Jail for ‘Sunshine Gang’ in £17m solar panel scam
A GANG of conmen who duped dozens of vulnerable victims in a £17million solar panel scam were yesterday jailed for a total of 30 years.
The six men, five of whom were Scots, tricked 1,500 people into paying thousands of pounds into a fraudulent ‘something for nothing’ renewable energy scheme.
Many elderly and retired victims were persuaded to part with their life savings and pension funds with promises that their money would be invested and returned to them in full.
The gang instead used the cash to fund their taste for luxury cars, private jets and lavish holidays.
Ludovic Black, 38, his brother David Diaz, 34, Niall Hastie, 54, and Kenneth Reid, 60, all from Glasgow; Robert Ross, 52, of Monkton, Ayrshire, and Stephen Wilson, 56, of Widnes, Cheshire, had previously been found guilty of conspiracy to defraud after a trial spanning four months at Liverpool Crown Court.
Sentencing the six, Judge Robert Warnock said the false representations were created by Black and Diaz ‘and promulgated and promoted by the other four’. He also suggested the men resorted to scamming their customers after the Government reduced ‘feed-in’ payments to people with solar panels.
The court heard that for more than two years customers were sent ‘glossy brochures’ and visited by the gang, who said their homes were ‘perfect for panels’.
Diaz and Black led the fraud as directors of Solar Energy Savings, based in Manchester. Two offshoot companies, EPH and UEG, were based in Ayrshire.
To add an air of authority to their claims the gang also used a company called Capital Suisse, which was not based in Switzerland but in Central American country Belize.
Solar panels were installed at victims’ homes and they were signed up to the Government’s feed-in tariff scheme, under which people receive money for generating more power than they use.
The victims were also told they could benefit from a bogus cashback plan which encouraged them to spend significant additional sums.
In some cases, all their savings were ploughed into the scheme which falsely ‘guaranteed’ their money would be safely invested, insured and returned after a number of years, risk-free.
In reality, no money was invested as claimed, leaving the victims between £10,000 and £20,000 out of pocket.
The money was instead transferred between Solar Energy Savings and other companies.
The men’s bank accounts showed they each paid themselves £1.9million and enjoyed extravagant lifestyles, including driving Lamborghinis and Porsches and taking private jet flights to Italy and Switzerland. The scam was exposed and the men arrested following a four-year probe by the Serious Fraud Office.
Judge Warnock said: ‘As the feed-in tariff support from central government declined, so it became more difficult to generate the required sales to sustain the high rate of sales turnover and large amounts of cash.’
He added that the suggestion there was insurance to guard against financial loss was ‘a blatant and sustained lie.’
The court heard that Wilson acted as the frontman, posing at times as a cavalry officer, peer and barrister to hook victims.
Judge Warnock, jailing Black for seven-and-a-half years, told him his view of himself as a ‘talented and successful businessman’ was wrong and slated his ‘greed’.
Diaz was sentenced to six-and-ahalf years and Wilson to four-anda half years. Former dentist Ross was sentenced to four-and-a halfyears and Hastie and Reid threeand-a-half years.
‘Blatant and sustained lie’