In February 2024 a UK investor was pitched an Amazon gold mine. The introduction came from Phil Wilkinson, a British salesman working out of St Helier, Jersey. The offer was 18 per cent a year, £100,000 to enter, and a mine said to be backed by “gold in the ground worth over $200M.” It was structured as a loan to the company behind the mine.
The investor signed a loan agreement on 23 March 2024. By then the terms had firmed up to 20 per cent a year, paid in four quarterly instalments of £5,000, with his £100,000 returned to him on 25 March 2025.
The date came and went. “Yeah didn’t get it back,” the investor wrote on 20 April 2025.
More than a year on, the £100,000 has still not been returned. The investor has chased repayment ever since and been given only excuses by the company behind the mine.
That was the first of three.
What he bought
Between February 2024 and February 2026 Mr Wilkinson introduced the investor to nineteen separate investments, according to a schedule the investor compiled from his own WhatsApp records. He put money into four of them.
| Company | Amount | Rate offered | What happened |
|---|---|---|---|
| AN International Ventures Ltd Amazon gold mine |
£100,000 | 20% a year | Capital not returned on the due date |
| Go Asset Finance fixed term bonds |
£100,000 | 17% a year | Certificate issued, payments stopped |
| SA Trading Strategies Ltd | £100,000 | 18% a year | Company now in liquidation |
| Woodville Consultants Ltd litigation funding |
£25,000 | 10% a year | Repaid in full and on time |
| Total committed | £325,000 | £300,000 outstanding | |
The pattern is worth stating plainly. Of the four companies the investor funded on Mr Wilkinson’s introduction, one repaid him. Two are now formally insolvent. The fourth simply stopped paying.
The fifteen he turned down
The fifteen investments the investor declined say more about the operation than the four he took. Mr Wilkinson offered him 15 per cent a month on a crypto strategy in July 2024, with a minimum entry of $50,000. In February 2025 he offered a trading account he said was “turning 25% per month.” In July 2025 he offered 15 to 20 per cent a month on futures trading, and described it as “where the cash is at.”
There was a Mali gold deal at 5 per cent a month, then at 10 per cent a month. Then came a one-off offer of a “100% uplift on his funds within 60 days” if the investor committed £250,000 inside a week. He declined that one in writing. “I also don’t wanna risk 250k,” he wrote.
Twenty-five per cent a month compounds to more than 1,300 per cent a year. No legitimate investment pays that. A promoter offering it is either mistaken about what he is selling or aware that the numbers do not have to hold, because the money is not being invested in the way described.
How he gets paid
Mr Wilkinson makes his money by finding investors. He is paid a commission for each person he brings into a scheme. The investor says that by August 2025 the SA Trading Strategies paperwork was offering introducers commissions of up to 35 per cent.
That is the mechanism in one number. No investment can pay 35 per cent of an investor’s capital to the person who made the introduction and still return the capital. A payment on that scale does not come out of profits. It comes out of the next deposit.
How he sells
The investor describes a relentless style. Mr Wilkinson would send an opportunity, then follow up the next day, and the day after, asking when the money would move. Every deal was urgent. Every deal had to close now.
When an investor asked for time to think, the pressure sharpened rather than eased. He pushed, he chased, and he grew short-tempered with anyone who hesitated or wanted to run their own checks first.
None of this is incidental. Manufactured urgency, and hostility towards anyone who slows down to verify, is one of the most reliable warning signs of investment fraud. A genuine investment is still there next week. The demand to commit today, before you have had time to look, is the tactic itself.
The one that paid, and then collapsed
One investment did exactly what it promised. The investor put £25,000 into a Woodville Consultants loan note. It matured on 26 March 2025 and Woodville paid him £25,625, capital plus interest, by HSBC Faster Payment the same day. He called it the only professional setup of the lot.
Sixteen months later Woodville Consultants Limited entered administration. The High Court appointed Robert Goodhew and Andrew Stoneman of Kroll as joint administrators on 16 July 2026, on an application brought by an investor whose loan notes were in default and unpaid.
The Joint Administrators’ Statement of Proposals, dated 9 September 2026, sets out what was left. Woodville owes its loan note holders £296,058,471. Against that, the administrators identified £254,734 of cash and £650 of office equipment.
They had recovered nothing at all from the law firms the company had lent to. They write that they have “significant concerns as to the realisable value of the loan book” and that “it appears clear that there will be a significant shortfall.”
Woodville paid this investor in full, on the day it said it would. It was, on that evidence, the soundest thing he bought. He was repaid sixteen months before the company collapsed owing its investors £296 million. An investment that pays on schedule can still be an investment that fails.
One line in the administrators’ proposals bears directly on this article. Kroll are investigating introducers. They say they are “reviewing introducer agreements and commission arrangements, including amounts paid and the circumstances in which investors were introduced to the Company,” and they have set aside £214,153 for that work alone. Mr Wilkinson introduced this investor to Woodville.
The regulator
On 13 March 2026 the Jersey Financial Services Commission published a statement naming Mr Wilkinson. The regulator said he “is claiming to offer investment opportunities for Jersey residents via P Wilkinson International, while not authorised to do so by the JFSC.” It confirmed that neither he nor the business had ever been registered, or ever applied to be registered, under Jersey’s financial services law.
By the time that statement appeared, the UK investor had already committed £325,000 on his introductions.
The JFSC named his LinkedIn profile as one of the places he was offering investments. That profile has since been deleted.
A copy taken before it came down describes him not as a financial adviser but as “a highly skilled and experienced sales professional”. His record, it said, was in “the oil and gas, agriculture, and tier one trading industries.” It listed no financial qualification and no regulatory permission of any kind.
The Jersey Financial Services Commission has asked anyone who has had dealings with Mr Wilkinson, or who holds information about him, to contact its Enforcement team at enforcement@jerseyfsc.org, or by its confidential line on +44 (0)1534 887557. You may do so anonymously.
He is not the only one
A Swedish investor met Mr Wilkinson in Thailand in August 2022 and took five investments from him over the following three years. More than £600,000 of that money is lost or at risk. That investor has published his own account, written as a warning to anyone else who has been scammed by Phil Wilkinson.
Between them, the two investors are out more than £900,000. They may not be the only ones.
What to check before you move money
- Check the register, not the person. Every regulator publishes a searchable list of who is authorised. The JFSC, the FCA and their equivalents are free to search and take under a minute. Mr Wilkinson was never on any of them.
- Treat the rate as the warning. Five per cent a month is 80 per cent a year. Anyone offering it is telling you something about the risk whether they mean to or not.
- Ask who pays the introducer, and how much. Ask in writing. An honest introducer will tell you, and the figure will be modest. If the answer is that he earns nothing, ask why he is working for free.
- Look up the company, not the brochure. Companies House shows incorporation dates, filed accounts and registered offices. A firm selling a ten year track record that was incorporated last year is telling you the track record is not its own.
- Be careful with a testimonial. Ask the satisfied investor whether he has actually been paid out, and when. Ask him who suggested he speak to you.
- A payment that arrives on time proves only that one payment arrived on time. It is not evidence that the company behind it is solvent.
Legal note
Mr Wilkinson has not been charged with any offence, and no court has made any finding against him. The Jersey Financial Services Commission statement of 13 March 2026 concerns his lack of authorisation, and is not a finding of fraud. Anthony Hirsch of AN International Ventures has not been charged with any offence and no court has made any finding against him.
Woodville Consultants Limited is in administration, which is an insolvency process and not a finding of wrongdoing against anyone. Its directors have not been charged with any offence. Quotations from messages are reproduced as written, including errors. Figures for the loans, rates and repayment dates are taken from the investor’s own records, the signed agreements he holds and the filed insolvency documents.
If this has happened to you
If Phil Wilkinson, or anyone acting for P Wilkinson International, introduced you to an investment, report it to the police where you live. Do that whether or not you put money in, and whether or not you have lost anything yet.
- United Kingdom: Action Fraud on 0300 123 2040, or actionfraud.police.uk
- Jersey: States of Jersey Police on +44 (0)1534 612612, or hello@jersey.police.je
- Jersey regulator: enforcement@jerseyfsc.org, or the confidential line +44 (0)1534 887557
- Thailand, Tourist Police: 1155, or +66 2 308 0333 from abroad, English speakers, 24 hours
- Thailand, online fraud: Anti-Online Scam Operation Centre on 1441, or thaipoliceonline.go.th
- Woodville investors specifically: the joint administrators at woodville@kroll.com, who have asked anyone with information about how the company was run to come forward
Reports from several countries about the same person are what let investigators see a pattern instead of an isolated complaint. Make yours even if you assume someone else already has.