Fraudsters must repay £13.7m to cold-calling pension scam victims

David Austin, Susan Dalton, Alan Barratt and Julian Hanson squandered the millions after 245 members of the public were persuaded via cold-calling and similar techniques to transfer their pension savings into one of 11 scam schemes operated by Friendly Pensions (FP) between November 2012 and September 2014. Victims were told that if they transferred their pension pots to the schemes they would receive a tax-free payment commonly described as a ‘commission rebate' from investments made by the pension scheme - a form of pension scam. On 23 January, the High Court ruled that Austin, Dalt...