Dan and Tom: the story of the armed robber and the "sheriff"

Daniel ‘Brokermandan’ Levi’s exposure as a former armed robber who spent 16 years in maximum security prisons, raises inevitable and pressing doubts about his business associates - primarily the apparent ringleaders of their short-selling game, self-proclaimed "Sheriff of AIM" Tom Winnifrith and infamous short-seller Simon Cawkwell.

Levi (former name David J Hopkins) has been closely associated with both Cawkwell and Winnifrith for some years, each backing up the opinions of the other on controversies such as Sefton and Quindell.

Levi’s links with Cawkwell are broadly circumstantial: they move in the same circles, appear at the same events - ShareProphets seminars and UK investor shows - and share many of the same friends and business associates.

Levi has been prone to describing Cawkwell (as well as other members of the group) in the warmest of terms: “Lucian Miers & Simon Cawkwell both are people that have their fingers on the financial pulse and can pull the trigger in any discourse. When they speak people take notice for one reason and one reason only. More often than not they are invariably right on how a company or a market will go.”

He was even closer to Winnifrith, who might be regarded in some ways as his former mentor. In August 2014, for instance, all was sweetness and light between the two of them; in an article headed “In Defence of Tom Winnifrith”, Levi wrote: “Tom Winnifrith is a good man to have in the trenches with you. He is as solid as a rock…the abuse this man is taking is despicable. It comes from people of low morality…It is people like Tom Winnifrith who have championed the truth against all the odds and all the abuse, Winnifrith has yet again proven to be an invaluable source for truth and integrity.” (http://guerillainvesting.co.uk/2014/08/10/in-defence-of-tom-winnifrith/)

By October 2014, the relationship had become tarnished after Winnifrith questioned the validity of a Levi ‘scoop’ about UK Oil & Gas (revealing a discovery which sent the shares briefly soaring before everyone found out it was not commercially viable), which was said to have similar qualities to a typical ‘pump-and-dump’ operation.

Levi appears to have been genuinely hurt that his mentor had turned on him but his criticism was measured: “In the main TW talks sense but on the actual scoop we got, he talks absolute shite.” His ire was also directed at Ben Turney, another financial journalist who questioned the validity of the scoop(Turney is co-author of The Times’ exposé on Levi – proving that what goes around comes around).

By May 11, 2015, real bitterness had set in: “What an absolute cock Tom Winnifrith is,” wrote Levi. “The self righteous hypocrite the man who has taken £100’s of thousands of pounds from London listed companies…He’s a hypocrite of the lowest order. A ramper or a deramper, a gun for hire who flip flops more times than an Asian flip flopping his way through the slums of Karachi…He is quite literally a double dealing nauseating bullshitter.” (http://guerillainvesting.co.uk/2015/05/11/tom-winnifrith-crony-capitalist-flip-flopper/)
On May 13 Levi published another rambling rant which observed of Winnifrith and Turney: "Two bare faced Bullshitters now having to reunite in an unholy alliance fighting a rear guard action against myself. Pathetic." (http://guerillainvesting.co.uk/2015/05/13/shareprophets-ben-turney-gotcha/)

Less than two weeks later, things had worsened. Describing events at New World Oil & Gas, Levi told followers: “You the share-holders get screwed. Who makes all the money? Those who ran the squeeze and dumped the stock. I directly accuse shareProfitsWinnifrith and ‘safehouse’ Turney of Market Abuse.I expose the lies and deceits perpetrated by shareProfits, the witless Ben ‘safehouse’ Turney and hypocrite crony capitalist Tom Winnifrith.”

All this bile has value: if Levi and Winnifrith were close associates until one dog finally bit the other, one may assume that Levi’s description of Winnifrith’s modus operandi has more than a modicum of truth to it.

When the The Times’ story broke on July 27 2015, Winnifrith had the chance to savage Levi. He didn’t. In an article for ShareProphets, he wrote: “You might expect me to slate Dan or David John Hopkins as he was born as we have had a number of pretty severe differences in recent months. I do not think this is as simple as that. For starters we were friends, comrades in the struggle against evil JimmyliarEllerton and there is good in the man (Levi not Ellerton). I am not going to forget that and whatever happens now or happened in the past I shall not forget that.”

What a nice thing to say. I wonder whether Winnifrith has speculated, like the rest of us, that if Levi is going down, he might wish to take others with him.