The Crown Office & Procurator Fiscal Service has published details of two fraud cases that were recently heard in court.
Fraud can take many forms and generally involves deceptively taking property without the owner’s consent with the intention for personal gain.
In the first case, a 43-year-old woman was sentenced to three years in jail after defrauding a family run business out of £110,000.
The woman ran a financial advisory service and been contracted to carry out some accountancy work for a garage in Castle Douglas, despite not being a qualified accountant or having any affiliation to accredited financial bodies.
She became responsible for all aspects of the company’s finances and told them she would set up a client account for them, telling them to provide funds to demonstrate the firm’s liquidity. The money was actually being kept in her own business account and over a six-month period she siphoned off and spent £110,000.
In a second case, a 57-year-old was jailed for seven years after pleading guilty to a complex investment fraud that accrued more than £18 million.
He had established his business through cold calling potential investors and then providing a false picture of the returns on their investments.
The clients believed that his company was trading their funds on financial markets via a currency trading platform. However, the vast majority of their investment was in fact deposited into the company’s main bank account, where it was used to pay rent, staff wages, other running costs of the company and for the owner’s personal spending.
His scheme was eventually brought to an end through an intervention by Police and what was then the Financial Services Authority.
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