Here are a few of the greediest scammers out there!
Carbon Scamming Sami Raja
Meet Sami Raja.
From 2012 to 2013, this shameless scammer tricked 130 victims into giving him 2.4 million
pounds for worthless investments.
That's nearly 3 million in US dollars!
To pull this off, Raja primarily targeted the elderly and vulnerable.
He cold-called them at their homes, posing as an honest investment broker and using aggressive
sales tactics to pressure them into buying his products.
He sold them what are known as "carbon credits."
Carbon credits can be real investments, but Raja sold them for 25 times their actual value.
That'd be like buying a new TV for $20,000!
With all the life savings money he siphoned from his victims, Raja lived like a king.
He frequently posted pictures of his expensive purchases on social media, including designer
clothes, a Aston Martin, and a Rolex.
He also traveled extensively, visiting luxury resorts from the deserts of Dubai to the beaches
of the Maldives.
Carbon Credits We know Raja funded all this by selling over-priced
carbon credits, but what exactly are carbon credits?
A carbon credit is a certificate representing 1 ton of carbon dioxide removed from the atmosphere.
Most of the time, big corporations buy these carbon credits to either voluntarily reduce
their environmental impact or meet government regulations.
But it's not just companies — regular people, like the ones Raja was scamming, can also
buy and sell carbon credits.
Some buy them because they care about the environment, but most people buy them as an
investment opportunity, hoping their value will increase in the future.
Some experts predict the price of carbon credits will jump 88% by 2030.
That sounds great for carbon credit investors, but remember that Raja was selling them to
his victims for 25 times their actual value.
With a price like that, they would have had to wait over a century just to break even!
Aftermath Authorities eventually caught on to the scam
and arrested Raja in September 2013.
They then released him while they continued their investigation.
Over five years later, in January 2019, his trial was finally set to begin.
But, right when it seemed the scammer was going to be brought to justice, Raja fled
the UK and headed for Dubai.
While there, he continued his life of luxury, posting more photos of designer clothes, sports
cars, and resort destinations.
Back in the UK, Raja's trial went on without him.
The court found him guilty of six counts of conspiracy to defraud and money laundering
and sentenced him to eight years in jail.
Three days later, Raja posted a picture of himself in a Maldives resort hot tub with
the caption: "Ain't no one bursting my bubble."
Unfortunately for him, that wasn't exactly true.
In July 2020, more than a year later, authorities finally popped Raja's bubble, arresting the
scammer when he traveled to Athens.
A month later, they brought him back to the UK so he could begin his eight-year jail sentence.
Friends and Family Freddy David
Hannah David thought she knew Freddy, her faithful husband of more than 24 years.
That quickly changed when, on a seemingly ordinary day in 2017, armed police officers
showed up at their doorstep and arrested her husband.
As Ms. David soon learned, the hard-working family man she thought she knew had lied to
her for over a decade.
From 2005 to 2017, Freddy David ran a high-level Ponzi scheme that scammed 55 victims out of
nearly 15 million pounds or 18.5 million US dollars.
A Ponzi scheme is a scam in which early investors are paid with the money put in by newer investors
— a scam, in other words, that makes no real money and can only survive by scamming
more and more people.
David was the managing director of HBFS Wealth Management's investment firm and pulled off
his con by running it alongside his legitimate company.
After his arrest, the court found him guilty of theft and fraud and sentenced him to six
years in jail.
But if David already had a good-paying job as an investment director, why did he need
all this scam money?
Addiction As it turned out, David had a serious gambling
addiction.
During his 12-year scam, he spent 15.6 million pounds on various gambling sites, funding
almost all of this betting through his Ponzi scheme.
Online gambling is legal in the UK, and David took full advantage of that unrestricted access.
At his worst, he spent more than 100,000 pounds a day on online gambling.
One time he even lost 240,000 pounds in 24 hours.
He targeted fellow Jewish community members to keep the gambling money coming in.
David used his reputation as an honest financial advisor to lure in his victims.
One of these victims, Leon Winsky, was an elderly man who lost 300,000 pounds he'd saved
after 50 years of hard work.
Winsky planned on using that investment money for an apartment for his special needs son.
Aftermath In June 2021, David was released from jail,
after serving half of his six-year sentence.
Even though the total loss his victims suffered was nearly 7 million pounds, the court ordered
that he only had to pay back 1.3 million.
While he got off lightly with his legal punishment, David's family life wasn't so lucky.
After learning of his deception, his wife Hannah filed for divorce and sold their family
home.
Since her husband's release from jail, Ms. David has called on the UK government to crack
down on online gambling and prevent situations like her husband's.
She hopes the government will create new laws that raise red flags when someone repeatedly
loses large amounts of money.
The Wannabe Wolf Jeffrey Revell-Reade
For four years, Jeffrey Revell-Reade ran one of the largest investment frauds ever uncovered
in the UK.
By pushing worthless stocks to amateur investors, this high-level con artist raked in around
70 million pounds — almost 90 million US dollars!
All this eventually earned him the title the "Wolf of Wimbledon."
Just like the Wolf of Wall Street, who inspired the nickname, Revell-Reade used his criminal
proceeds to bankroll some expensive tastes.
He bought numerous overseas properties, including a luxury flat in Melbourne, Australia, and
three apartments in Marbella, Spain.
He also owned four mansions in Wimbledon, just south of London, including one worth
5 million pounds.
But the spending didn't end there.
In addition to the property, this real-life Wolf bought a luxury yacht, frequent private
jet rides, and multiple wine collections.
He also spent 54,000 pounds on sports cars and motorbikes and 13,000 pounds on Rolex
watches.
Boiler Room To make this kind of luxury possible, Revell-Reade
operated what's known as a "boiler room scam."
This scam works by hiring salespeople to cold call amateur investors and pressure them into
buying worthless stocks.
The salespeople often make outrageous claims about huge returns on the investments and
then push their victims to make an immediate payment.
In this case, Revell-Reade and his associates called investors in the UK — many of whom
were elderly people — to sell shares of US companies.
These companies were either low in value, no longer operating, or even fake companies,
but he and his salespeople would market them as sure-fire investments.
To deflect attention from law enforcement, Revell-Reade organized his scam as a complex
web of offshore companies.
He based his operations in Madrid, Spain, but directed the payments from victims to
a separate company he controlled — one based in Hong Kong but registered to a law firm
in the British Virgin Islands.
If all that seems confusing — well, that's kind of the point.
Aftermath Despite his best efforts, the Wolf of Wimbledon
couldn't hold off law enforcement's wandering eye forever.
When an elderly UK investor contacted the company's law firm about shares he had purchased
but never received, the firm tried to deflect suspicion and prove their client was a legitimate
company.
But the damage had already been done.
Eventually, the UK's Serious Fraud Office, or the SFO, got involved.
After a seven-year investigation codenamed Operation Steamroller, the SFO finally had
enough evidence to arrest Revell-Reade and his associates in 2014.
After a three-month trial, the Wolf was convicted of conspiracy to defraud and sentenced to
nine years and six months in jail.
This sentence was later increased by four more years after Revell-Reade failed to pay
back 7.5 million pounds to his victims.
Later, in April 2022, a 1 million pound luxury apartment owned by the scammer was sold to
help raise more money to pay back victims of the fraud.
Fake Plates Zahid Khan
For scammer Zahid Khan, the trouble began with a crushed Ferrari Spider.
In May 2017, police pulled over Khan while driving the 200,000-pound sports car in Birmingham.
They seized the car, believing it was a stolen vehicle, and then had it destroyed.
When Khan showed up at court later that month to prove he'd bought the car legally, he was
in for quite the surprise: police had already crushed the car, he was told.
There was nothing he could do.
Khan was furious at the police, but that was just the beginning.
Unbeknownst to him, while the car drama was going down, detectives were investigating
a scam he was running with two of his brothers.
The Khan brothers' scam revolved around stolen license plates.
Zahid and his brothers tracked down information about valuable personalized plates, then contacted
the UK agency in charge of those plates.
They claimed they were the rightful owners and had recently changed addresses, thus needed
to re-register the plates.
Using this method, Khan stole the rights to five license plates which were worth 500,000
pounds in total.
Gillian Bayford One of these victims was a woman named Gillian
Bayford.
In 2012, Bayford and her husband had won a lottery prize worth 148 million pounds — the
second biggest ever paid in the UK.
Using a portion of this money, Bayford bought a personalized license plate that simply read
"8G."
Years later, seeing money-making potential in the plate, Khan stole the rights to it.
He assumed the 8G plate would bring him a massive payday, but in reality, it was the
beginning of his downfall.
When he tried to sell the personalized plate, his potential buyer contacted Bayford directly
— who told the buyer that she was the owner, not Khan.
This buyer then contacted the police, who began investigating Khan and his scam.
Aftermath Once they had enough evidence, law enforcement
arrested Khan and charged him with conspiracy to commit fraud and concealing and converting
criminal property.
It looked like the plate scammer was about to be brought to justice, but then, right
before his conviction, he fled the UK for Dubai.
While in Dubai, Khan used his scammed savings to live a high life.
He stayed in a luxury apartment and took full advantage of Dubai's bustling nightlife, even
partying with boxer Floyd Mayweather and rapper Busta Rhymes.
The plate scammer also had some words for police back in the UK, claiming they didn't
have to destroy his Ferrari and could have just sold it.
As if that wasn't enough, Khan also posted videos of himself smashing a ￡30,000 gold
Rolex and flying over Dubai.
Still, the law got the last laugh.
In 2020, two years after his flight from the country, UK police requested to extradite
Khan from the UAE and place him in jail.
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