The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which launched its enforcement action against James Moore, an accomplice of Renwick Haddow, back in 2018, is making an attempt to finally get the case to budge. On February 23, 2022, the regulator filed a status letter with the New York Southern District Court.

The document, seen by the FNG team, reveals that the SEC is requesting a pretrial conference. This happens after earlier in February Moore was sentenced in a related criminal case.

He was sentenced to 140 months of imprisonment and ordered to pay restitution of $57,579,790.00 and a fine of $50,000.00. Moore has filed his Notice of Appeal in the Criminal Case.

The Commission therefore requests that the Court schedule an initial pretrial conference in the civil action. If the Court grants the request, the Commission will notify Moore in writing of the conference and make arrangements for Moore to appear telephonically.

In late 2009, Moore partnered with Renwick Haddow, who is also a British citizen, to sell investments in a hotel scheme in which investors lost money. Haddow had been disqualified as a director of any U.K. company for eight years, and later sued by the Financial Conduct Authority, a British regulator, for operating investment schemes through misrepresentations that lost investors substantially all of their money. These sanctions and lawsuit were publicized extensively online.

Beginning in 2015, Moore chose to partner with Haddow again, this time to solicit investments into Bar Works through material misrepresentations concerning, among other things, the identity of Bar Works’ management and the financial condition of that company.

In order to conceal his role at Bar Works because of the negative publicity on the internet related to past investment schemes and government sanctions in the United Kingdom, Haddow adopted the alias “Jonathan Black.” Notwithstanding Haddow’s control over Bar Works, Moore and others knowingly distributed the Bar Works offering materials listing Black as the chief executive officer of Bar Works and claiming that Black had an extensive background in finance and past success with start-up companies. As Moore well knew, “Jonathan Black,” was an entirely fictitious person, created to mask Haddow’s control of Bar Works.

Among other things, Moore helped devise and distribute pitch materials that contained the misrepresentations. Moore and an affiliated Spanish-based company, United Property Group, coordinated a substantial sales force to recruit investors knowing that the materials contained the falsehood. Moore advised Haddow as to how to continue to conceal the truth concerning the identity of “Jonathan Black,” and affirmatively represented to potential sales partners that he was communicating with CEO “Jonathan Black.”

Moore also advised Haddow how to evade foreign law enforcement authorities. Moore personally received approximately $1.6 million from Bar Works before helping to launch a competing co-working space investment project.

Moore repeatedly lied to the United States Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) and federal law enforcement agents to cover up his role in the Bar Works scheme. On August 11, 2016 – while the Bar Works scheme was still operating – Moore participated in a recorded phone interview with the SEC and reiterated that Jonathan Black was a real person who he understood to be the CEO of Bar Works, notwithstanding knowing that Black was fake.

Moore claimed that he never asked to speak to Jonathan Black, even though in the prior months, Moore had been misrepresented to multiple agents that he was working closely with Black.