London mayoral candidate Brian Rose has been keeping some interesting company.
The American-born "London Real" independent candidate is standing in what could turn out to be the most expensive personal campaign in British political history.
At one point bookies made him second favourite to win after Labour’s Sadiq Khan, though that may be because he’s admitted to betting thousands of pounds on himself.
Outside politics, the 49-year-old who previously worked on Wall Street bills himself as a money guru, running business courses and planning a “day to improve your health, wealth and wellbeing” for September, with tickets from £77 to £1,479.
Among the guests to have featured on his londonreal.tv is, probably most notoriously, David Icke, who last year was given airtime to spout his nonsense about the pandemic not existing.
There have been other controversial though less well-known guests on the podcast, such as Teeka Tiwari, hailed as “The #1 Most Trusted Expert In Cryptocurrency”.
“I buy everything Teeka recommends,” says Rose.
Not sure I’d do the same – the United States financial services regulator filing for Tiwari states: “FINRA has barred this individual from acting as a broker or otherwise associating with a broker-dealer firm.”
The ruling came about partly because Tiwari refused to attend an interview to explain investments he encouraged the public to buy.
Also featured on Rose’s TV channel is Jeff Brown, who is billed as a Silicon Valley legend.
He has a lifetime ban from acting as a broker and investment adviser in the States dating back to 2012 after he pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit fraud.
Brown was found to have falsely claimed that particular investments were safe, liquid, and “guaranteed to never lose value”.
Meanwhile investors were not told that some of their money would pay Brown and family members even though some carried out little or no work.
I asked Mr Rose to comment and received a short statement which amounted to saying neither Brown nor Tiwari were giving specific investment tips so there was no problem.
As for the fact that there’s a Facebook page with 326 followers set up by unhappy customers of his London Real business course, I was told: “Any business with thousands of clients is likely to have some unhappy customers.
“But we do try to learn from feedback, and our Trustpilot rating of 4.3 speaks for itself.”
