5 boiler room  £2.8m scammers handed down sentences totalling 17.5 years

The Financial Conduct Authority who brought criminal prosecution, its second largest in terms of volume of evidence seized, after successfully investigating five different boiler room groups, one of which claimed to be “ one of the UK’s largest wealth advisory firms”,  a scam that resulted in £2.8m losses, got five people jailed for 18 years for their involvement.

A sixth defendant and the mastermind of the fraud, Michael Nascimento, 41, a former bouncer described by the FCA as the “controlling mind, instigator and the main beneficiary of the fraud”, will also be sentenced in the Southwark Crown Court on 14 September.

Boiler rooms are unauthorised brokerages that use cold-calling and other high-pressure tactics to sell worthless and overpriced investments to unsuspecting members of the public.

Between July 2010 and April 2014, over 170 members of the public were persuaded to invest in a company that owned land on the island of Madeira. Investors were the company’s shares and land would increase in value to give returns of 228 per cent, but none was ever paid and lost their savings in the scam. In some cases, investors lost their entire life savings.

The Southwark Crown Court found the defendants guilty of offences of conspiracy to defraud, fraud, money laundering and perverting the course of justice and breaches of markets legislation.

Operation Tidworth, involved seizure of over 100 computers and digital devices and 3, 682 exhibits, was among the watchdog’s biggest probes and the investigators found that defendants had forged documents under the name of the Four Seasons and Hilton Hotels as part of conning investors into thinking the hotel chains were interested in buying the Madeira development.

Broker Charanjit Sandhu(30) was sentenced to five and half years’ jail, Hugh Edwards and Stuart Rea, who both recruited sales brokers were sentenced to three years and nine months.  Jeannine Lewis, 50, Mr Nascimento’s assistant, received two-and-half years for helping him launder the proceeds of the fraud through various bank accounts including her own and hid and destroyed document and computers to prevent them falling into the hands of FCA investigators, Ryan Parker, 27, received two years suspended for 18 months due to his age, personal mitigation and lower level of involvement. He was also been exploited in a significant way by Michael Nascimento who also ordered to carry out 180 hours of unpaid work.

Mark Steward, The FCA’s executive director of enforcement and market oversight said “ these fraudsters callously targeted investors who were often elderly and vulnerable, lying to them to get them to part with significant sums of money. Despite efforts to conceal and destroy evidence, the FCA, in one of its largest ever investigations, was able to ensure that these criminals faced justice and ended up behind bars”.