| Count | Offence |
|---|---|
| Two counts | Misrepresentation of prosperity, s.1(1) |
| One count | Failure to notify, s.3(2) |
In a podcast interview with a business publication that did not check, the subject stated that she had 'sold my first company for eight figures'. The company had invoiced, in its six-year trading history, a total of £142,000, including VAT. The Office's forensic accountant confirmed that the figure of eight is reachable only by counting in pence, and that the subject's accountant has since asked not to be mentioned in these proceedings, which was granted, and then mentioned in them anyway, which was the point of the mention.
The buyer was a company of which the subject is the sole director. The transaction is lawful. The Office has reviewed it twice and disliked it both times.
The subject failed to notify the launch of a paid community ('The Inner Circle of People Who Build in Silence', £340 per month, 41 members, silence not enforced). The breach was detected when a member's employer requested a Tanya's Law disclosure on the member.
The subject is required to notify changes of circumstance within three days. The history below is the complete record of what the Office was told, when it was told, and what the Office found out anyway.
Registered at initial notification interview. The subject arrived with a slide deck. The slide deck is held on file. It is eleven slides and the eleventh is a quote.
Notified a change of circumstance: the subject's profile now carries an 'Open to Work' banner. Recorded as a notified change of circumstance and, separately, as the saddest line in the file, which the Office has asked the Panel to strike and the Panel has declined to strike, on the grounds that the file is 'a complete record'.
- Required to state all figures in pounds, in words, and in the same currency as the buyer.
- Prohibited from describing any transaction as 'life-changing' within the hearing of the transaction.
- Prohibited from founding, co-founding, or 'visioneering' a company without prior notice to the Office. Two weeks' notice is required. The Office requires this so that it can watch the company being founded, which is not a power the Office has, but which it has now exercised.
Medium. The subject is competent, industrious, and has invoiced real clients for real work; this is noted as mitigating and is also the part of the file the subject finds hardest to hear.
The Register is public. The Office does not control what is done with an entry and does not record everything that is done with an entry. The log below is the portion that came back.
- Disclosed to one bank (mortgage declined; the underwriter's note reads 'Band C claimed; Band B invoiced').
- Disclosed to the business publication that ran the original interview. The publication has not amended the article. The article now carries a reader note reading 'See: the Flex Offenders Register'.
- Disclosed to the Inner Circle, all forty-one members, individually, in alphabetical order, by an Officer who has asked not to be assigned anything like this again.
The subject's re-application to describe the sale as 'seven figures in pence' was considered on its merits and rejected on its merits.