The judgment was announced yesterday, and followed a trial at The Old Bailey in London.
According to the Crown Prosecution Service, Ames had been the sole director of two companies which were found to have been operating a "large-scale Ponzi scheme” which defrauded investors out of more than £1.35m over a three-year period.
Both Ames’s companies, Forestry for Life and The Investors' Club, claimed to invest money in teak tree plantations that generated carbon credits, which, investors were told, could then be traded for profit.
“In truth there was no investment by the companies”, the CPS said, with the investors’ money being used “simply…to pay company expenses and support Ames' lifestyle”.
CPS specialist fraud lawyer Antony Swift said that out of some £1.6m that was invested across both companies, “only £250,000 was ever returned to investors”, with the rest being used by Ames for such purposes as renting a villa on the Caribbean island of St Vincent and “the long-term hire of a Lamborghini”.
Matthew Ames was arrested in 2011 and charged with two counts of fraudulent trading, which he denied. Last year the Insolvency Service disqualified him from being a company director for 13 years.
Harlequin has said that Matthew Ames, who had been reported to be involved in operations at Harlequin’s Buccament Bay resort in St Vincent and the Grenadines, is not affiliated with that company any longer.
Trouble began last January
As reported, trouble started for Harlequin started in January of last year, when the Financial Services Authority issued an alert on the company, and on 1 March, contacted SIPP providers, asking them to say whether they had any clients invested in Harlequin, which it said was not FSA regulated.
Media interest was piqued after the BBC postponed a Panorama episode which was to have included a look at Harlequin, and the producer of the show was first suspended, over bribery allegations, and later resigned.
Two weeks later, the company – again, the UK marketing operation rather than Harlequin Hotels & Resorts – applied to go into administration.
