Tycoon’s ‘Wolf of Wall St’ style con
Scammer fleeced elderly investors out of €4million
AN Irish tycoon who ran a ‘Wolf of Wall Street’-style operation that conned elderly investors out of their life savings has been convicted of fraud.
Dylan Creaven, 44, fleeced pensioners out of £3.5 million (€4million), promising huge returns on worthless carbon credits and diamonds.
He set up two fraudulent companies in order to run a plush ‘boiler room’ office in St James’s Square, central London.
Between 2012 and 2013, Creaven delivered motivational speeches to his salesmen every morning to ‘rev them up’, and they were allowed to keep crates of beer in the office, Blackfriars Crown Court in London heard.
In Creaven’s latest fraud case, he and his co-defendant Andrew Rowe, 41, offered diamonds that were non-existent, or of inferior quality, and offered worthless ‘green’ carbon credits.
A prosecutor told the jury that it was ‘no mistake’ Creaven’s victims were in their 70s and 80s.
The fraudsters socialised with each other and fostered a macho atmosphere of intimidation in the office, where being a ‘soft touch’ on the phone was ridiculed.
Creaven, from Newmarket-on-Fergus, Co. Clare, and Rowe, of Barnet, north London, were convicted, after a six-week trial, of two counts of conspiracy to defraud and one count of conspiracy to transfer criminal property. They were remanded in custody for sentencing on April 19.
Judge David Richardson told Creaven: ‘You face a substantial sentence and I advise you to get representation.’
Describing the ‘boiler-room frauds’, prosecutor Angus Bunyan told jurors earlier: ‘These individuals hard-sell worthless, or otherwise dubious, investment opportunities to people they have cold-called on the telephone.
‘It was sophisticated, carefully planned and persistent. Between 2012 and 2013, they operated a company called Agon Energy Limited, which sold worthless carbon credits to investors.’
Agon published an impressive brochure with pictures of its St James’s location, which claimed the firm was an ‘industry leader’ and included fake quotes from Forbes magazine. It sent Christmas cards, pens, caps and mugs to its clients.
Mr Bunyan said Creaven and Rowe were also involved in running a second company, Lanyard Capital Ltd, from 2013 to 2014.
Potential clients were called on their landlines by brokers who were ‘plausible, articulate and intelligent, but persistent and occasionally aggressive if challenged’.
The Met Police and Trading Standards received numerous complaints and the police were able to obtain evidence from 32 investors.
Mr Bunyan said: ‘Both these enterprises were vehicles for fraud. They were not and never were bona-fide commercial businesses.
‘The carbon credits offered and sold by Agon were in fact almost completely worthless and the diamonds offered and sold by Lanyard were either non-existent or of very inferior quality.’
Mr Bunyan added: ‘Almost all of those who parted with their money were relatively advanced in terms of their age, in their retirement, and we would suggest
‘Victims were in their 70s and 80s’ ‘People dipped into their savings’
that there was no accident to that. Many were in their 70s, and some in their 80s, at the time and these people dipped into their savings in good faith.
‘Almost none of them have been able to receive any of their money back at all.’
Clare County Councillor Pat McMahon said yesterday that the Creaven family carried huge respect in the community and that Dylan had left the area a long time ago. Dylan’s father, the late Louis Creaven, chaired the Mid-Western Hospital’s Development Trust, which helped raise €16million for better healthcare. The trust fundraised money for a cancer treatment centre at the Limerick Regional Hospital and other centres.
In November 2005, Dylan Creaven was cleared of masterminding a multi-million pound VAT scam.
However, he later made a settlement of €26.5million with the Criminal Assets Bureau here and Britain’s Assets Recovery Agency.
As part of this deal, he agreed to hand over £18.5million (€21million), his luxury villa in Marbella, a flat in the exclusive London district of Knightsbridge, a further €176,000 and four racehorses worth €245,000.
He retained a £2million (€2.3milion) apartment, also in Knightsbridge.
In his early 20s, Creaven built up a global business trading in computer chips, with offices in Singapore, Boston and Ireland.
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