Following a successful FCA prosecution, Wilson was served seven years for fraud, two and four years for counts of forgery, with the terms to run concurrently.
He had previously also pleaded guilty to operating a collective investment scheme without authorisation. The sentence is the longest for anyone prosecuted by either the FCA or its predecessor, the Financial Services Authority.
Wilson was successfully prosecuted in December 2013 after it transpired that his company, SureInvestment, was “a sham” using investors' millions to fund his “extravagant” lifestyle.
More than 300 investors put more than £21.8m with Wilson. When his scheme was closed down by the FCA £17.54m was owed, with an estimated £5.39m likely to be recovered.
His Honour Judge Michael Grieve QC said: “It was an utterly shameless confidence fraud. The purpose was to give himself a lifestyle of untold lavishness and luxury. It was abuse of trust on a massive scale."
FCA director of enforcement and financial crime Tracey McDermott said: “Wilson used his charm and the trappings of apparent success to lure investors. However, his firm was almost as fictitious as his claims to genius. It was little more than a charade acted out at the expense of those who trusted and believed in him. There was only one beneficiary of the scheme and that was Wilson himself.”
SureInvestment was set up in 2003 by a 24-year old Wilson. The regulator had warned him he needed authorisation to continue to trade or he would be shut down. Wilson then lied to the regulator, claiming he had wound up the firm and repaid his investors.
When the FSA contacted Wilson's clients to verify his claims, he had convinced them to tell the regulator he had returned their money, when he had actually encouraged them to invest in a separate 'overseas' fund.
Rather than doing as he had said, Wilson had placed their money in his personal SureInvestment bank account. Only 20% of the total money that investors gave him between 2003 and 2010 was ever traded, and more often at a loss than a gain.
Wilson “grossly exaggerated “ claims of his investing talents, informing one investor that the fund had risen 146% and was $3.6m. It had in fact less than £100,000, having lost 90% of investors' cash the previous year. His approach, described by the FCA as “Ponzi-style” continued to attract investors.
When the scale of his dishonesty became clear to the FSA, a criminal investigation took place.
During the lifetime of the scheme, Wilson took £21.8m from investors. Of that, only £4.2m was ever traded, with Wilson losing £2.25m.
Wilson spent £6.3m funding an extravagant lifestyle, including a £4m house; £200,000 on racing and horses; £200,000 on cars; £100,000 on shopping and hundreds of thousands more on leisure and holidays. On one trip to Las Vegas, the bar bill alone was $37,000.
Wilson pleaded guilty on 12 December 2013 to two counts of forgery and one of fraud, thereby avoiding a trial which was due to begin on 7 April 2014.
He had already pleaded guilty to a count of operating a collective investment scheme without being authorised by the FCA on 25 October 2013. As a result of these pleas, which the FCA felt fully represented Wilson’s criminality, it was decided it would not be in the public interest to proceed to a lengthy trial on the remaining counts.
