Three men have been sentenced to nine years for a boiler-room investment fraud, the Serious Fraud Office has said, including one man who stole the identity of a registered financial adviser to commit the crime.
The operation, based in Spain, targeted investors in the UK between 2009 and 2010 and took in over £1.3m. During the course of the fraud one of the men, James Muir Baird, stole the identity of an FSA registered financial adviser and an FSA registered company and set up a bank account. By posing as a financial adviser he was able to purchase the contact details of people who had made investment enquiries on an investment website. This gave the boiler room the cold call list it needed to deploy high-pressure sales techniques. Baird (D.O.B. 09/06/81) and Paul O'Leary (D.O.B. 22/08/73)...
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