25/08/2011
A trio of family members who jointly defrauded investors of £14 million in countries dotted all over the world have been sentenced to a total of 19 years in jail.
The father, Tomas Wilmot, aged 64, was judged to be the ringleader who masterminded the operation and was jailed for nine years, whilst his two sons, Christopher and Kevin, were given five years apiece for their role in the scam.
The term boiler room refers to a particular type of scam where aggressive telephone calls are made to coerce individuals into paying for sham shares or investments. They are usually almost impossible for police to act upon, because despite UK residents being tricked out of money, the hub of the operation is usually located overseas with no ties to Britain.
However, in this case, Wilmot and his family had property in Surrey and the surrounding areas, as well as relatives living in the region.
This particular scam was a major operation and involved five years of fraudulent activity before they appeared on the Financial Services Authority's radar.
The operation was revealed as highly complex with around 16 different boiler rooms working to pressure vulnerable individuals to part with their cash for non-existent investments, with most of the telephone work carried out from Spain. Once the funds were received, they were laundered into a variety of accounts, with the financial trail going as far afield as Iceland and Hong Kong.
Around 1,700 victims in the UK are believed to have handed over their money without receiving their promised shares, with many of them either vulnerable or elderly.
At Southwark Crown Court, Honour Judge Leonard QC, told the trio that they 'deprived many individual investors of substantial amounts of money; for some that was money they could not afford to give up' and described the scale of the fraud as 'staggering,' with many of them either vulnerable or elderly.
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