Sascha Morris was jailed earlier this week for her role in encouraging investors to buy ‘off plan’ property in Cyprus, the York Press reports.
Between May 2004 and May 2007 she told clients of her Yorkshire-based advice firm to invest in the overseas property schemes, telling them that the properties would later be sold to high-profile holiday companies.
Investors then had to put more money into the scheme just to keep it afloat, when it became clear that the properties would not be sold.
Morris, who also represented Australia in international senior tennis tournaments, attracted £1.9m of investments into the property from 14 individual clients.
Between December 2007 and December 2008, Morris also conned two companies to invest £2.6m into a scheme which would again fund property building in Cyprus. Both groups lost their money.
At the end of last year Morris was found guilty of one count of fraudulent trading, and two counts of giving investors fraudulent information, and she was sentenced to eight and a half years in prison earlier this week.
Morris had invested her own money in the Cyprus property scheme, but had lost money, so knew that it was not a “sensible investment” at the time she recommended it, Judge Rodney Jameson QC said in his sentencing.
