Two jailed over £10m boiler room scam

Two men found guilty of running a £10m boiler room fraud have been jailed for a total of nine years.

Matthew Noad and Clive Griston ran a London-based scam which took in £10m from victims who were persuaded to buy worthless plots of land and valueless carbon credits.

The fraudsters were sentenced to four years and eight months each in jail at the Old Bailey this week, and disqualified from being company directors for 10 years.

Between 2005 and 2010 the two men conned investors, many of them elderly, into believing they would make returns of several hundred per cent from sites in the UK that were ripe for housing development.

In reality the land had little or no value, as much of it was situated in greenfield belts or flood zones.

Noad and Griston were arrested by City of London Police in December 2010 on suspicion of conspiracy to defraud and money laundering.

But when released on bail the pair set up another boiler room to sell valueless carbon credits.

They were arrested for a second time in September 2012 and in December 2013 pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud.

Detective inspector Nigel Howard, from the City of London Police’s fraud squad, says: “Griston and Noad are professional criminals who dedicated much of the last decade to running boiler rooms that specialised in conning elderly investors out of money that should have been there to support them in retirement.

“The pair pocketed millions while showing no care for the damage being done to their victims’ lives.”

The City of London Police says many victims lost their life savings and have no prospect of recouping the money.