A foreign exchange fraudster has been jailed for an extra year-and-a-half after failing to compensate his investors.
Last year Alex Hope was sentenced to seven years in prison after operating a collective investment scheme without authorisation.
A confiscation order in the sum of £166,969 was made in February 2016 and Hope was given three months to pay it, but so far only £1,000 has been paid.
He has now been given an additional 603 day sentence in addition to his existing jail time.
Mark Steward, director of enforcement and market oversight at the FCA, said: “The FCA will continue to make sure wrongdoers do not profit from their crimes at the expense of victims.
“Confiscation orders cannot be ignored and will be enforced.”
Confiscation orders cannot be ignored and will be enforced.Mark StewardIn total, more than 100 investors entrusted Hope with more than £5.5m on the promise their funds would be used to generate substantial returns by his trading on the foreign exchange markets.
In reality, only 12 per cent of the total sum investors gave him was ever traded and when Hope did trade, he lost almost all of the money in his trading accounts.
The FCA identified and froze almost £2.65m in accounts controlled by Hope, which was returned to investors earlier this year.
Hope used more than £2m of investors’ money to fund his lifestyle.
He spent more than £1m in a casino, more than £200,000 on designer watches and shoes, £60,000 on foreign travel and more than £600,000 in bars and nightclubs in London, Miami and New York.
He also gave some of it as gifts to family and friends and under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, which allows the value of tainted gifts to be recovered, Hope was ordered to pay a sum equal to the value of these gifts.
All money recovered from Hope will be used to compensate the victims of his crimes.
