COUNTY NEWS: Fraudsters to pay back illegal gains

Officers have been successful in securing Confiscation Orders at Lewes Crown Court against an organised crime group of fraudsters and money launderers for more than £250,000, those confiscated funds were also ordered to be paid in compensation to their victims across the South East.

The series of frauds which netted £256,000 took place in 2011. The criminals posed as neighbours, couriers and workmen, targeting more than 25 elderly and vulnerable people in Sussex, Surrey, and South and East London with a cold calling scam telling the victims that drains at their homes needed repairing as they were affecting neighbours’ properties. Taken in by the story and being compassionate for the plight of others the victims tried to help and many handed over cash.

After the initial contact in person there typically followed persistent and bullying phone calls where the kindly householder was conned into transferring money believing it to be for the hire of machinery for urgent work, when in fact the money was being received into the accounts of money launderers set up by the ring leaders, who would then withdraw the cash and give it to the ringleaders on demand. Police were on the trail of the offenders from the start and made arrests in 2011, 2012 and 2013.

The trial took place in 2014; 12 defendants pleading guilty and further two being found guilty by the Jury. Judge Charles Kemp heard the trial and sentenced all of the offenders in November 2014: The five main offenders received a total of 25 and a half years imprisonment and the remainder received suspended sentences and unpaid work orders.

On 28 September and 12 to 13 November this year the same Judge made the Confiscation Orders under the Proceeds of Crime Act (POCA) and subsequent Compensation Orders which means that £234,513.65 to be repaid by defendants will compensate the victims. In addition one defendant made a civil settlement already repaying one of the victims £20,000.

So in total £254,513.65 (representing 99.4 per cent of the total loss of the group of victims) has been ordered to be repaid or has already been paid. Each order is enforceable and defendants will have to serve additional prison sentences of up to two years if they fail to pay.

The hearings saw ringleaders James Ward and Wayne Smith ordered to pay £91,500 each from assets that they admitted they held.

Ward, 30, of Twin Willows, Pleshey, Essex, had pleaded guilty last year to two offences of conspiracy to commit fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering. He was sentenced to a total of eleven and half yeas - eight years - five years for fraud, three years for money laundering, three years for burglaries and six months for bail offences.

Smith, 33, of St Vincents Close, Girton, Cambridge, had pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit fraud, and conspiracy to commit money laundering. He was sentenced to a total of eight years - five years for fraud and three years for money laundering;

Other defendants are to repay as follows;

• Kelly Robinson, 21, of Albany Road, Pilgrims Hatch, Essex. who had been sentenced to two and half years for conspiracy to money laundering, was ordered to repay £128.00;