The former Plymouth student at the centre of a BBC investigation into Forex trading has revealed how he received death threats and needed counselling for depression after the foreign exchange market crashed and people he had enticed into trading lost thousands of pounds. Gurvin Singh – who was the main focus of the four-part expose Scam City: Money, Mayhem and Maseratis – has revealed he lost more than £100,000 himself when the market tanked in December 2019.
The ex-biosciences student, who famously drove around Plymouth in a gold Maserati sports car, also admitted he had given away £2,000 to strangers in Cornwall Street in late 2019 because it was a cheaper way of advertising his Forex activities than taking out adverts on social media. Mr Singh, who describes himself as a “marketing genius”, also said he has now rebuilt his wealth and drives a £70,000 Mercedes and enjoys nights out in Mayfair and trips to Dubai.
The former student, who began his Forex adventures with cash from a University of Plymouth bursary, has revealed his side of events surrounding the December 2019 foreign exchange crash, on the podcast Anything Goes with James English, which has featured famous sports and TV celebrities including Paul Merson and Jimmy White. The Youtube show, fronted by Scottish TV star and model James English, has already been watched more than 33,000 times in just the first three days.
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Mr Singh became a national news sensation amid claims that people lost a combined £4m trading on the Forex market when it suffered a major dip in December 2019. In January 2020, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) issued an official warning about Mr Singh and his companies, GS3 Trades and GS3 Marketing Limited, saying they were unauthorised and people should be wary of dealing with them, following complaints from numerous people who claimed to have lost cash in the December crash.
The BBC then aired an investigation into the events, in May 2021. But Mr Singh told Plymouth Live at the time that he had never acted dishonestly, or even handled people’s cash, but was paid to introduce potential investors to a broker which then dealt with the investments.
In Mr English’s podcast he reveals more about what happened following the crash and how he saw a £200,000 wad he had amassed fall to just £10,000 or £20,000. He revealed how he had been recruited to introduce potential traders to the market and had even enticed family, friends and his former teacher and driving instructor.
Mr Singh said all of them, including himself, made cash trading on the foreign exchange market, though now considers it tantamount to “gambling”. But one day the market suddenly dropped and he said: “Everything starts plummeting down. Investments are halving by December 24, my phone is going crazy. All these people that have obviously signed up, because I have thought ‘this is something which is reasonable’, are messaging me, I’m getting death threats, I’m getting my home address leaked online. Boxing Day, everything drops, all the investments drop by like 90%.”
He added: “I’ve made a group chat with all the people in it. I said we need to fix this. People are not having it from me, they are turning on me, saying ‘get us our money back’.” Mr Singh said that by January 2020 he had “lost everything”. He said: “I had put all my money into the marketing end of this and had nothing left. Two years of work, my whole journey, that £200,000 thing, it’s all gone. I had a couple of tens of thousands and the Maserati, worth about £30k I would say. “
Mr Singh denied he had done anything other than introduce to brokers people who wanted to trade in foreign currency markets. And he denied those he did bring in lost anything like the £4m figure which was quoted at the time, saying it was more like “a couple of hundred grand”.
“I wasn’t the only influencer promoting this,” he said. “There was a ton of influencers. If you watched the documentary you’ll know they spoke to other influencers who promoted this same thing. All the influencers that promoted this, the money went into one big trading account. That is what was £4m. My clients were nowhere near £4m.”
He said he was badly affected by the aftermath of the crash and said: “It ruined me. I had to have counselling over it.” Mr Singh said on the podcast he even contacted the police and the FCA. He said: “I went to the police, actually. I was the first one to go to the police. I went to Ilford police station to explain what happened. They go ‘that’s just Forex trading, we won’t do nothing, the money’s gone’. I’m saying my clients have lost money and I’m getting death threats over it, and they are going ‘has anyone physically done or said anything to you,’ I said ‘no’, they said ‘when they do then tell us’. I was getting threats. I called the FCA and explained what had happened.”
Mr Singh, described as an entrepreneur and influencer on Mr English’s podcast, revealed he was brought up by a single mother and bullied at school in London. He was hard up and worked at Next in Ilford and “didn’t have a social life”. He wanted to become a doctor but because his A-level grades were not high enough, he “took a different route”, studying biomedical science at University of Plymouth, with a view to training as a doctor later.
He said he “couldn’t afford anything” in his early days in Plymouth, and relied on his mother to send “£30 a week for a Tesco shop” and worked “night shifts at sandwich delivery place”. He said: “I needed to make money.” Mr Singh revealed he used a university bursary of “£500 or £1,000” to pay for an online Forex course, and said: “I started learning about foreign exchange markets and trying to make money from that.”
Mr Singh told the podcast that by the time he was 19 he was Forex trading, affiliate marketing, selling courses, growing social media, and drop shipping, making “ a couple of hundred quid a week”. He said: “Using the money I made online I bought my first car, an Audi A1 13 plate, for about £4,000. Few months later I bought myself an Audi A5. Spectacular, loved that car. Blacked out the windows, white car, loved it and I guess it just kept going up and up from there. Eventually the Maserati did come.” He added: “I did accumulate £100,000 at that point. But multiple incomes. Affiliate marketing, drop shipping, bit of foreign exchange.”
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Mr Singh, now aged 23, says he has now rebuilt his wealth, via e-commerce and online marketing, and now has his own brand of LED lit vapes coming out. He said: “Vapes is popping right now. There are tens of thousands coming from China in a few weeks. I am putting my full energy into vapes. I was thinking what can make me potentially tens of millions and that’s where the vape idea came from.”
Mr Singh said: “I’m a marketing genius. I have had successful Shopify stores. I have so much connections. So many celebrities, influencer that I know, I have so many connections to make these vapes literally global.”
On the Anything Goes podcast Mr Singh also lifts the lid on his famous cash giveaway in Plymouth city centre in late 2019. He handed £10 notes to strangers outside Drake Circus Shopping Centre. On the podcast Mr Singh said: “I’ll be honest, it was marketing. At that point I was trying to grow as a social media influencer. Handing out £2,000 got more public attention, I’d say, than me running a £10,000 Facebook ad. It went viral, viral. It’s business. I don’t know how I thought of it at that age. I thought ‘I’ve got £2,000 here, if I spend it on a Facebook ad or an instagram ad that will reach 10,000 to 20,000 people, whereas if I do this and the media clock on to it I could reach hundreds of thousands of people and that is exactly what happened.”
The entire Anything Goes with James English podcast can be viewed here
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