TWO fraudsters have been convicted for conning vulnerable victims out of a £2 million in a ‘boiler room’ fraud operation.

Luke Ryan, 33, and Paul Seakens, 60, and were found guilty at the specialist court, Prospero House, Southwark, on Wednesday, on charges of running a business for fraudulent purposes. Seakens was also convicted of money laundering and proceeds of crime charges.

Seakens and Ryan were directors of Enviro Associates, a company based in Southgate Street, Winchester, that used high pressure sales tactics to convince vulnerable people to buy Voluntary Emission Reduction (VERs) carbon credits. They used call operatives, making false claims about returns.

Individuals were sold these VERs on the basis they were good and promising investments but, in reality, there was no market for investors to sell them on and no realistic likelihood of there ever being one. They were purchased via Seakens’ London based company CNI for very small sums and then sold by the boiler rooms - call centres for con artists - to victims at vastly inflated prices sometimes up to a 1,000 per cent mark-up.

The money from the victims was paid directly to the bank accounts of three London based clearing companies, CNI, Tocan and Opus, all controlled by Seakens, that deducted a commission and then paid the monies back to the boiler rooms.

Total losses amounted to £1,847,630.94, but this is believed to be a large underestimate of the total scale of the fraud as financial analysis of bank statements showed well in excess of £30 million went through various company accounts controlled by Seakens.

Ryan, 33, Scott Road, Eastleigh, was convicted of one count of fraudulent trading, and Seakens, 60, from Whitewebbs Farm, Enfield, London, was found guilty of three counts of money laundering and one count of fraudulent trading. They are due to be sentenced on Friday May 28 at Southwark Crown Court.

Their convictions follow an eight-year-long investigation involving the City of London Police and Hampshire police, with the support of the Crown Prosecution Service.

Jane Mitchell of the CPS said: “This was a particularly hideous scam operation, where vulnerable victims lost their life savings on so-called investments that had greatly inflated return claims and no resale market.

“In each of these frauds elderly and generally inexperienced investors were targeted. They were cold called in their homes and pressured into buying these so-called investments by criminals who made them look genuine and trustworthy.”

Detective Inspector Andrew Symes, of Hampshire Constabulary’s Economic Crime Unit, said: “They caused immeasurable loss over a number of years in many different forms and preyed upon, at times, the most vulnerable - not only in Hampshire but country-wide. They deceived their victims by mis-selling of VERs, and grossly inflating mark ups, with little to no opportunity of the investor being able to sell their credits at any point in the future.”