Three jailed for £27.5m boiler room scam

Three men have been jailed for a total of 19 years for a boiler room scam which defrauded 1,700 investors of £27m, the FSA said today.

The sentencing of ringleader Tomas Wilmot for nine years and sons Kevin and Christopher for five years apiece at Southwark Crown Court follows a long-running investigation by the Financial Services Authority (FSA), City of London Police (CoLP) and Eurojust.

Sentencing was passed following the individuals' convictions on four offences of conspiracy to defraud which resulted in £14m of losses.

The father and son team operated a syndicate of 16 boiler rooms which defrauded an estimated 1,700 investors of £27.5m in total. Many of the victims were elderly and, in some cases, suffering from serious illnesses.

Today the court found the three Wilmots conspired to acquire, transfer and sell millions of low value, worthless and sometimes non-existent shares to victims in the UK.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) conducted the prosecution.

His Honour Judge Leonard QC, sentencing, said: "You ran a highly successful enterprise. You deprived many individual investors of substantial amounts of money; for some that was money they could not afford to give up. It was a staggering amount of £14m.

"You've sailed so close to the wind in your commercial enterprises it was not a surprise the FSA investigated you."

A total of 16 international agencies provided cooperation and support for the investigation.