That whole long list of posts were submitted recently but dated back to 2009. the last info the we have received is that there is much more information on the way from several individuals who were effected recently including from staff and business acquaintances, and also an update from his former business partner(s).

At the moment Robert has been spotted in Peterborough after chipping from the Manchester region and declared himself personally bankrupt around late 2009.

I was under the impression that Robert was giving Matthew business advice and helped to wind up woodpecker, and are now business partners in Lavamar, and he was going to make sure that it was now done properly and all paperwork was in order. And had been to Italy to seal the deal.

Paul Noone is also a victim in this as he commissioned Robert from the Zen days to promote their mats site and was his personal long term client. Paul has the patience of a saint and I spoke to him to track Robert, and he basically said that during the whole graphical mats > Allen fallout, he promised Paul Noones company Kleentex? that he would invest 10s of K into a venture. Allen asked him to confirm that this investment cheque would clear as the deal would have repercussions in the business if it didn’t clear. Well it didn’t clear and Allen got dropped by his supplier Kleentex, Paul Noone got made to look like a fool and Graphical Mats had to go into administration. I think Allen managed to get some money out of Robs parents and is probably the only person in the world that owes Robert any money and good for him, I hope he get everything back with interest.

So as you can see he’s pretty much turned my life upside down in a matter of a year and from the stories that have surfaced – I may have come off lightly. I’m sure there are more names involved in the last two years dealing I had with him, but literally the guy is a ghost until 2006/7, I’m sure there a big can of worms with Robs history in it and I will find out all I can.

As for action – I’ve been through hell and back, as has my family, to the point where we were living off beans, and got to the point were I had only 14p in my pocket and an empty fridge. I turned my situation back and thank God Almighty that everyday away from Robert has been a road to recovery, but the Reach mess is still there and I’m not getting off his case until he has taken full liability for the problems he directly caused.

Had it not been for Robert’s false promises, disregard for relationships, money and the impact of his liberal use of bullshit, we would not be in this situation. I blame him directly and wholly for pulling the wool over everyone’s eyes, and I accept full liability for being stupid enough to believe that he was a genuine person, I guess I’m not the only one that feels this way.

I have told Robert recently what I think of him, and the only way my opinion of him is ever likely to change is through his actions – not words. He must take full responsibility for the problems he created and produce a plan of action to resolve them financially or accept the full liability, take it into the fold of Hand in Hand to do with what he wants. I will not accept anything less and will pursue him with all my substantial human resources until he has nowhere else to hide. He repeatedly made a fool of me and I will return the favour with a full portion – repeatedly!

Me, my family, my friends and my extended friends have endured enough and they are all waiting to see what this final reasonable action yields.

I have since been trying to find out more about him but, he’s hard to trace and only seems to have appeared in 2006/7 and turned up at Zen. I have asked them for his CV but they don’t have it any more.

He told me for the first year that he was formerly married to a girl called Bonnie, and that he had a skiing accident and whilst he was on traction for 2 years, she proceeded to scam his credit cards and took the house, and his parents had to go to the house and destroy the cards whilst she was out. And then he went through a divorce and she got everything. Then I overheard him tell a client that she was a girlfriend and that he was not married and when I questioned him about it, he said it was ‘like’ being married. I pointed out there’s a big fucking difference between marriage and ‘like’ being married, not part to do with a weeding and a divorce and not to lie to me again. He always sidestepped it when I tried speaking to his mum about it. And the scars on his body are supposedly related to this skiing accident. I’m not convinced and I know how scars are caused, those marks on his wrists are not skiing accident, they look very much like what happens when you bind wrists with French ties for a sustained period. The guys had a good beating in the past and I would put money on the fact that he has a good filling in in the past!

The we have SVS leasing, who I think are still his client and has been put through administration and is now called JK leasing, I believe rob is rolling around in the Range Rover I had which was from SVS, and he gave that to Allen at graphical mats for a while to keep him happy, as their relationship turned very sour. Robert told me, Jon Kay’s wife is very wealthy – daughter of the company who make Love Hearts sweets – and JK is sitting on a major fortune – no doubt Robert will still be sniffing around him if that is the case.

I’m sure JK will eventually get burned too with his venture Evolution Mats – time will tell…

So It was crunch time, I sat him down and as calmly as i could  expressed that I couldn’t work with him anymore due to problems he had caused between me and my friends, to leave me with Reach so that I can try to rebuild it. In my haste to get rid of him and move on I agreed that I would sign him out of all liability if he, left, didn’t poach staff, didn’t poach clients, didn’t slander and helped us with sales remotely to tune of 20k per month to help repay debts via his new venture with Mat Creations. He agreed and we signed and off he went.

A few weeks later, I start having staff approach me about wanting to leave to better paid job and after some gentle interrogation, that employer turns out to be Robert Hand flush with his parents cash (they sold their house on London and moved up North – Robert then used up their slush fund), who was also going into web sites, and also taking clients and chatting shit to anyone who would listen – making wild claims that I had bought him out for several millions and went about his escapades given property developers the run around (who you will also hear from soon).

Needless to say Robert had not brought in a single sale for me after he left but was still recruiting staff for himself – poaching directly from my team with lure of huge wages (none of which materialised once he left – who are also chasing him for money). So after our agreement he immediately turned his back on us and ran.  I then handed my keys back to the outbound SVS because I didn’t want any more to do with Robert or the leaving clients – all whom later got burned one by one see below.

I now have banks, recruiters etc chasing me. And what I didn’t realize until we got our hands on the books was that Robert ‘who was in charge of finances ‘horror’ had not ever paid a single PAYE payment in 3 years for any staff – or any TAX, so now I have this to deal with too. So we decided to give Robert one last chance to redeem himself so I arrange to meet him.

We met and he agreed to help in repaying the debts he incurred because it was all on my head, and to do that I would build him a Mats website, selling his mats services. So I build him the site, get it live and its generating inquiries as I am CCd into everything. Every time I asked Robert how it was doing, I am told it was doing well and we will have money soon. That went on for about 6 months and around 2 months ago apparently his Nan died and since then he has not returned any calls, and appears that his situation financially has got worst. He hasn’t Paid Vicki Ormerod who’s details I have, he hasn’t paid Chris Gillespie who left, he has blanked Rod who he owes 8k and he has blanked me who is sat under 250k worth of debt that I cannot escape from or afford to pay.

We agreed that we would deal with the debt and he would not leave it on my head and that is my grievance. After all we went through I have been left high and dry and am not going to allow Robert to get away with it. I treated him like my own brother, introduced him to friends, family, fed him, paid his rent and in the end it was all thrown back in my face and he has been spreading stories about me since. I will get full compensation for my losses and Robert knows full well I could have rung him dry at anytime, but we kept giving him the opportunity to do the right thing! Clearly he thinks he has got away Scott free..

At this stage all eyes were now on Robert as it was the umpteenth cock up in a row and my arse on the line, as it was a partnership and I had hocked everything up in my name. Historically I had paid any shortfalls in wages by getting equity out of my house and borrowing from friends. Note, I had managed to get 150k as an SFLG to get us this far and our OD was up to 40k. On this occasion enough was enough, Roberts game was up and it was time to put him on the spot. This time I asked Robert to put in the required 20k to cover the wage shortfall which he agreed, claiming his friend ‘Tom’ would lend him the money. As pay day got closer Toms money hadn’t landed and the excuse being that it was being transferred. Well the money never showed on pay day and I couldn’t let my staff down, they had done nothing wrong in all this.  I offered to get the money if Robert absolutely promised me that he would pay these guys back within the month. He promised. I got the money in a few hours and as soon as wages were paid and cleared, he told me that his friend Tom had now backed out surprise surprise. So at the end of the month  I had to find a second round of friends to pay the first ones back and this started a vicious circle that had it not been for literally Divine intervention, I would have lost everything I had. Thankfully of my friends and family no-one ever turned me down. A life of never asking anyone for penny was flipped on its head because of Robert Hand.

In the meantime Robert noticed my aggressive attitude towards him and started making his bed with Mat Creations and Kleentex and international company who he also managed to piss off, a client that we did a good amount of marketing for, threatening me with claims that he was being offered 5 figure wages and people were begging him to join them. He claimed that Allen from Graphical Mats was a fool and run the business in to the ground, and only He could turn it around. Allen was raping the business for his own gain were common statement but I knew the level of his bullshit by now.

He came in to work probably once a week, was trotting all over the UK to find his parents a house and giving several people the run around such as clients like Woodpecker Furniture. His brothers were here and there sniffing around. I knew he was up to something and it become obvious that there was no value left in our relationship, and some of the stories about his personal life were also false, like being previously married, having a skiing accident, previous work history – all fabricated.

I spoke to my family and decided he was too toxic and to part ways with him and deal with the mess myself. I got a second opinion from a well known businessman and friend Vance Miller who warned me about Robert several times, but when it came to the crunch he sniffed him out in a second and literally tore strips out of Robert during a prolonged verbal assault on how much of a conman he was – a meeting I wish I had recorded. Vance warned me over and over until his advice rang true. Note: Robert since splitting claimed he was best friends with Vance, and that Vance was his backer and that he had him over a barrel. For all those that know Vance Miller or wish to find out for themselves how he feels about Robert – contact me or him direct for clarification, you will find out what Vance thinks of him in fine detail.

Still, I went for a third opinion from another studio owner, and again they pointed the one common problem – Robert Hand.

During this time Reach BCS was doing very well, we were getting paid good money for good websites but we were starting to get complaints from customers. I had a built a reputation as a good designer and these complaints were a first so decided to start calling clients myself.  It was here that the horror stories began to surface about the massive promises of orders flooding through the websites. Clients were furious that they had been duped and that this was not the service they had bought.

We had steadily grown as a business, took out further bank loans to fund a move to new premises in Heywood, loans I was the guarantor for as Robert had no credit rating blaming a failed marriage to a girl called Bonnie who cleaned him out. Turns out he was never married and I doubt he has ever had a female in his life as his sexual orientation became apparent in later meetings with victims.

I became very suspicious of everything Robert was doing at this stage but as we were in a ‘Partnership’ there was no way out, not with the loans, overdrafts and projects so we had to work our way through the mess. We found an office in Heywood and then thats were shit began to really fly.

+Side Story+

SVS Leasing approached us for a car leasing website. Robert in true form came back with a few £k and the promise of two cars. Not content with a straight forward leasing website, he convinced them to build the UK’s largest most comprehensive leasing site. a month later we take delivery of a Range Rover sport and Mazda RX7. Zoom forward 9 months, no site, cars go back, SVS go in to liquidation and he has become friendly with Jon Kay, the owner of SVS leasing citing everyone at Reach BCS as the reason they went bump and convinces him to front a business called Evolutions Mats. The mats venture came about after he put 4 mat companies into liquidation one after the other once he was kicked out of Reach, see his Credit safe report below.The whole mats episode is another story entirely but one that will appear on these pages soon enough.

+Back to Reach+

During our move from Rawtenstall to Heywood, one of Zulf’s US colleagues asked for some ‘design’ help on a project.

Enter Real Seekr, Grant Freer, a friend of Zulf’s of 20 years. We had a conference call in my car with Grant in the States and we agreed to help with the design as the project was technically beyond us. Grant decided he would come to the UK on his mext trip home and meet us, again we had a great time and agreed to design project.

Grant the invited Robert Hand over to the US for a final discussion, at which point Robert went in to action with his serpent tongue. He quickly sold him the moon and solar system and returned with our biggest contract to date. I was swept along in awe really, if he said it could be done then surely it can be impossible,. before you know it a massive recruitment drive started, and Robert took on 12 contractors in total to deliver this all singing all dancing real estate portal + other complete the equally ambitious projects that we’re also failing, the guy was unstoppable and began disappearing for days a time (enter the Mats side story)  in the end it turned in to a real mess.

Grant totally fell out with Robert and on a second trip to launch a beta version of the site in Vegas – exhibition stand and all – they actually left Robert stranded in Vegas at the convention because they couldn’t deal with him anymore. Apparently Robert wouldn’t come out of the Casinos and was late for every meeting, ran up huge room service bills. Grant demanded his money back from Reach, at this time we were in no position to repay and Zulf lost one of his oldest and dearest friends because that twat.

But did that deter Robert – did it fuck. If that wasn’t a big enough problem, the next project was about to shake our world for the foreseeable future.