Has anyone on here heard of Winters Investment or even been on their courses?
I have recently attended their free 3 hour seminar in Heathrow and was wondering if their 1450 2day course attendeable with partner is worth it?
They also have their course on video aswell. Anyone seen the videos?

Regards

Javid

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Just come across this on the Guardian website:



Real secret behind the 'millionaire' promises

Darren Winters offers you the chance to become fantastically rich. But, reports Tony Levene, the man himself is no stranger to heavy losses

Saturday October 4, 2003
The Guardian

Darren Winters advertises his easy road to making a fortune from shares schemes on radio. He takes space in newspapers; and he sends out mailshots which include free tickets for his "Winters Investment Network" seminars.
Those who attend his free "tutorials" - and he holds around 10 in the London area in a typical month - are told they can become a millionaire with minimal effort and even less capital by following his "winning" stock market investment formula.

Many spend up to 3,100 to attend an additional weekend course held once a month. With up to 500 attending each time, according to his office, he could be netting around 1.5m although most pay discounted rates. Besides all this, Winters also says he is a full-time shares trader as well as spending time sunning himself in the Caribbean.

But Winters may not be all he seems. A Jobs & Money investigation this week reveals that he was a director of a company that collapsed owing creditors 250,000.

At the seminars, which Jobs & Money has attended, Winters exudes confidence as he works his audience into admiration for his money minting skills. He sells himself heavily to the 150 or so who turn up at each free "seminar" seeking a quick escape from humdrum earnings to amazing wealth.

And the proof, Winters says, is that as well as bestriding stock market investment like a colossus, he himself made a fortune from selling a software company. He claims that investing the payout from this sale was a defining moment after which he was determined to become one of the greatest investment traders.

Winters has never named this company nor given any further details either at the seminars or in response to questions from Jobs & Money.

But in June 1998, as the information technology boom was moving into overdrive, Winters became a director of the then newly incorporated Amicus Solutions, a software firm based in Exeter. Amicus was involved in software for travel agencies. Just over two years later, in October 2000, Amicus ceased trading, making all of its staff redundant.

On December 21, 2000, an Exeter firm was appointed as liquidator of Amicus Solution.

Documents show Amicus owed 257,562 to creditors led by the Inland Revenue which wanted 37,000 and Customs & Excise, whose unpaid bill amounted to 13,149.

The liquidators sold the software and client database to Dolphin Dynamics for 31,920. The Inland Revenue grabbed office furniture and other items under a distraint order; the landlord recovered the property on default; and the firm's cars were repossessed by Ford Credit.

Darren Winters' current internet site makes no mention of Amicus in which he held 333 of the 1,000 shares issued. But it does say of part of the period when he was a director: "From 1997 to 1999, he [Winters] spent an average of 80 hours a week, researching, testing and applying everything he learnt [from studying "investment for over 12 years"]."

Neither does Amicus feature in his official return to Companies House for his current company, Winters Investment Network (WIN).

"Not stating previous directorships from the past five years whether the directorship is current, resigned or has ended due to a company being liquidated or dissolved is a criminal offence punishable by imprisonment and/or a fine," says Jonathan Pickworth, a partner specialising in company law at solicitors DLA.

His date of birth has also changed. Amicus returns show he was born on March 3, 1972. But documents from WIN (which has no relationship to any similar named firm) show March 3, 1973.

Companies House uses date of birth to identify directors with otherwise similar names.

Records show the same signature on documents for both Amicus and WIN, where Winters holds 99 out of 100 shares issued. The other share is owned by Tatjana Valujeva, 27, a naturalised Estonian with whom Winters shares a home address. So Winters' August 2002 claim to have invested for "over 12 years" suggests he started at just 17 years old.

Jobs & Money tried to contact Winters this week. "I haven't got a number for him and there is no one here who can help you," said a Winters Investment Network person who refused to give his name.

The Financial Services Authority does not regulate WIN as WIN only offers "investment tutorials" and not investment advice.

Travis,

Good post, I hope The guradian are informing Companies House of the accusations and irregularities!

I attended the 3 hour seminar, and he certainly does work the audience well, although there are some tacky bits too, such as "give yourselves a round of applause for attending tonight" ugggh!

Andy: I hope Companies House do something if the Guardian article is right.

Now the BBC have featured him!

Can this man make you rich?

By Orla Ryan
BBC News Online business reporter




I have taught you enough to be dangerous

Darren Winters
Darren Winters knows how to sell.

He is standing in a room full of people who have already bought into a dream.

We all read the advertisement which offered us a free seminar on how to make millions on the stock market.

We handed in our signed disclaimers as we walked through the door, we bear the bruises of our previous stock market encounters and we want to learn how to do it right. We are the Saturday night crowd, waiting for the lottery balls to roll.

Darren takes a sip from the first of a dozen or so already poured glasses of water and begins.

Briefcase of learning

He holds up a silver briefcase, which represents the stock market.

To get the money inside, we need the combination code.

And Darren, who has read 200 investment books, attended stock market seminars in the UK, America and Russia over a period of five years, had one-on-one training with some of the best stock market traders - is the person to teach us the code.

"Maybe you know someone who lost money," he starts.

"Sitting on this chair,"shouts someone from the audience and everyone laughs.

He speeds through different buy-and-sell strategies, play-it-safe ones which offer returns of 20% and single trades which can offer us returns of 451%, all of which sound too good to be true.


In the throng: Everyone can make a fast buck
We are on a rollercoaster of adrenaline when Darren reveals the catch - he can teach us everything we need to know on a two-day course, which costs just over 3,000.

Life is a beach

Over the course of the next three hours, we learn a lot about Darren.

At one stage, he says he lost 40,000 on the stock market in eight weeks through his ignorance.

Then he tells us he was frying burgers in McDonald's when he saw an advertisement for a stock market course. He had doubts and then he realised he "did not have enough money not to do the course". He paid for it on his credit card and a part-time job in a bar while his flat mates laughed at his aspirations.

He laughs now. He can. He has spent years in Goa, St Lucia and Barbados. And where are his flatmates now? Accountants, marketing directors... he shakes his head.

What was the difference between him and them? He chose to pay to do the course.

Life on the beach was good, that is until he realised life without a goal was meaningless and his goal was to teach other people how to make money on the stock market.

Child's play

How easy is it to do?


A few years ago and you could have seen Darren on a beach in St Lucia
Easy, says Darren, showing a picture of his toddler son, Richard, at a laptop doing stock market research.

"What is a dividend yield? Who cares, lets keep this simple," he says half way through one strategy.

What is it that we need to learn?

How the economy influences shares. How to pick quality companies at the right time. When to buy and when to sell. Lots of charts. Pipe bottom, diamond bottom, gap island reversal - all things we can master.

A quality company. What would you want, he asks, a Mini or a Mercedes? We look confused. Darren prompts us - a Mercedes.

More than 40,000 people have attended his courses over the last four years and he has 700 testimonials and success stories.

"I have taught you enough to be dangerous, " he says at the end.

About one quarter of us have already left. Some of us are looking incredibly alert, possibly dangerous, maybe ready to invest.

To be really profitable, and not just dangerous, we should do the course.

Disappearing act

Within seconds, Darren disappears through a side exit into the kitchen, so quickly it is as if he never existed.

Is it really possible to learn to make millions on the stock market in just two days when even highly trained fund managers can come a cropper when markets turn?

Can it be that easy, I ask the man on my right.

Rob Huntley knows a lot of people in the City, has attended this course before and is back now because he has some money to invest.

"I don't think it is probably that simple... if it really is that simple, there would be more people making money," he said.

I ask the man on my left, who slept through half the seminar.

He says he came just to see Darren's selling techniques, as he heard he was a really good salesman.

A young woman tells me the course was inspiring, but she cannot afford to do it yet.

About ten to fifteen people have signed up for the two-day course at reduced prices available only today, the organiser tells me. She has already told me I can't take pictures, and no, I can't interview people who have already attended the course - I would only distort their stories.