“Please Call Me” The Bermuda-Connection
offshore's comedy of errors
BE VERY AFRAID: The Offshore financial players may hide their wealth from Tax Authorities in the murky financial waters of the Caribbean, but what if it gets stolen by some of them? Choices are limited; Cops? Courts? or Some knee-breakers!
In Brief
- This is an investigative narrative uSpiked has been working on since Vodacom/Makate’s settlement was announced early last month. We have exclusively obtained records that had never reached our shores before. We hereby reveal how offshore opportunists tried to hijack Makate’s Millions.
- We further reveal how when the mist cleared, some of these offshore players were dead, missing or left broke and broken.
- A West Indies Law professor summed it up best for uSpiked
- “Elsdon brought Bermuda-Triangle trickery to Africa, hoping Makate’s 40% would disappear.”
- But surprise! a Black South African used nothing but his thoughts to earn millions cleanly. No shell companies. No reincarnations. Just intellect and persistence.
Grandma, Paulinah Makate, a strong willed woman who took no nonsense from anyone
When Nkosana Kenneth Makate first suggested a call-back service at Vodacom in the early 2000s, he was not imagining yachts, offshore trust funds or London lawyers. He simply wanted South Africans without airtime to still connect with loved ones; an idea that would turn into a billion-rand revenue engine for Vodacom.
Nkosana Kenneth Makate, The Thinker
About his Grandmother Paulinah, Makate told us "She taught me humility and respect for all people that I interact with. But to also trust other human beings. I think it’s the latter that has been exploited by others," adding that his Grandmother was a woman of faith and she gave him the gift to always trust in God.
A few years later, when Makate — who grew up in the East Rand township of Katlehong (place of success) under the care of his maternal grandmother, Paulinah Makate, while his mother completed her teacher-training, returned to claim the share he had been promised. Vodacom responded with a paltry offer of R48 million and a polite suggestion that he disappear. He refused. And the moment he chose to stand his ground, the sharks began to circle.
entered the opportunists
It began with Christiaan Schoeman, a former KZN advocate struck off the roll in 1999. He approached Makate with an irresistible pitch: backing for the David-versus-Goliath legal war. Funding, he boasted; access, he promised.
Who is this man who avoids direct camera shots? Would he recall who he was yesterday?
He forgot one detail though; he didn’t actually have any money.
But he had a concept of a plan and a network. One link was a Kevin Jenkins, a facilitator of deals in the shadows. The other was a man with a gift for inventions - not of technology, but of himself.
Errol David Elsdon; Multiple identities that reads like a yellowpages. Multiple jurisdictions. Shelf companies like loose change. A self-mythologising operator who would later claim to uSpiked - with confidence we must add - that he had been a WWII pilot, despite being born three years after the war ended.
Schoeman already had an agreement drafted - signed by him in November 2010 - a full year before he ever persuaded Makate to sign his portion in November 2011. The draft bore no ID number for Makate, because the “Client” had not yet been found. He was still a prospect.
fishing in offshore waters
Even before Makate could be found to sign the Agreement, on 29 September 2011, Schoeman and Elsdon needed a funder that would never want to meet South African regulators (Financial Inteligence Center and South African Revenue Service). A local litigation-funding company was briefly acquired, Sterling Rand Litigation Fund (Pty) Ltd. added into Elsdon's portfolio of shelf companies on 12 December 2012. Then quietly ignored. Too close to SARS for comfort.
Instead, they reached into Elsdon’s drawer of Caribbean shells and pulled out Black Rock Mining (BVI) Ltd, a dormant but offshore enough to be convenient - and invisible.
On 29 September 2011, their fishing lines were cast into London, towards Hamilton Downing Quinn LLP, where lawyer Walton Eddlestone could unlock access to serious money; Global Distressed Alpha Fund III (GDAF) - a litigation-funding outfit with capital and a tolerance for risk.
Emails flew. Figures floated. Promises discussed and expanded. For £250,000, the funders would receive their investment back plus 5% of the gross proceeds, risk-cushioned and tax-buffered.
Enough mistrust to go around. It was bound to collapse
“A safe bet,” Schoeman assured them.
He wasn’t wrong - for everyone except Makate.
money moves — and vanishes
On 18 July 2013, £250,000 was wired to the London law firm from various offshore facilities. Soon after:
- £100,000 allegedly reached Makate’s attorneys via Jenkins - just enough to maintain credibility.
- £150,000 went straight into Elsdon’s Cyprus bank account — the real destination. Elsdon later told the London lawyers that the £150k was shared between himself and Schoeman, and as he expected, they believed him.
Only later did GDAF discover the truth:
Black Rock Mining had no valid agreement with Makate. And had been deregistered for Elsdon's failure to file returns for this outfit with no mines anywhere in the world. The investment was legally worthless.
In December 2014, Elsdon conjured up yet another entity - Raining Men Trade (Pty) Ltd - and declared this company now owned the Makate agreement. It did not. But the paperwork provided just enough fog to keep the funders hopeful while their money got sucked into the Vortex of Bermuda Triangle, if anyone could believe them.
when the funders needed funding
GDAF - whose business was funding lawsuits - suddenly had to fund its own lawsuit. In January 2018, it sued Hamilton Downing Quinn for £18.25 million, claiming negligence in due diligence they had been retained for. The funders argued that the lawyers should have known better than to endorse a contract built on a ghost company.
Meanwhile, Elsdon made a curious move: He later walked into the South Gauteng High Court, asking it to enforce parts of the very agreement his funders already attested in court papers was unenforceable.
His Notice of Motion and Founding Affidavit read like a thriller drafted at 2 a.m. on an expired caffeine supply. In it, he asserted that Black Rock’s deregistration had been rectified in 2020.
A problem emerged; He only filed the restoration claim in the British Virgin Islands on 16 July 2024. Either he had mastered time travel - or he was lying. Close to perjury.
Hon D Mahon AJ, must have been left doubting whether being a judge was a gig worth the pain of going through the 134-paged Notice of Motion and many similarly convoluted pages he would encounter on the bench should his position be made permanent!
Surely, whose brilliiant idea was it to include Adv Mabane’s arbitration records to the interdictory application, and since Elsdon seems to have been on a self-mutilation adventure, why didn’t he supply the South Gauteng high Court with copies of the suit against Hamilton in London? If his buddy Walton didn’t try to contact him after his law firm was sued, then the lawyers deserved whatever got to them.
But onto the rescue entered Makate's legal team, their Heads of Arguement was as precise as 'Please Call Me' text message. Though they casually touched on it, the not so hidden racial undertones could not go past uSpiked's handlenses. If access to the proceeds were not restricted, the man from East Rand would spend all the money including what Elsdon believe is his 40% of it.
a Walter Mitty in courtrooms and call logs
When confronted by uSpiked:
“Sir, lying to courts is perjury. Lying to us costs you our respect.”
He agreed to be honest. It lasted about one and a half question. Asked why he was claiming 40% while in essence the Agreement he filed with GDAF indicated Black Rock Mining (BVI) Ltd was entitled to 50% from where did the extra 10% come? "That was Schoeman, he found an additional investor so the percentage had to increase? Really! why should additional investors dilute equity on the opposing side and not your side? We asked him, "It was all Schoeman's making.
Isn't easy to blame evrything that goes wrong on the dead guy who cannot present his version.
When asked about the WWII pilot whose London home he had listed as his address in the court papers, he insisted:
“That was me. I was a pilot in the War.” [idiota-editor]
He was born in 1948.
When told the real pilot died in 1944, he pivoted to reincarnation.
The call ended shortly thereafter.
the offshore web unravels
From the Caribbean, legal experts confirm that the GDAF ecosystem itself now faces criminal proceedings in Bermuda for fraud and theft-related behaviours. A key figure - Michael Shone - has reportedly disappeared entirely. Could he have crossed over Bermuda Triangle?
Their names surfaced in the Paradise Papers, where financial ghosts go to be remembered.
Arabic wisdom; ‘"A man is known by his friends (before he speaks)." Or the biblical book of Proverbs 13:20 states, "Walk with the wise and become wise, for a companion of fools suffers harm.
One West Indies Law professor summed up the pattern for uSpiked:
“Elsdon tried to bring the Bermuda Triangle to Africa - hoping 40% of Makate’s payout would vanish into offshore mist.”
Bringing Bermuda Triangle into mainland Africa
unanswered questions
The offshore players have scattered. Court cases grind on. Paper trails twist through Mauritius, Cyprus, London, Singapore and the BVI.
But the story leaves behind one question that refuses to sink:
Who, exactly, is the man calling himself Errol David Elsdon — and who is he working for?
Because identities can be restored as easily as deregistered. Companies can resurrect.
But truth, once unmasked, is much harder to bury. And uSpiked will stand on the bridge to warn future Makates to watch out for the likes of Elsdon.
*Additional data acquisition and processing by Miguel García of San Francisco, California with thanks from uSpiked's friends at www.offshorealert.com