Prison for directors behind £70 million investment fraud

Former directors sentenced for defrauding 3,000 people.

Today, Matthew Pickard, 56, Stephen Greenaway, 47 and Paul Laver, 47 from Bournemouth have been sentenced to a combined 15 years and nine months in prison for orchestrating a seven-year £70 million investment fraud duping more than 3,000 people – many of them pensioners – out of their savings. 

Matthew Pickard was sentenced to six years in prison for fraudulent trading. Stephen Greenaway was sentenced to five years and three months. Paul Laver was sentenced to four years and six months in prison. All three were also disqualified from acting as directors for ten years.

The Serious Fraud Office (SFO) told Southwark Crown Court that its investigation into Ethical Forestry Limited uncovered how the former directors ran a Bournemouth-based call centre, cold-calling and persuading members of the public to withdraw and invest funds from their pension schemes in a tree-planting operation in Costa Rica.

Investigators found that employees of Ethical Forestry Limited used false company names without disclosing their true employer, to gain the trust of victims before encouraging them to transfer their savings to the scheme.

Whilst trees were planted in Costa Rica using the funds, nothing was set aside to maintain or harvest the saplings, meaning investors’ money could never generate the returns they had been promised.

While their victims watched their life savings disappear, the defendants spent millions of stolen money funding their luxury lifestyles, including amassing high-end sports cars  and luxury holidays across Europe and Asia. Greenaway purchased a £1.9 million home while Pickard bought a £4.3 million property   in Sandbanks, Poole.

£2.77 million of investor money was also diverted and used to administer a tax avoidance scheme for the directors’ own benefit.

The SFO’s investigation led all three defendants to plead guilty to fraudulent trading in January earlier this year ahead of a scheduled trial.