The trial of seven men involved in the Essex and London Properties scam has ended. One man pled guilty, four men were found guilty by the jury and two men were acquitted. The case was investigated and brought to court by Essex Police.
The Essex and London Properties scam persuaded ordinary investors to become limited partners in a Scottish Limited Partnership. In effect, investors were giving loans to the company at 10% annual interest. The money was supposed to be invested in UK property. More than £13m was taken in and only one property valued at around £150k was purchased. The rest of the money was stolen.
The five men who were found guilty were
MOHAMMED TANVEER
ABDUL MUKITH
FLORIAN PIERINI
MOHAMMAD HUSSAIN
JEFFREY RAZAQ
Most of these men have also been linked to other scams. The two who were acquitted were Mitchell Mallin (the company director) and Anthony Whymark (a sales agent who owned Apex Alternatives).
The five men who were convicted will be sentenced at the end of July. For a more detailed report visit this article on the Safe Or Scam blog page.
As this money was stolen, and the Thieves were convicted, why has the money not been recovered and repaid.? Those convicted should have to be made to repay their Debt.
SOS Comment: When a defendant is found guilty in a criminal case in the UK which involves the theft of a lot of money, it falls upon the UK Police to trace and confiscate the money and/or assets of those convicted. This is done under the Proceeds Of Crime Act commonly known as POCA. In the case of Essex and London Properties Ltd a significant amount of the money was sent to offshore jurisdictions. It can take a long time for the Police to seize the money. The convictions were achieved in the summer of 2022 and it is unusual for distributions to victims of large-scale frauds to be made within six months of a conviction. In the case of Essex and London Properties there were a lot of victims. In some cases it can take years for all assets to become available, especially if the perpetrators do not co-operate which is frequently the case. They often put the stolen money in well hidden offshore bank accounts or convert it into hard to trace cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, hence the time it can take for the authorities to trace and seize it.
However, for E&LP we were recently informed that some money has already been recovered. Therefore, we believe there is likely to be a distribution to the investor victims sometime in 2023. Unfortunately, investors are likely to receive a small percentage of their total investment value.
It is wrong in this country that those people who are convicted of stealing investors money, are not made to work to repay those debts. To say that they have hidden the money away, and they can avoid repayment by ‘not cooperating’ is just not good enough. Financial criminals who are caught, must work to repay the money they have stolen, even if it takes their lifetime to try to do so, if they will not diclose where the money has gone.
This is pure logic, and might deter others from conning investors.
My local club invested £75000 in this company is it likely to get any back
It is now 2024, and desite their convictions, I have not had a single penny back from this. I pay lots of money every year to the police, why should they keep our money, and not reimburse the investors?
Lance Mangold
Why have the Courts not returned money to the investors ??