Have you been scammed by Phil Wilkinson?

A British introducer sold high-return investments out of Jersey for three years. Jersey’s regulator says he was never authorised to sell anything. One Swedish investor lost more than half a million pounds and says the pressure to buy was relentless. Between them, investors who have come forward have lost more than £1 million. Wilkinson is believed to be in Thailand.

A Swedish investor met Phil Wilkinson in Thailand in August 2022. Wilkinson seemed to have access to everything: bonds, offshore bank accounts, gold, a litigation fund, a mine in Brazil. He spoke about the firms behind these products as people he “worked with” and was precise about which of them were regulated and which were not.

Over the next three years Wilkinson brought him one opportunity after another. He took five of them. Three are gone. One returned his capital months late. The fifth paid on time for nearly four years and then collapsed into administration.

More than half a million pounds of his money is lost or at risk. He is not the only one. Between them, investors who have come forward have lost more than £1 million.

What the regulator said

Philip William Wilkinson, a British citizen born on 24 March 1986, traded as P Wilkinson International from an office in St Helier, Jersey. On 13 March 2026 the Jersey Financial Services Commission published a statement about him. The regulator said Wilkinson “is claiming to offer investment opportunities for Jersey residents via P Wilkinson International, while not authorised to do so by the JFSC,” and confirmed that neither he nor the business had ever been registered, or applied to be registered, under Jersey’s financial services law.

By the time that statement appeared he had been selling investments to the Swedish investor for three and a half years.

The regulator named his LinkedIn profile specifically, and that profile was central to how he operated. It was where he found investors, and it was where he found the products he sold them. When he lost his phone and all his contacts in April 2024, he told the investor he was “having to go through LinkedIn and the small circle k work with to gain access to groups and info”.

The 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” with “a proven track record of success in high-ticket sales, with expertise in the oil and gas, agriculture, and tier one trading industries”. It gave his location as St Helier, Jersey, and showed 224 connections. It claimed no financial qualification, no regulatory permission, and no investment experience of any kind.

What the investor bought

Other investments Wilkinson has promoted

The investor declined these. Read together, the promised returns are the clearest warning in the story. No legitimate investment pays 10 per cent a month.

Product	When	What Wilkinson said
Arkfort Capital loan note	2022 to 2023	“The loan note paying 4% per month is via my group in London, that’s the unregulated firm (All legit)”. Roughly 48 per cent a year.
Gold transport, Kenya to Dubai	May 2024	“It’s paying 10% per month on the transportation of gold from Kenya to Dubai. Been active and paying out for the last few years”
A “Troy” deal	July 2024	“I have a 5% per month deal of Troy… I’ve met the guys that run the deal”
Twelve month note	September 2024	“18% minimum… a 12 month deal”
Go Asset Finance bond	June 2024	“asset backed, meaning luxury watches, cars, jets and so on. This firm been going for 10 years, also FCA regulated with a ISA.” Both companies involved had been incorporated the previous year.
Linklease Finance PLC bonds	September 2023	Promoted as “one of our trusted partners”. Companies House now records the company in liquidation.
An oil deal	October 2024	A photograph, captioned “Worth $7m commission. You want in?”

The pressure

What the investor describes, and what the messages show, is not a salesman waiting patiently for a decision. Wilkinson would send an opportunity and follow up the next day, then the day after, asking whether the documents had been read and when the money would move. Everything was urgent. Everything had to close now.

When investors hesitated, the tone changed quickly.

In October 2022, about a prospective investor who wanted to deal by email rather than take a call, Wilkinson recorded two voice notes. In the first he said the man was “not a serious investor and it’s bullshit”. In the second: “just pick up the fucking phone and call me, that’s it… get some balls bro!”

In March 2024, about another prospective investor who was hesitating: “you put yourself in this high net worth league and that you’re a sophisticated investor. I said, now you’re backtracking… If you want it won’t do it. If you don’t, then, you know, it’s your loss.”

He pressed the investor about his wife’s account that June: “It’s been a while mate, and I provided everything on a plate.”

When the investor finally raised his losses in November 2024, the replies turned personal. Wilkinson told him he sounded “like a proper sweed” and wrote “You’re a absolute dick”. In a voice message on 21 November 2024 he said the investor was hiding away “like the Asian part of you just fucking ignores me”. Several of the voice messages he sent over this period contain racial remarks and personal insults aimed at the investor.

The aggression was not reserved for investors. When Divkovic failed to pay him, Wilkinson said in a voice note dated 28 November 2023 that if the money did not arrive within a fortnight he would “just have a bunch of Albanians go round to his house”. Divkovic emailed the investor at the time asking him to call, “since Phil is threatening me and my Family”.

“I made nothing from that deal”

Wilkinson told the investor repeatedly that he earned nothing from what he was selling. On the equity deal that cost £450,000, in September 2024: “Btw, I’ve been speaking with Anthony, and believe me you’ll do extremely well out of the equity deal. And heads up, I made nothing from that deal, it was a favour to you.”

The investor says that is untrue. He says the promoter of the deal, Anthony Hirsch, later told him by telephone that Wilkinson had been paid a commission on it. That call was not recorded, and the account of it is the investor’s.

He was candid that introductions were a business when the introductions were someone else’s. In July 2023, about his own friends and family: “if you guys get the green light from Anthony and would like ti introduce your close friends and family, please send them via me. I gave you direct access because we are friends. anything else is business.”

Then there is the invoice.

On 19 November 2023 Wilkinson issued invoice #0000044 from his Jersey address, billed to Roberto Divkovic in Belgrade, the man whose gold deal he had recommended the previous month and vouched for personally. Under the heading “Marketing Services” it carried one line: “Commission, €11,225.00.” Amount paid: €0.00. Balance due: €11,225.00.

It was never paid, which is the only reason the investor knows it exists. Wilkinson’s falling out with Divkovic was not about his money. It was about his own. “He’s trying not to pay me what we agreed,” he wrote. “Still hasn’t paid the coms.”

That invoice is the only commission document the investor holds. At €11,225 against a €100,000 investment it comes to roughly 11 per cent. A second investor, who was approached by Wilkinson with the same products and who asked not to be named, puts the figure far higher. He says introducers on these schemes were paid as much as 40 per cent of the money an investor handed over.

If that is right, it is the entire story in one number. No legitimate investment can pay 40 per cent of an investor’s capital to the person who made the introduction and still return anything to the investor. A payment on that scale does not come out of profits, because there are none. It comes out of the next deposit.

The testimonial he asked for

In March 2024 Wilkinson sent the investor a voice note about a prospective investor who had grown suspicious of the gold deal and feared he was being scammed. The man, Wilkinson noted in a companion message, “invests 500k plus”.

…would you do me a favour and give [name withheld] a message… let him know that you’ve done me investments into the gold man, his company… just say, yeah, look, you know, I’ve done this investment, I’ve been paid out. And yeah, I think it’s a safe investment on a 12 month term.

Voice note, 28 March 2024. Transcript; the audio is held.

The investor had not been paid out. Nothing had been paid out. He was being asked to hand a stranger a testimonial he knew to be false, so the stranger would put money into the deal the investor was already trapped in.

That is the part worth sitting with. Not the losses, the machinery. Anyone shown a satisfied investor as proof that something works should ask what that investor was told to say, and who told them.

Phil Wilkinson tries to directly scam victim

Sixteen months after the gold money went, Wilkinson emailed with good news. “I am writing to share some good news about your funds… Kindly reply to this email confirming that you would like your £100k back.”

Then the condition: “there is a fee you’d have to pay if you’d want then €100k returned back to you.” Then the amount, and a refusal to explain it: “The €14000 fee is for the collection of your €100k. Unfortunately I’m not putting in writing what’s happened and who I’ve had to speak to regarding this matter.”

The next day, having also declined to repay a €6,000 personal loan the investor made him in 2023: “Thanks to me, you should pay me £5k for my work… You only have these opportunities because of ME and my work. Pay the £10k and you receive €100k or nothing.”

And then: “you come from a silver spoon, I come from the streets. Just try me, I dare you.”

The investor did not pay. There was never any evidence the money existed, had been recovered, or could be recovered. Demanding a fee to release funds that are already gone is a recognised second wave of investment fraud. It works because it targets people who have already lost and want to believe they can win it back.

Seven checks before you move any money

1. Check the register first. In Jersey every regulated business is listed at jerseyfsc.org. In the UK it is the FCA register and the FCA Warning List. Being told a firm is regulated is not the same as it being regulated.
2. Ask the introducer, in writing: are you being paid by the other side, and how much? Keep the answer. It is the single check in this whole story that would have changed the outcome.
3. Run a proper background check on two people, not one: the person selling you the investment, and the person who will actually hold your money. A web search is not enough of a background check. Company registers show every company someone has run, including the dissolved and struck-off ones, director disqualifications, and personal insolvency or bankruptcy. Court records show convictions and judgments. Almost none of that surfaces on Google, and it is usually where the pattern is. If someone has left a trail of collapsed companies behind them, that trail exists in public records years before it reaches a news article.
4. Treat the rate as the warning. 4 per cent a month, 5 per cent a month, 10 per cent a month. The number is not the opportunity. The number is the tell.
5. Look the company up yourself. Companies House is free. Check the incorporation date, whether accounts are overdue, whether an auditor has resigned, and whether charges are registered against it.
6. Notice who is vouching for whom. A warm endorsement from someone you like is not due diligence, and it may be a paid introduction you were never told about.
7. If you have already lost money, never pay to get it back. Nobody who has genuinely recovered your funds needs a fee from you first.