The UK’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO) will be returning over £1m to more than 200 boiler room scam victims, after having already given back £3m ($4m, €3.6m).
Between 2003 and 2007, Australian national Jeffrey Revell-Reade managed to defraud over 200 investors using several sales entities operating from Madrid.
The bogus firms pressure-sold shares in US listed companies, which were restricted for 12 months, the SFO explained. But when the victims tried to sell their holdings, “they found their shares to be worthless, as they belonged to either shell companies or companies that were not operating at all”.
During the period, Revell-Reade managed to con investors out of around £70m, “one of the largest boiler room frauds ever pursued by a UK authority”, the SFO said.
In 2014, it prosecuted him for running the scheme, after he was extradited from Australia in 2012. He was sentenced to nine years and six months in prison.
The SFO then handed him a confiscation order of around £10.75m in 2016. But in 2017, Revell-Reade successfully appealed the order and had it reduced to £7.5m.
As of June 2018, he had only paid around £3.5m and had an additional four-year prison sentence activated.
His co-conspirator, Anthony May, was given a term of seven years and six months and ordered to pay £250,00 which was reimbursed in full at the time.
Emma Luxton, head of proceeds of crime and international assistance at the SFO, said: “This result demonstrates our tenacity and commitment to ensuring victims receive the justice and compensation they deserve, no matter the complexity of the investigation or how many years have passed since the crime was committed.”
