John Bernard is back, sinks cruise line that wanted to bring a green house fleet to market

This is the fifth in a series that Krebs on Security has been doing on a guy by the name of John Bernard. His real name is not John Bernard of course, and we’ve covered him in podcasts 10, 12 and 14.

If you search for John Bernard you’ll find multiple blog postings including the 2020 October Piece asking if he was done for. I even wasn’t really impressed when I saw a story in 2021 and I titled this John … what’s your name now … is now back in the news because he can’t decide what he want to call himself.

He’s also been covered in news notes articles and the podcast show notes themselves for those podcasts.

This time, Mr. Bernard is covered in the fifth installment titled Fake Investor John Bernard Sinks Norwegian Green Shipping Dreams which is pretty detailed.

Several articles here have delved into the history of John Bernard, the pseudonym used by a fake billionaire technology investor who tricked dozens of startups into giving him tens of millions of dollars. Bernard’s latest victim — a Norwegian company hoping to build a fleet of environmentally friendly shipping vessels — is now embroiled in a lawsuit over a deal gone bad, in which Bernard falsely claimed to have secured $100 million from six other wealthy investors, including the founder of Uber and the artist Abel Makkonen Tesfaye, better known as The Weeknd.

John Bernard is a pseudonym used by John Clifton Davies, a convicted fraudster from the United Kingdom who is currently a fugitive from justice and residing in Ukraine. Davies’ Bernard persona has fleeced dozens of technology companies out of an estimated $30 million with the promise of lucrative investments.

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In case after case, Bernard would promise to invest millions in tech startups, and then insist that companies pay tens of thousands of dollars worth of due diligence fees up front. However, the due diligence company he insisted on using — another Swiss firm called Inside Knowledge — also was secretly owned by Bernard, who would invariably pull out of the deal after receiving the due diligence money.

The scam artist John Bernard (left) in a recent Zoom call, and a photo of John Clifton Davies from 2015.

But Bernard would adopt a slightly different approach to stealing from Freidig Shipping Ltd., a Norwegian company formed in 2017 that was seeking the equivalent of USD $100 million investment to bring its green fleet of 30 new offshore service vessels to fruition.

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Two Journalists wrote a story (which is behind a paywall) and Brian took some quotes from it. The writers say that he’s professional, even with his company Inside Knowledge. The article talks about how he has 6 potential investors that would put up 99.25 million, leaving the shortage of 750,000 which would have to be accounted for elsewhere and discussed in the article.

But by the spring of 2020, it was clear that Devos and others involved in the shipping project had been tricked, and that all the money which had been paid to Bernard — an estimated NOK 15 million (~USD $1.67 million) — had been lost. By that time the two co-founders and their families had borrowed USD $1.5 million, and had transferred the funds to Inside Knowledge.

The article goes in to the invesigation we talked about in the other podcasts where he supposedly killed his wife, and how he’s apparently living with a 4th wife now.

Remember that John Bernard wants you to believe what he’s telling you, and the fees are to guarantee the trust in him and his companies.

Do your due dilligance so you’re not bitten by him and his companies.

Bernard’s scam is genius because he never approaches investors directly; rather, investors are incentivized to put his portfolio in front of tech firms seeking financial backing. And because the best cons begin as an idea or possibility planted in the target’s mind.

What’s remarkable about Freidig Shipping’s fleecing is that we heard about it at all. In the first of this now five-part series, we heard from Jason Kane, an attorney who focuses on investment fraud. Kane said companies bilked by small-time investment schemes rarely pursue legal action, mainly because the legal fees involved can quickly surpass the losses. What’s more, most victims will likely be too ashamed to come forward.

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Finally:

John Clifton Davies, a.k.a. John Bernard, Jonathan Bibi, John Cavendish, is a U.K. man who absconded from justice before being convicted on multiple counts of fraud in 2015. Prior to his conviction, Davies served 16 months in jail on suspicion of murdering his third wife on their honeymoon in India. The U.K. authorities later dropped the murder charges for lack of evidence. Davies currently resides with his fourth wife in or near Kyiv, Ukraine.

If there is a way to get this guy picked up and charged for his crime(s) than lets see what we can do to bring him to justice. He’s hurt quite a number of people by stealing money, there’s got to be a way to bring him to justice once and for all.

While I like writing articles, there has to be a time to say that its enough and pick him up. Problem is, which country would be trying him anyway? Its going to get interesting as this continues to progress.