The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is urging investors of an unregulated collective investment scheme to get in touch as they may be eligible to get back some of the money they lost.
The scheme was established by Synergy Land Group and its director Samuel Exall and managed to collect £3m ($3.8m, €3.3m) from the public between 2009 and 2011.
The firm used high-pressure sales techniques to persuade potential clients to buy small plots of land from two large sites, which would have been supposedly managed and sold by Synergy.
Additionally, the company claimed it was going to get planning permissions for the two sites and then negotiate with a developer so that individual investors could realise a large profit.
This meant that Synergy and Exall were operating a collective investment scheme (CIS), the FCA said.
Although the scheme was unregulated and outside the watchdog’s scope, a firm must be authorised by the FCA in order to run a CIS in the UK, and neither Synergy nor Exall received authorisation from the regulator.
Small refund
The watchdog investigated the Synergy CIS in 2011 and started civil proceedings against the firm and director, resulting in the freezing of their assets.
Exall was then prosecuted by the City of London police for conspiracy to commit fraud in October 2016, and sentenced to four years in prison, as well as handed a seven-year ban from acting as a company director.
The FCA said it recently managed to recoup some of the money invested in the CIS after the realisation of assets, which Exall was ordered to sell, and it intends to redistribute them to the scheme’s victims.
Mark Steward, executive director of enforcement and market oversight at the FCA, said: “If you believe you were an investor in this unauthorised scheme, please get in contact with us.
“Although we will only be able to return a small sum to eligible investors, we are keen to ensure that as many investors as possible benefit from our work to secure and realise assets.”
