The ringleader of a £2.8m fraud has been jailed for 13 years after being prosecuted by the Financial Conduct Authority.
Michael Nascimento, 41, was jailed for his role in a share fraud carried out through a series of boiler room companies and of which he was the instigator and main beneficiary.
Between July 2010 and April 2014, members of the public were cold-called and subjected to high pressure sales tactics to persuade them to buy shares in a company that owned land on the island of Madeira.
Investors were told the value of the shares would increase substantially when permission to build 20 villas was granted and they were promised guaranteed returns of between 125 per cent and 228 per cent, but none were ever paid.
Nascimento's jailing at Southwark Crown Court on Friday followed the sentencing of five others involved in the fraud, who were collectively jailed for 17.5 years.
In sentencing Nascimento the trial judge, His Honour Judge Hehir, said he had shown "utter cynicism and contempt" for some of the victims.
He also said it was "particularly repellent" elderly people had been specifically targeted and that many of the victims were vulnerable.
He said some of the stories he had heard during the trial were "positively heart-breaking" and many of the victims had suffered "life-shattering losses". The judge said, "despicable was not too strong a word" to describe some of Nascimento’s actions.
The judge said Nascimento was "very adept at getting others to do his dirty work for [him]" and that many of his actions were "specifically designed to frustrate the task of the FCA and to prevent apprehension".
Nascimento "very rarely broke cover and revealed his identity" however, where he did he was "quite happy to defraud people [he] was looking at in the eye". He also added that "over a period of years [Nascimento] acted single-mindedly in pursuit of riches through fraud".
More than 170 members of the public invested more than £2.8m in the shares and their money was used to maintain the fraud and to fund Nascimento's lifestyle.
Mark Steward, executive director of enforcement and market oversight at the FCA, said: "This brings to an end the FCA’s largest fraud prosecution which has seen the perpetrators imprisoned for a total of 28.5 years, affording justice to victims who were the subject of their calculated deception. We are continuing to fight for compensation for victims out of their assets."
Nascimento was sentenced to 11 years in jail for his role in the boiler room fraud and an additional two years for further criminality in respect of a separate prosecution by the Crown Prosecution Service and the City of London Police.
damian.fantato@ft.com
