Protect your sanity
A long time ago, when dinosaurs roamed the earth, I shared an office with Pawl Couzens. That's Pawl Shanley to you. This fellow is an idiot: a real-life Clouseau. I was suffering from clinical depression at the time, and his imbecilic behaviour drove me close to suicide.
Here are some examples of his genius, chosen randomly. I will forgive you if you don't believe the stories: they should be fiction, but sadly they are not.
1. I am returning a borrowed car to its owner. Pawl is following me in another car, to give me a lift back to the office. As soon as we get onto the motorway, he overtakes me, drives extraordinarily fast for a few miles, then pulls into the first service area we come to. 'What's up?' I ask. 'Where exactly are we going?' replies Pawl.
2. Pawl sells advertising for the magazine on which I work as a journalist. One day he needs to ring a marketing person at an Italian company. He makes several calls to his Italian contact, unfailingly speaking with an Italian accent throughout. (Pawl is actually from Bath, and speaks with a slight westcountry accent.)
3. Three times, Pawl was asked if he knew the name of some particular person. Once it was an attractive young woman I wanted to introduce myself to; once it was a new neighbour on the industrial estate where we worked; once it was the fellow who came around the estate each day selling pies and pasties. Each time he answered confidently and (I and others subsequently discovered) incorrectly. I have to assume that, presented with a question he couldn't answer, he simply made something up, apparently quite unaware that we would discover the truth sooner rather than later.
So I've read this thread with some interest. My reaction is this.
1. It would not be beyond Pawl to invent a VAT number.
2. He is exactly the sort of person who would find himself the sole director of a dying, debt-ridden company as the other directors run for cover.
3. The idea of starting a new company, transferring the ownership of everything of any value (planes) from a failing company to the new company, closing the old company, then merging the new company with another company, would feel like pure genius to Pawl. In fact, I suspect he had help cooking that one up.
4. I design web-sites. The slickness of a web-site has no bearing on the solidity of a company. All we know about TIA from the web-site is that they/he got a good designer to build the site. Has the designer been paid? The snaps of the executive jet used in the Flash sequence are unquestionably marketing pics from the manufacturer — they are very high quality montages, and were not taken live.
Now I know that £12,000 is a lot of money, but what value do you place on your sanity? You will get nowhere dealing with this twerp. Keep a step removed. Pawl Shanley is so stupid he's dangerous. Your only possible source of satisfaction would be seeing to it that HMRC roast him alive.
As to why he changed his name — frankly I neither know nor care. It happened shortly after I left the company. I noticed when I was reading the magazine I had worked for. Perhaps it was creditor avoidance? Perhaps he just forgot his name one day and made something up.