Five fraudsters who used puppet trustees as a tool to steal almost £3m from a final salary pension fund have been jailed for a combined total of 26 years.
A total of £2,918,915 was stolen from the pension fund of CW Cheney & Son, a small Birmingham based manufacturing company, in 2000 after it was acquired by Cumberland Leasing, a company controlled by two of the convicted men, Kevin Sykes, and Simon Maya. By this time Cheney & Son was no longer a going concern and its single biggest asset was its pension fund of £3.1m. Trials of seven defendants were held in 2004, with Kevin Sykes, Simon Maya, Trevor Farrell, Altaf Sayed, and Ian Selby all found guilty of conspiracy to steal. Prison sentences ranged from eight years for Sykes, the main inst...
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