In charge of the company was John Blunt, the son of a Kent shoemaker. He knew from the start that the proposal was of very limited merit. There was virtually no scope in trading with the Spanish colonies of South America as Europe had virtually nothing that they wanted. His idea all along was to offer shares in the South Sea Company and to defraud the share-trading public by artificially inflating the share price. This was to be done by spreading rumours of the amazing trading potential in the South Seas. Blunt and his fellow board members would then realise their profits before the share price collapsed. They launched the scheme in January 1720.