The sinister British cult that lured in its victims with the promise of ‘life teaching’ and fleeced members out of thousands and thousands of kilos – as disgraced head honcho goes on the run

It’s been three years since British cult Lighthouse was brought down over allegations of exploitation and fraud after fleecing over £2 million from its trusting members.

Lighthouse, also known as Lighthouse International Group, was founded in 2012 and paraded itself as a mentoring scheme before the Mail exposed its cult-like practices. 

It sparked a BBC podcast and leader Paul Waugh, now 57, was exposed by MailOnline for abusing and threatening its trusting middle class devotees, and ruining member’s lives. 

Using platforms like LinkedIn, it targeted hundreds of middle-class recruits with the promise of personal fulfilment and a dream career through its up to £100-an-hour mentoring programmes.

Instead it was uncovered to be a duplicitous scheme, set up to fund the cushy life of  Waugh, who at the time lived in a £2 million country estate and drove a Range Rover with plates bearing the initials of his group.

It has since all come crumbling down, with the recent news of of an arrest warrant being issued for the firm’s business director, Shaun Cooper, confirming its fall from grace.

Police are seeking the arrest and detention of the South-African raised executive after he failed to turn up to court following a court order in November 2024.

Cooper – so far the only Lighthouse senior member whose arrest has been sought  -also failed to show up for interviews organised by investigators.

Cooper, Waugh and co-CEO Chris Nash – who both scampered to South Africa after Lighthouse was shut down – were asked to to turn over Lighthouse’s financial records – which they never did.

The BBC further reported that three members of Lighthouse, Kris Deichler, Jatinder Singh, and Sukh Singh were charged with ‘harassment without violence’ against the platform’s reporter, Catrin Nye, last year.

As Lighthouse executives continue to be MIA and their actions grow more murky, FEMAIL takes a look back at the company’s tumbling fall and self destruction.

How did it all begin?  

Lighthouse was based in the Midlands and is also known as Lighthouse International Group.

The company was initially hailed as a premium networking club, offering exclusive access to the rich and connected who could guarantee you a ‘dream career’ and life.

It was founded in 2012 by businessman Paul Waugh who said the venture differed from many others out there, and that Lighthouse focused on its clients’ futures.

According to the BBC’s 2023 podcast, A Very British Cult, Lighthouse offered year-long mentoring courses for the price of £10,000, and for those willing to shell out an extra £25,000, they were bestowed with an esteemed place in the Lighthouse Associate Elect group.

So-called lucky members were given direct access to a network of entrepreneurs including Waugh himself, which included lengthy video calls on the expertise of business.

Taking advantage of the booming life coach industry, Paul also sought to expand Lighthouse by borrowing ideas from coaches like American psychiatrist, Morgan Scott Peck, who believed in the four stages of ‘spiritual development’.

Paul adapted these messages for Lighthouse by characterising anyone in ‘level one’ as chaotic and childlike, while those at ‘level four’ were said to be enlightened with profound perspectives of the world. 

A former member alleged that everyone was placed in category one except Paul, and that only when members reached level four could they graduate to achieving their goals, revealed the podcast.  

Who owns Lighthouse?

According to its own website, the ‘Lighthouse International Leadership Family’ consists of co-CEOs Paul Waugh and Chris Nash, as well as the group’s business director, Chris Nash. However LinkedIn once listed Warren Vaughan as a senior associate of the brand.

The leadership panel ‘is made up of a wide range of unique human beings from all sorts of backgrounds, nationalities, beliefs and experiences’, revealed the site.

But the recent scandal is mostly centred around Paul, the face and name of the brand – who won over fans with unfounded statements claims such as becoming a multimillionaire by the age of 35.

The father-of-two moved from South Africa to the UK in 1999 and is said to live in a £2 million, six-bedroom, secluded country home  – complete with a sauna – set on the northern edge of the Cotswold Hills and drives a Range Rover.

He was at one point a regular at his local golf club, where he played off a ten handicap, and claims to have many famous friends and to have previously mentored a Premier League and England footballer.

Paul has also told Lighthouse members he is very connected in government – both in the Commons and the Lords – and has helped to get laws passed.

He claimed to be so personally wealthy that other nations have ‘courted’ him to get him to emigrate and take his money into their country. 

In YouTube videos, he has described himself as deeply ‘spiritual’ with a ‘very sophisticated and advanced understanding’ of what can be known compared to most people.

This, he stated, has set him apart from the group’s new members, some of whom he said are of ‘exceptionally low emotional intelligence’ and ‘know nothing about how to succeed in life’.

His life’s work, as he explained it, is to empower and unite them in a ‘genuine state of family and community’ through mentoring and coaching.  

Allegations made against Lighthouse

Lighthouse’s fall from grace was sealed when the BBC opened an 18-month investigation into the company, stemming from accusations of fraud, corruption and threatening behaviour.

The same year, the MailOnline exposed them for abusing and threatening its trusting middle class devotees, and ruining member’s lives. 

Former members said the Lighthouse International Group ‘groomed’ them with promises they would find personal fulfilment and a dream career through its up to £100-an-hour mentoring programmes – but say they instead ended up in thrall to its leader Waugh.

New recruits, who were often vulnerable because of divorce, depression or previous abuse, were assigned a mentor who became like a ‘brother’ to them and to whom it is claimed they were encouraged to share their ‘innermost secrets’ in sessions which were recorded and stored by the group’s leaders.

But these turned into ‘abusive relationships’ with members later ‘pressured’ into ‘investing’ tens of thousands of pounds, often by taking a loan which plunged them deep into debt, without any formal written financial agreement or receipt, it was alleged.

In one case, a mother said she remortgaged her family home to help raise over £200,000 for her two sons to invest in the group, which they were promised would be repaid. She said she never received a penny back.

Ex-members said they were told to isolate themselves from friends and family who criticised Lighthouse, with the group’s leaders even urging husbands to sue wives and children to sue their parents.

An environmental consultant who questioned the value of the mentoring with other members said she was left ‘terrified’ and in tears after Paul bombarded her with abuse during a two-hour phone call.

When she later requested a refund on her £25,000 investment, she said he refused and reminded her that the group had recordings of her describing the ‘long-term sexual abuse’ she suffered as a child – which she felt was a threat.

Ex-members said Lighthouse also implied part of their cash was going into African water purifying programmes – but it never produced firm evidence of this and the published company accounts gave no indication of where the cash had gone.

Primary school teacher Jo Holmes asked for a receipt for her £19,000 ‘investment’ and evidence of what it had been spent on, only to receive a reply from Paul calling her a ‘psychopath’ and ‘malevolent’, and implying her behaviour made her a danger to the children she taught.

When she later posted her concerns about Lighthouse online to try to warn others, the group complained about her to the headteacher of her school and threatened legal action.

A computer graduate mentored for anxiety and depression who shared his concerns with other members when he left was deluged by messages from Lighthouse leaders, initially suggesting he was having a ‘paranoid episode’.

The company then allegedly warned they would take out a restraining order against him and finally said they would be giving police ‘various recordings and communications’ he’d had with his mentor.

A 48-year-old consultant who borrowed £10,000 to invest in the group after joining in 2019 said she eventually felt she had to move abroad to escape them.

The woman, who did not want to be named because her counselling involved discussing previous childhood sexual abuse, said: ‘I was going through a divorce at the time and it felt extremely positive to begin with. 

‘They encouraged us to use LinkedIn, for us to connect with people, so it is just like multi-level marketing’.

But when she raised concerns about the mentoring with other members, Paul turned on her and during a two-hour call branded her ‘nasty’, ‘pernicious’, ‘selfish’, ‘horrible’, ‘vindictive’, ‘broken’, ‘very damaged’, ‘stupid’, ‘dishonest’, ‘duplicitous’, ‘misleading’, ‘f*****g deluded’, ‘seriously f****d up’, ‘sinister’, a ‘cynical little old witch’, a ‘weasel’, a ‘negative, self-defeating, self-sabotaging automaton’, ‘the worst, weirdest, sickest f**k’, having ‘an ego like a feral dog’ and being an ’emotional, mental and spiritual toddler’.

He also reminded the woman that every conversation she’d ever had at Lighthouse was taped and ‘every journal you’ve ever written is stored’.

And he told her that if she had behaved with her children the way she had been behaving in the group he would immediately have reported her to social services – where he claims to have connections. 

When she broke down in tears, he berated her for ‘crying for herself’, saying: ‘It’s all about you’.

The woman said: ‘It is terrifying. We need to stop them’.

Additionally former Lighthouse member, Jeff Leigh-Jones claimed he sold his home to raise enough cash for the group, and ended up investing around £130,000.

He said he was also told to keep away from his family and loved ones, including his girlfriend, Dawn Ingram. 

In 2021, Dawn contacted the BBC over fears regarding Lighthouse and questioned why he was encouraged to part ways with her. She also called it a ‘cult’. 

‘We’ve had private investigator reports into Lighthouse but you can only ever go so far’ she told the publication. 

Though Lighthouse wasn’t founded on religious beliefs, it later developed cult-like status, as evidenced by Paul’s discussions of the teachings of Christ. 

An ex member claimed Paul had a close relationship with Christ, who influenced his work, and that soon members began converting to Christianity.

On the accounting front, records revealed that over half of Lighthouse International Group’s takings were paid out to its boss Paul, who many speculate used the proceeds to finance a lavish lifestyle of a mansions, pricey hobbies and expensive cars.

Accounting records handed over by Metro Bank also showed £1.27million of the group’s £2.4million takings had gone to Paul, most of it between 2018 and 2022.

Smaller amounts also went to other leading members of the group, including its joint chief executive Chris Nash, who received £127,000 in the same four-year period. 

Why was Lighthouse shutdown?

Enough was enough and in April 2023, a High Court judge shut down Lighthouse after hearing that despite the ‘substantial sums’ it received for its mentoring, between 2013 and 2022 – it filed accounts claiming it was either dormant or had no assets and had failed to register for VAT despite being eligible since 2017.

It was also found that Lighthouse also had ‘no transparency’ and ‘blatantly failed to cooperate’ with a nine-month Insolvency Service investigation into its finances which followed a MailOnline expose of the group, the court heard.

Paul, who was representing himself, told the court that £2.4million is ‘not very much money at the end of the day. 

‘Not for the amount of people who were involved and who it supported. It sounds big but it just isn’t a lot. We hardly survived off it’ he added.

But in her ruling that Lighthouse should be wound up with immediate effect, Judge Jones said: ‘For the record, this court does not consider over £2 million to be a small sum’.

The High Court in London eventually shut down the business entity ‘in the public interest’, reported the BBC.

How did Lighthouse hit back? 

In response to a sustained and detailed campaign of negative press, Lighthouse hit back, saying they would seek legal counsel and intended to hold sources accountable to the full extent of the law.

In a 17,000-word response to the MailOnline, Lighthouse described the allegations as ‘false and baseless’, and said it was a ‘healthy community’ that does not tolerate abuse or bullying and was a victim of ‘persecution’ and ‘trolling’ from ex-members with whom it had financial disputes. 

It added that the group offered ‘life coaching’ rather than therapy, and was supportive of stronger regulation for the ‘personal development industry’.   

The group said it had ‘mentored’ individuals who have ‘suffered from the most terrible abuse’, but senior Lighthouse counsellors are not part of any professional body, have no academic qualifications in their field and said their only expertise comes from the ‘university of life’. 

It further claimed that police had twice visited Lighthouse members at their homes after warnings from concerned relatives that they were being ‘manipulated and held hostage financially’, but in both occasions the officers left without taking any action.

On allegations of using religion to peddle their coaching workshops, Paul told MailOnline he often stressed to members that they should not ‘idolise’ him or paint him as a modern-day ‘fat, bald Jesus’. 

Speaking to South African publication, Saturday Star in April 2022, Paul said: ‘We are receiving guidance from our legal counsel in this regard, and we will be holding the Daily Mail, as well as named and unnamed sources in their article, accountable to the full extent of the law, including damages, which have been significant’,

Meanwhile the group referred to BBC journalists as ‘predatory’ who were guilty of ‘heinous government collusion’.

‘Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth – John 17:17’ it added on a seperate Lighthouse Global Media website. 

The BBC further reported that three members of Lighthouse, Kris Deichler, Jatinder Singh, and Sukh Singh were charged with harassment without violence against A Very British Cult reporter, Catrin Nye.

The men, in their late thirties and forties, were charged between August and  September 2024 and have since been out on bail.

Is Lighthouse still running? 

As of 2023, Lighthouse was trading as Lighthouse Global, while  a legacy website under the name Lighthouse International Group is still active.

There, the brand has asked people to ‘connect’ with them on social media, while a paragraph on the page reads: ‘While we take our work incredibly seriously, we do not take ourselves seriously; we are human, we make mistakes, we learn, we love and we grow as much as possible’.

According to the BBC, both Paul and Chris Nash moved to South Africa shortly after Lighthouse was shutdown.

They say they are unable to turnover the company’s financial records requested back in November 2024 because they are suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is an anxiety disorder caused by very stressful, frightening or distressing events. People with PTSD often suffer nightmares and flashbacks to the traumatic event and can experience insomnia and an inability to concentrate.

Shaun Cooper has repeatedly ignored numerous interview requests arranged by investigators, and has since left the country.

He too, according to a letter submitted by fellow Lighthouse members to the court is unable to comply, owing to depression and anxiety. His whereabouts currently remain unknown.

Warren Vaughan now touts himself as an ex member of Lighthouse and has so far cooperated with the investigation.