WILMOT: FATHER AND TWO SONS JAILED FOR £27.5m FRAUD
A crooked father and his two sons have been jailed for a total of 19 years for a £27.5m boiler room scam.
Tomas Wilmot, 64, ran a syndicate defrauded an estimated 1,700 investors with his sons Kevin, 43 and Christopher, 42.
The scam was only discovered when searches carried out by officers examining a different boiler room fraud uncovered links to the Wilmots.
Investigators then raided the homes and offices of the three men in Guildford and Bramley, in Surrey, and Horsham, in West Sussex, and uncovered computer hard drives and other storage devices alongside tens of thousands of documents detailing the trio’s deception.
Jailing the three men Judge Anthony Leonard said: ‘Over a period of four years you ran a highly successful and dishonest boiler room operation which deprived many individual investors of quite substantial amounts of money; for some it was money they could not afford to lose.
‘The total amount is staggering’.
He told Tomas Wilmot:‘I judge you to be at the very centre of this fraud and to have been responsible for the involvement of your sons.’
During the lengthy trial the court heard the three men sold worthless shares mainly from offices in Spain.
But companies were also used in Brazil, Belize, Dubai and a number of Caribbean islands.
During the four year period £27.5m was paid into five UK bank accounts and £14m was transferred out to off-shore accounts in Spain, Malta and Lithuania.
The three men were heard to offer millions of low value, worthless and sometimes non-existent shares to victims in the UK.
Tomas Wilmot was today described as the ‘mastermind’ and was heard to have been central to the procurement of shares for sale through boiler rooms.
He also instructed others to create entities that were used as boiler rooms and to sell shares to victims.
Kevin Wilmot was involved in the day to day mechanics of the administration of the various schemes, including providing instructions to the people operating UK and offshore accounts for the scheme.
His brother, Christopher, was said to have played a key role in giving the various scams credibility as he controlled a Slovakian IT company, Page Conception, that designed and hosted websites used in the fraud.
Expert analysis showed that forged signatures on share transfer forms were made by his hand.
Turning to the two brothers Judge Leonard QC said: ‘Both of you played an important part, in particular in the oversight of the boiler room operating from Spain and in the mechanics of sending false information to investors.’
Speaking after today’s sentencing Tracey McDermott, the Financial Services Authority acting director of enforcement, said: ‘This was a highly sophisticated scam that made use of offshore structures to launder the funds, put distance between the Wilmots and the boiler rooms, and ultimately disguise the nature of the business.
‘That meant that what started out as a UK-based FSA investigation had to evolve into a joint, then global, operation to bring the perpetrators to justice.
‘The individuals convicted today sought to cloak their activities within an aura of respectability to deceive investors, many of whom were vulnerable or elderly.
‘They are, however, nothing more than cold-hearted criminals who profited from stealing other people’s money.’
Tomas Wilmot, of (Buckhurst), Westwood Lane, Normandy, in Guilford, Surrey, was jailed for nine years after being convicted of four counts of conspiracy to defraud.
Christopher Wilmot, of (218) St Leonards Road, and Kevin Wilmot of (Oaktree House) in Langhurstwood Road, both in Horsham, West Sussex, were each jailed for five years after being convicted of the same charges.
A fourth man, Mark Dingley, of (5) Goodwin Stile, in Bishop Stortford, Hertfordshire, who faced the same charges was cleared by the jury of any involvement in the scam.
ENDS
