Two convicted fraudsters have been returned to prison for failing to pay back the millions they gained by swindling investors.
Shinder Gangar and Alan White were originally told to pay £2.28m and £686,996 after they were found guilty of operating a Ponzi fraud.
But Gangar, 54, and White, 75, only paid £67,712 and £145,208 respectively.
At a hearing in Leicester Magistrates’ Court today Gangar, a former accountant from Leicester, was sentenced to six years and White, of Nottingham, to three and a half years imprisonment for failing to comply with the confiscation order.
Mark Thompson, head of the proceeds of the crime division at the Serious Fraud Office, said: “The criminals have had ample opportunity to pay the order and broke several promises they gave to the court.
“The activation of their default sentences should serve as a warning to others of the consequences of failing to comply with confiscation orders.”
Gangar and White were partners in Dobb White & Co, a firm of accountants through which they marketed investment opportunities.
But there was no underlying trading in investments and the fraud depended on the constant adding of new victims’ funds to finance the payments of “interest” to the existing victims.
Clients’ money was instead syphoned away including to provide unsecured loans to acquaintances, to purchase properties and spend on speculative investment schemes.
The defendants, who were based in the Midlands, targeted investors in the UK and the US.
Together the victims lost more than $200m (£137m).
Clients were told by the defendants that famous names such as Lord Andrew Lloyd-Webber and Sir David Frost were investors in the scheme but this was exposed as a lie.
Gangar and White were both found guilty in February 2008 of a number of offences arising from the Ponzi fraud they operated and were sentenced in April the same year to seven years’ and six months’ imprisonment.
