Our experience with B1 Of Us
We joined the B1 Of Us online courses and later attended the in-person seminar at the Paramount Hotel in Dubai. The material was well put together and informative, and there was a lot of energy in the room. We came away feeling positive about the training, which helps explain why we were open to the investments presented during the seminar.
We were shown several opportunities, including gold, the Rixos Al Reem Residences project and other properties. The gold investment was presented as offering substantial returns. Some of the properties were pitched as special deals, with an emphasis on acting quickly to secure the price.
We paid before seeing the contract
We decided to put money towards the Rixos project. Up to that point, we’d only dealt with Immanuel Ezekiel and Ranjan Bhattacharya. We transferred the money directly to an account in Immanuel’s name before receiving a contract.
We chased for the contract several times. When it arrived weeks later, it named Joel Ezekiel, whom we’d never met or been introduced to. Immanuel’s name didn’t appear on it. We felt the terms heavily favoured Joel and gave us very little protection as investors if anything went wrong. We told them we didn’t want to proceed and asked for our money back.
What happened when we asked for a refund
After months of chasing, Immanuel told us he had passed the money on to Joel, his son, and said he had acted only as an intermediary. We continued to follow up with Vetra until Joel told us directly that we would not get a refund.
We also went back and checked some of the property prices we’d been shown. In the examples we checked, the same prices were available on the projects’ own websites. That was hard to square with the impression we’d been given that we needed to act quickly to secure a special price.
We’ve also heard from people who say they paid into precious-metals investments and are still waiting for contracts, proof of ownership or refunds. Our own experience was with Rixos.
Where this has left us
Based on our experience, I would strongly advise against investing with Immanuel Ezekiel. We sent the money to an account in his name. He says he passed it to Joel, who told us we would not get a refund. We’re now thousands of euros out of pocket, with no refund and no title deed.
I can see why someone reading this would ask whether it was a scam. We’ve asked ourselves the same question. We went into it thinking we were making a sound investment for our family. We came away still asking where our money went.
I wish we’d waited to see the contract before sending a penny. That’s a decision I regret. But there’s still one question we deserve an answer to.
What happened to our money?