Ian Johnson's Business Associates

Ian David Johnson does not operate alone. Like any other experienced and weathered scheme merchant, he has "business" associates. Information shown below about Mr Johnson's 3 key associates casts further doubt on his business ethics and competency.

Ms Pratima Patel (Tina Patel)

LinkedIn profile: http://uk.linkedin.com/in/tinapatel2
Duedil.com: https://www.duedil.com/director/911961734/pratima-patel
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tina.patel.3192?fref=ts
Location: Abingdon, Oxfordshire, UK

Firstly, it is important to note that Ms Tina Patel is Ian Johnson's life partner and has been involved in his numerous business ventures for years. As such, she has both been party to and participated in Mr Johnson's dubious and unethical business dealings.

This can be seen from Ms Patel's LinkedIn profile, where she claims to be a franchisee of both The Infinite Group and Luminar International, both Ian Johnson’s schemes. Importantly, unlike other past and present franchisees, there is no evidence to suggest she has ever paid franchise fees.

Ms Patel claims to be a “qualified accountant”, when in fact she dropped out of the ACCA qualification without a single pass to her name.

Whilst Ms Patel claims to "help" businesses with their strategies and "take them to the next level", as well as being a "Business Acquisition, Investment, Growth and Development Specialist", there is absolutely no evidence to suggest that Tina Patel is any way qualified to offer such services.

She highlights two other companies on her LinkedIn profile in which she has been involved; here are our thoughts:

Freelance Contracting Services Ltd

Ms Patel claims to have been UK Divisional Director of this company. At the time of her departure, the company was insolvent and it is now in liquidation.

Orange Genie

Ms Patel claims to have started and quickly grown this business, going on to say:

“As we grew we created structure, recruited and trained staff to take over the daily running tasks so that my business partner and I could focus on business growth, development and exit strategy, which we did to significant effect.”

Indeed: The “significant effect” she mentions is presumably the fact that this business also went into administration due to insolvency (click here for info on duedil.com and Companies House).

There were/are a number of Orange Genie companies of which Ms Patel was director, along with Ian David Johnson. However, neither remained a director for long.

It is interesting to note that Orange Genie’s financial performance has consistently improved since both Patel’s and Johnson’s departure.

Here is a list of such companies with the record of both Ms Patel's and Mr Johnson's involvement:
Genie Management Group Limited

Genie Services Limited

Genie Payroll Limited

Orange Genie Admin Limited

Orange Genie Cover Limited

Mr James Russell Lowrie (Jim Lowrie)

LinkedIn profile: http://au.linkedin.com/pub/jim-lowrie/5b/aab/4ba
Duedil.com: https://www.duedil.com/director/913250733/james-russell-lowrie
Location: Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

Ian Johnson and Jim Lowrie go back a long way. They were both involved in Bradley Sugars' Action International (now Action Coach) both in Australia (http://toys.asiaep.com/franchise/link/action-international/action16.htm) and latterly in the UK, where they were charged with expanding the franchise across Western Europe. During this time, Messrs Johnson and Lowrie persuaded a good number of people to become franchisees. They charged substantial fees, yet provided very little in return. It is understood that things got very unpleasant: a number of angry franchisees not only complained about Johnson's and Lowrie's conduct, but also threatened the franchisor company with a lawsuit. As a result, soon after launching Action International in the UK both Mr Johnson and Mr Lowrie abruptly left the organisation.

In July 2010, James Russell Lowrie and Ian David Johnson launched Luminar International.

Registered in Luxembourg, Luminar is yet another franchise scheme, this time claiming to be “The world’s leading private investment partnership” set up to acquire businesses (See http://www.luminarinternational.com/)

When Luminar International began, Lowrie and Johnson signed up 14 or so franchisees in the UK, USA, Spain and Australia. Today there are only 2 remaining.

Since launch the three "founding partners" of Luminar have collected over £2 million from their franchisees in license and royalty fees and provided nothing in return. The claimed “unique” acquisition method is unproven and fundamentally flawed. Unsurprisingly, Luminar International has failed to close a single deal.