputable places, right? He's doing it at the capital club, or we're getting toward through the Dubai financial market." Unlike the other participants you've heard, Ex-Marine Andrew Mueller didn't pay for his place on the course. That's because in the months before he says he paid Simon thousands of dollars to attend other investor events. Simon told Andrew an investor was interested in backing his fund on one condition. He complete a medical check. "He had said that the last person that this family had invested in had a cardiac arrest, so it had a heart attack. So I went and spent about $2,000 on a full workup." Andrew passed the medical, but the investment never materialized. And then within a month it was the out to cohort, and that would be the new hurdle. Come be a part of it, and in that process we'll finish out your term sheet and get you invested." "Reluctantly, Andrew agreed." "And here he is at graduation saying, "Everyone here will at least get a million dollars in seed, that everyone will be funded, that is graduating from this cohort." Graduation events were held in different locations, but we've been told the format was broadly similar. A presentation, a big table, lots of finger food. Course participants had to deliver and elevate a pitch for their funds. "We were promised that there would be like all these LPs, all these investors, all these people in the room." "Sheikh, so-and-so, and CIO, so-and-so, and bankers, so-and-so, and wealth managers, so-and-so that would be infected. They weren't just there for the snacks." "In actual fact, we ended up basically pitching to each other." "There were no investors in the room." "We were literally in the room pitching to each other, and Simon, and maybe two of his friends." For Mark, Simon seemed to be undermining the whole purpose of the course. "So he then proceeded to spend the first hour and a half telling us why Dubai and Abu Dhabi were not good places to do business. "We were kind of looking at each other like in shock, and I said, but why are you promoting a course that's accelerating people to build businesses in Dubai, where you're not telling us not to come yet? Is that contradictory to what you're saying?" At X-Marine Andrews graduation event, there was also a distinct lack of investors. He ever calls Simon promising they'd be an event later that evening. "We got to this cocktail party, and there were nothing but service providers that were trying to feed off of us. I don't think there was an allocator in that cocktail party." We've been told the atmosphere at these graduation events was uncomfortable, as some participants demanded answers from Simon. And I wasn't being rude or aggressive, I was saying, "Where are the LPs, where they invest?" That's what we were told about. His answer was, "No, they worry that there's going to be this outbreak of war." And with Iran, a lot of them are not willing to be in Dubai, and I was like, "But I thought they were based in Dubai." Mark's graduation ceremony was in January 2026. Not long after, Simon emailed him. "Copying based email with a little bit of personalization." He'd not graduated. Mark shared this email. We've seen another sent to a different course member by Simon. Large sections of both emails had the exact same wording. Both Mark and the other person were told they were, quote, "not yet external investor-ready." So we have like legitimate documentation that you're committing to investing in us. But Cheyenne did graduate, a musissued investment times by Simon. On our end, it was you need to get a Middle Eastern or a person with regional expertise on your team. And you need to do this, this, this, and then we're investing in you. We introduced him to our venture partner who was from the region. He was really happy. "Okay, we can start to have conversations now in terms of investment and next steps." He didn't respond to us for weeks. And then he contacted us on Christmas day, and he's like, "I'll be reaching out to you in the new year to get the ball rolling on our discussions." Cheyenne then hears from other course participants still hoping to secure investment. They tell her they can't message Simon on LinkedIn. And then I go in and I check and sure enough he's blocked me. His numbers are all out of service because I tried to message him on with that. And then I said, "Okay, I need my money back, sir." None of the 20 participants we've spoken to say they were able to secure any investment for their funds, either directly from Simon nor from any of the investors he claimed to have commitments from. They're also not aware of anyone else on the Aukta course who secured investment. And with participants out of pocket and Simon out of the market, of Reach, the group started looking for answers. That's when I first heard about them. Googling him and looking into his past, I couldn't find anything to be honest with you. One of our portfolio companies actually happens to have a private investigator company and they actually looked into it a bit and nothing came up. Fund management tends to be a bit of a secret of community. You don't tend to find a huge amount on fund managers and his LinkedIn did have a really long and detailed history going back quite a few years. A LinkedIn profile that we were about to discover had some career gaps. What are you doing in the third week of your career? I'm not going to be in the middle of the day, I'm going to be in the middle of the day. What are you doing? I'm going to be in the second week of the year. I'm going to be in the middle of the day. The middle of the day, the company is going to be in the middle of the day. The company is going to be in the middle of the day. This night 2019. Perhaps differently from a typical Burns night. It was more formal. It was a black tie-dew. This is Chris Butler, OBE, who was head of the British Chamber of Commerce in Vilnius, Lithuania. And he was hosting the evening. The traditional dinner, traditional address to the haggis, the traditional speeches to the lads and the lassies. We've seen photos. Trisson stayed smartly dressed in a tuxedo. Also suited up is a man we recognize. At the time that Simon arrived in Vilnius, he wanted to be active. Visible, he wanted to join the Chamber, which is usually a sign that somebody wants to make themselves part of the business community and also to a certain extent, the British community. So I think for me, I thought, well, this is great. Frankly speaking, and I quite like the guy. He spoke well and presented up well. Three thank yous to start with. First of all, thank you for. Pretty soon, Simon is speaking at business events. He started a farm called Solomon Securities. A nod to former Wall Street trading firm, Solomon Brothers. I wanted their brand. I knew the Solomon family since the early 1990s when I lived in the New York. Not only is Simon pronouncing Solomon differently to how most people do, he's picked a firm with a checkered past. It's free-wheeling trading culture, inspiring the books, Nightmare on Wall Street and Liars Poker. Despite this, Simon thinks the Solomon name still opens doors. And so, when we need to get a meeting, anywhere in the world in financial markets, please forgive me, we get it. Because that brand still carries a century or more of reputation. What I understood about the business was that he got a brokerage license from Nasdaq. So he was there to try to persuade clients perhaps to raise finance through the Nasdaq and generally to conduct corporate finance activities within Lithuania either looking for clients in Lithuania or potentially for clients in London. But within five months, the stock exchange had revoked the firm's status as a certified advisor. We asked Nasdaq why, but they wouldn't tell us. There's no mention of Solomon Securities on Simon's LinkedIn profile. And there are other firms missing too. Financial businesses all around the world are increasingly reliant upon financial technology to operate more efficiently. Here's Simon in the Channel Island of Gernsey two years before the Burns Night Party. He's being interviewed by the BBC about his Fintech consultancy. And we help those financial businesses install better technology. Simon has just spoken at yet another event. This one hosted by a recently launched government agency called Locate Gernsey, whose remit is to attract wealthy people to move to the low tax island. We did know the island before. We've been here, we've done business here. So it wasn't as if we'd never visited. But we certainly didn't have any links here before. So without Locate Gernsey, we wouldn't be here. Simon had weighed up a number of places to move to and his arrival was being presented as a coup by the relocation agency. But a deeper look into Simon's past might have revealed some red flags. Locate Gernsey, the government agency that helped him move to the island, told us it had no record of what due diligence was done on Simon. But added that today it checks the backgrounds of its clients and guest speakers. My producer Rob has been digging a bit deeper into Simon's past. So if you look at Simon's LinkedIn profile, he says that in 2004 he founded a London based asset management firm called Davies & Co. But if you look back you can see the firm was actually called SCD Limited and before that SC Davies & Co. Limited. And when you search for those company names, you find 15 complaints to the financial ombudsman which were all upheld between 2013 and 2015. Simon resigned as a director in September 2014. So stay with me, I've been through the complaints and a lot of them relate to money being placed in investments outside of the risk profiles agreed by clients. In one complaint, a client had £25,000 invested in a fund which was made "on the basis that it was a low risk investment when in fact it was clearly high risk". I guess the problem is we don't know if they relate specifically to Simon as the decisions only reference the firm and not individuals. So I asked the current CEO of the company which has a completely different name today all about this and they didn't want to talk to me but told me in an email that they hadn't had any contact or professional association with Simon for over 12 years and that they weren't aware of the ombudsman complaints being specifically linked to Simon or related to his departure from the business. While we're digging into Simon's past, we've been told there's another stop we need to make in London. "It's throughout the role of building the Royal Courts of Justice. It looks more like an office building than a court." "Yeah, so this is the order. Then it goes on." In 2017, Simon Davies was accused of fraud in a civil claim. In the documents we've got from the court, we can see that Simon is accused of defrauding a businessman in a property deal. The person who he said to the fraud would obviously want their money back. Simon didn't file a defense to contest the case and was ordered to pay the claim at back 1.7 million pounds in default. The claimant had some trouble trying to recoup the money and the record show they tried to force the sale of Simon's house in Surrey. Simon was also subject to freezing orders to try and force him to disclose what assets he had and to try and prevent him from selling or hiding them. But the documents show he breached a number of these orders by doing things like failing to disclose a bank account in Guernsey and selling an Aston Martin. Even though it was a civil case, because he breached the High Court's orders, a judge found Simon was in contempt of court and sentenced him to a year in prison. And we were able to confirm with the Ministry of Justice that he ended up serving six months of that sentence. Which wasn't known to Mark Witten or anyone else we talked to on the course. I mean how do you feel hearing that knowing that he actually spent time inside? Yeah, that's crazy, I'm a surprised though. I obviously didn't teach him much of a lesson. I mean generally most people who go to prison never want to go back. I think of nothing worse in the world than being locked up in a prison. Simon told course participants he'd been living in the UAE for 15 years. Yet we discovered that during that time he'd served a sixth month prison sentence in the UK, lived in Lithuania and spent time in Guernsey before surfacing in Dubai. It's really a paradise for fraudsters. Amber were he'd has lived in Dubai for the past 20 years. In that time the British expat population has peaked at nearly a quarter of a million people. Dubai is often seen as the ideal Instagram city with jet setters and influencers selling the sunshine lifestyle. Hey everyone, it's Amber Waheed and welcome to the expats in Dubai show. But on her podcast Amber also talks about the darker side of life in the Emirates. Shocking tales of fraud and deception experienced by expats is quite a playground here. That's when we thought we'd get it, yeah. We identified 20 categories, everything from automobiles down to pets and every single one of them has a scam story. Amber says that she herself was the victim of a fraud by a fellow British expat. She lost her life savings after being misled by an unlicensed financial adviser. Because of the way that the population is made up, people are coming and going all the time. It's very difficult to have a history about a company. It's very difficult to have a history about a person. You can ask for a comment. their trade license, but you cannot ask for any other information, whether it's company or whether it's an individual. You can't even ask for their Emirates ID unless you have a reason too. So the only way to go around that is to ask the court. It's an expensive and it's a very lengthy process and it normally leads to nothing. By the time you have found something out, the person is already out of the Emirates. That's what happened in Amhert's case. Her financial advisor left, leaving her to try and pursue justice through the courts. She was eventually successful and got her money back, but most people don't. They think when potentially people come here with the mindset that they're going to be deceitful towards people, they know that this is the best place to do that because there's really no comeback on them. On its website, Dubai's government is keen to stress that its economic policies and laws contribute to a highly attractive environment for international business, bringing prosperity to the region. It's what attracted people like Mark Whitton to the Ork to course, but feeling deceived by Simon, Mark has now turned to the UAE authorities for help. I'm speaking to one of the other cold members. I said to him, I think we need to go to the police and lay a charge and hopefully get him stopped before he leaves Dubai because I think once he leaves, he's going to be very difficult to get hold of again. In Mark's complaint to Dubai police, he argues the course members were scammed by Simon. We asked him to read a section of it. The accused either knew or ought to have known that the described program structure due diligence process in access to capital were not being delivered in practice, as evidenced by the identical outcomes experienced across multiple cohorts. This is a pattern of misleading behaviour. Dubai police haven't responded to our questions about Mark's complaint. Dubai played an important role, as not only were course events held there, but the company Simon set up to run the Ork to program was registered in the emerald. Well, sort of. With the freezum company you can work from anywhere, no office stress, total flexibility. The registered office of the firm Ork to project management is in a freezone on the deck of the QE2 yacht now permanently moored in a Dubai marina. A section of the famous retired ocean liner operates as a kind of co-working space that can be used by companies that register there for a fee. The Duke Freezone is one of over 20 in Dubai alone, places where there are perks for setting up businesses. Often, they don't have to publicly disclose information like their true owners. We asked Duke Freezone for any information about Simon's company, but it said it needed the firm's permission to share any information. In a country, the UAE that is a slight culture of fake it to you make it, I would like them to see Simon as a bad apple. Many of the course participants are now unpacking what happened. Some feel cheated by Simon. Every single person that I've spoken to is not happy, feels like they've been taken for a ride. He's going to continue doing this to other people and I can't really just sit back and accept that. Other things Simon started with good intentions, so there's split on what consequences if any Simon should face. Whether you can find something criminal, there's been a criminal loss of time for emerging managers trying to break into the industry. A number of course participants have complained to the Abu Dhabi global market. It's another Freezone where Simon registered a second company and where some of the course participants were taken on a tour. Emails we've seen suggest its enforcement officials are taking the matter seriously, but they wouldn't comment on the status of any investigation. I don't think I harbor any serious level of bitterness. I just see that, okay, he's a conman who we were con. Shayena still hoping to get some of her course fees back after paying for them on her credit cards. It's been tough. I mean, I moved to the Middle East and I took a massive risk. It has really forced me to look at my judgment, but it has definitely challenged me to really think deeper and really do more thorough due diligence. While important parts of Simon's past, like his time in prison, were not easily found out, one thing that was very visible were the endorsements he was getting online, especially on LinkedIn. I do think he's a confidence trickster in that he gets a lot of people that are legitimate business people to lend their name to this, knowing that at the other end of it there is nothing. There's no protocol. One person course participants suspect was unknowingly used by Simon like this was the UAE government official we mentioned earlier. Simon's claims to have financial backing from him and his family gave the course credibility in the eyes of some of the participants we've spoken to. We asked the official a series of questions about what he was told by Simon, about his apparent role as an advisor, and whether he and his family had ever seriously committed to investing through Simon and the Orc to program. The official's lawyers told us, despite limited contact between the pair, they had never been a business relationship between them, that he declined Simon's offer of a role in the Orc to group, and that he had not endorsed, supported or participated in the Orc to program in any capacity or authorised the use of his name or association with it, in summary in no way had he vouched for the program. As for Simon, well, he may not have been living in the UAE for 15 years, he might not have had the Waster or Influent some thought he did. His LinkedIn profile might have some gaps, but one thing he currently does have is Fimfluencer Status in the UAE. It's an official accreditation for people giving financial advice online. Simon's regulatory approval granted during the course was something he celebrated at the time on "You guessed it", linked in. The UAE's financial regulator, the CMA, told us if Simon's conduct is found to be against the law, it will take all necessary legal measures. Lately, Simon's not been posting as regularly as he used to, and his weekly, "fundy corn newsletter" is long overdue. The Orc to Accelerator website has been deleted, but Simon was promoting another investor event in London this April. He reached out to Simon three weeks before broadcasts to put the allegations in this program to him. The day before we release this episode, we received an email from Orc to corporate communications. Orc to told us, "The allegation that the emerging fund manager accelerator program we operated in 2025 was a scam, is entirely false. A number of graduates remain actively engaged with us, and we are progressing transactions. Orc to admit that the government's joined under written terms confirming there was no guarantee of capital, investment or any specific fundraising outcome. We recognise that some participants are frustrated and disappointed with the pace of post-program outcomes. We take that seriously." Orc to added that it's setting up a review process and inviting each participant with concerns to submit them in writing for review against the contractual terms and course programme. "Or we do not accept the allegation that the programme was dishonest or without substance, we understand that dissatisfaction should be heard and addressed properly." Many of the people who signed up to Simon's Orc to programme were simply too embarrassed to talk to us. To who did, ask that we didn't use their real names, but not Mark. "I was very amazed at how people were very reticent, to let charges, to chase up, to do anything. But I think he's got in a way with that for way too long in realising most people don't want to have a fight." "We've heard this a lot while working on this story. The ex-Marine Andrew is up for the fight." "Look, I'm a big boy. You know, I'm my own person. I'm moving into a new industry, really chasing a dream, but then to put the amount of time and effort with Simon to truly get it off the ground and then to come to realise eight, nine months later that it was all the waste of time. It was very disappointing." Now living in Australia, Mark isn't planning on relocating to Dubai anytime soon. He's waiting to hear what the UAE authorities are going to do about his complaints. In the meantime, he has a message for Simon. "How do you sleep at night knowing that there's all these people that you've taken money from? Good people, legitimate people, and do you not have any qualms? Do you not understand that everyone is held accountable in this world or the next? You're going to be held accountable for what you've done." This file and for investigates podcast was presented by Yemmase Adagokay and produced by Rob Burn. The technical producer was Cameron Ward and the production coordinator was Tim Furnley. The programme was edited by Tara McDermott. It was a BBC long-form audio production for BBC Sounds, where you can find many more episodes of our award-winning Radio 4 series by searching 'File on 4 Investigates'. "I'm Noel Tetherich and for BBC Radio 4, from Shadow World, this is impulsive. That happens when someone's personality changes completely." "It was completely out of character. Never done it before, never done it since." and it's because of a prescription drug. I asked myself, "Why would you do such a thing? What were you thinking?" I've been uncovering the shocking side effects linked to medications called dopamine agonists. For BBC Radio 4, from Shadow World, this is Impulsive. 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