A contemporaneous record of events following my involvement with Safe or Scam
Steve Conley
Why I am publishing this
For several years, various websites, anonymous online reviews and social media posts have made serious allegations about me following my involvement with an organisation called Safe or Scam.
Some of those allegations accuse me of operating a scam. Others suggest I exploited victims of investment fraud or was involved in criminal activity.
This article is not an attempt to re-argue every historical dispute.
Nor is it an attack on those who criticised me.
Its purpose is much narrower.
It is a contemporaneous record of events, supported where possible by documentary evidence that I have retained. It distinguishes between documented facts, allegations made by others, and my own responses. Readers should reach their own conclusions.
Background
For most of my career I have worked in financial services.
I have held senior positions with major financial institutions and later founded the Academy of Life Planning, an organisation dedicated to improving financial capability and restoring human agency.
Around 2019 I became involved with an initiative called Safe or Scam.
Its purpose was simple.
To investigate investment opportunities that had attracted concern and publish information to help investors make better-informed decisions.
The intention was not to provide investment advice.
Nor was it to decide what investors should do.
It was to improve the quality of information available before people committed their money.
Like many investigations into financial misconduct, this work inevitably affected commercial interests.
The investigations
Safe or Scam investigated a number of investment schemes and recovery organisations.
Some investigations concluded that investors should exercise extreme caution.
Others questioned whether particular recovery businesses were genuinely acting in investors’ best interests.
Whether those conclusions were correct remains open to scrutiny and debate.
Reasonable people may disagree with investigative findings.
That is entirely different from alleging criminality on the part of the investigators themselves.
The threats
As the investigations became more public, I began receiving threatening communications.
Among the messages I retained are statements including:
“We will hunt you down wherever you hide.”
“We’ve all thrown some money in the pot to bring you and your… pal Mike down.”
“You’ve upset the wrong people.”
Another message referred to the formation of a “breakSafeorscam” team, describing it as organised, well funded and highly motivated.
Whether the sender genuinely represented such a group is something I cannot independently verify.
What I can say is that I regarded the threats as credible.
The messages were sufficiently serious that I became concerned not only for my own safety but for that of my family.
The reputation attacks
Shortly afterwards, a series of online attacks began appearing.
These included:
- anonymous one-star review campaigns;
- websites making serious allegations about me and others;
- social media posts repeating those allegations;
- attempts to associate me with unrelated historical matters;
- claims that I was operating a scam.
Many allegations were presented as statements of fact.
Examples included claims that:
- Safe or Scam itself was fraudulent;
- I preyed upon victims of scams;
- I profited from referrals;
- I was working with criminals;
- I was under investigation by regulators.
I dispute those allegations.
To my knowledge, no evidence has ever been produced demonstrating that I defrauded investors, misappropriated client funds or committed the criminal conduct alleged.
Matters Not in Dispute
For clarity, there are a number of facts that are not in dispute.
- I knew Mike Davies, who operated Safe or Scam.
- Safe or Scam investigated investment schemes and published its findings.
- I agreed to help establish a new investigative business, The Fraud Team, which was intended to undertake future investigations independently of Safe or Scam.
- My name appears in Companies House records in connection with The Fraud Team Ltd, TFT Services Ltd and Recovery Squad Ltd. Those companies were incorporated but, following the threats and reputation attacks described in this article, I resigned before they commenced trading or investigated any new schemes.
- Articles referring to me were subsequently published.
- Anonymous reviews referring to me appeared online.
- I received anonymous WhatsApp messages containing threats and intimidation.
These are matters of public record or contemporaneous evidence.
What is disputed are the conclusions that others invited readers to draw from those facts.
For example, material published in the REVIVE – Reimbursement for Victims of Investment Violations & Exploitation Facebook group and the Insolvency & Law article, “Safe or Scam – Exposing and Unmasking the Hidden Figures,” combined publicly available information with allegations about my role and motives. I dispute those allegations.
This article is not an attempt to determine the motives of those who published or repeated those allegations. It is a contemporaneous record of events as I experienced them. It documents anonymous threatening messages, hostile online publications and allegations made about my involvement in proposed investigative work. The evidence on which this account is based has been retained and forms part of my supporting record.
Why I stepped away
Eventually I concluded that continuing to occupy the position between investors and those whose activities were being investigated created unacceptable risks for my family.
I therefore stepped away from Safe or Scam, and the associated companies.
This was not because I had stopped believing that investors deserved better information.
It was because I no longer believed that consumer protection should depend upon a small number of identifiable individuals becoming targets.
What changed
Those experiences fundamentally changed how I think about consumer protection.
For many years, the traditional model has been:
Investigator → Public
A small number of investigators carry out the work and ask everyone else to trust their conclusions.
Artificial intelligence makes another model possible.
Citizen + AI → Independent investigation
Rather than asking people to trust me, I now build tools that help citizens investigate for themselves.
That is why I created Investigator™.
Instead of standing between investors and potential scams, Investigator™ helps individuals analyse investment documents, identify warning signs, check public registers and understand risks before they commit their money.
The objective is not to replace professional judgement.
It is to restore the citizen’s own judgement.
What I have learned
Looking back, one lesson stands out above all others.
Financial misconduct does not always end with financial loss.
Sometimes the people asking difficult questions become part of the story.
Whether through anonymous reviews, hostile articles, social media campaigns or direct intimidation, reputation itself can become a target.
That experience reinforced something I now teach through both the Academy of Life Planning and Get SAFE.
Never rely solely on narratives.
Document events.
Preserve evidence.
Keep contemporaneous records.
Distinguish facts from allegations.
Allow others to examine the evidence for themselves.
That is how confidence is built.
Where I stand today
Today I no longer ask people to trust me because of my experience or credentials.
Instead, I ask them to trust a process.
Investigate.
Question.
Verify.
Think independently.
That is the philosophy behind Get SAFE and Investigator™.
The goal is no longer to create better investigators.
It is to create millions of capable citizen investigators.
Because when ordinary people have the tools to ask better questions before they invest, consumer protection no longer depends upon a handful of individuals standing between the public and those seeking to exploit them.
It becomes something far more resilient.
It becomes part of society itself.
Author’s note
This article is intended as a factual record based on contemporaneous documents retained by the author. It distinguishes between documented events, allegations made by third parties, and the author’s responses. Nothing in this article should be taken as an assertion that every critic acted together or that every allegation originated from the same source. Readers are encouraged to examine the available evidence and reach their own conclusions.
Steve Conley, a consumer protection advocate and founder of Get SAFE, has been subjected to a sustained, coordinated campaign of threats, anonymous online reviews, and hostile publications since approximately 2019–2020. The campaign followed his association with Safe or Scam, a separate entity that published investigations into investment schemes — investigations that appear to have directly angered organised scam operators.
Academy of Life Planning 