THE READERS’ CHAMPION
Fighting fraud every week
A SCHEMING investment cheat who accused me of trying to put him on trial in The Mail on Sunday is now starting a four-year jail sentence after pleading guilty at Southwark Crown Court to conspiracy to commit fraud.
Samuel Exall, 31, of Orpington, Kent, was leader of a gang that ran a series of land investment companies between 2008 and 2011.
In 2010, he was the director of Synergy Land Group, which claimed housebuilders Taylor Wimpey and Barratt Homes were being forced to sell off prime development land because of falling house prices. Synergy had snapped up choice pieces of land which it was now offering to investors.
This was a tissue of lies. House prices were rising and the big builders were buying land, not selling it. Synergy was actually selling vastly overpriced plots of agricultural land that had no planning permission for building. When I questioned him, Exall told me: ‘Your interest is in writing a story, mine is to continue running a legitimate commercial enterprise. I do not feel obliged to defend myself before the Court of The Mail on Sunday, as tempting as this might otherwise be.’
So when I published a warning in September 2010, I predicted that Exall might well be forced to defend himself, adding: ‘The court he stands in then will deliver a judgment that is more official than anything I write.’ City of London Police began to investigate two months later.
Others in the gang have also been jailed. James Francis Byrne, 30, of Bow in East London, was sentenced to five years in jail. Michael Foran, 27, also from Bow, was sentenced to 18 months. Max Jefferys, 31, of Woodford Green in Essex, was jailed for 18 months.
Police found the four crooks made £1.6million from their fraud.
Detective Sergeant Marcus McInerney, who led the investigation, said: ‘These defendants caused intense misery for their victims. They used the money to enjoy lavish and extravagant lifestyles, leaving their victims destitute.’
Proceedings have begun to seize their assets. In a separate trial, Byrne, Jefferys and Foran received further sentences for a scam involving the sale of nearworthless carbon credits as investments.
The London Carbon Credit Company which they ran raked in £1.8million from victims who were promised big profits. Byrne was jailed for six years, Jefferys for four years and Foran for four and a half years.