Phony Boss, Phony Company: Everyone knows a story about a bad boss. But few
tales top that of a handful of employees of an apparently defunct British
company with the ironic name Now That’s a Good Idea. The firm purportedly used
telephone canvassers to compile lists of potential investors on behalf of
investment brokerages. As it turns out, working for the cold-calling company
turned out to be a bad idea all the way around. Employees probably wish they had
done background checks on company founder Julian Blee, after learning he is an
ex-con who was masquerading under an assumed name and running a bogus
company.
According to an article published April 18 in Scotland’s Edinburgh Evening
News, the company suddenly shut down in the wake of revelations that Blee, 40,
whom employees knew by the name of Julian Bradshaw-Kempton, served four years in
prison for fleecing investors of more than £10 million (about $20 million) in a
fraudulent whisky and Champagne scheme in the mid-1990s. In that scam, Blee and
three other men were jailed for duping investors into “believing they were
cornering the drinks market in the run-up to the millennium, but [who] lost
out,” according to the newspaper.
The telephone canvassers Blee hired reportedly are owed “thousands of pounds
in unpaid wages,” and it’s unclear when or if they will be able to recover their
earnings. One of the ex-employees described Blee as “a likable guy” who promised
to make good on the back pay, according to the newspaper.
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