£31m is a proper penalty...

More news on investment fraudster Renwick Haddow. Among his multi-million pound scams was one that persuaded victims to put their savings into farmland in Australia and Lithuania.

But 65% of investor money disappeared in marketing costs, including commission for the sales reps, and no land was ever bought.

Now Haddow’s been banned from being a director for the maximum 15 years.

“This is fraudulent conduct of the nastiest kind,” said Deputy Registrar Baister in the High Court.

“Misleading marketing material was disseminated to investors which seriously misrepresented to laypeople the value of the investments.”

The court heard that Haddow, 49, acted as a director of Agri Firma Capital Limited even though he was already a banned director.

He was also named as the owner of the Capital Alternatives group of companies. As I’ve reported, this previously marketed investments in rice farms in Sierra Leone, pocketing 50% of investors’ money in fees.

Haddow has lived in London, Hong Kong and New York, where his latest “ventures” are in trouble.

Investors put £28million into two schemes, one supposedly a company that rented office space, another a platform for trading cryptocurrency called Bitcoin Store Inc.

The investments were sold by gushing cold callers at a third company, InCrowd Equity, which, unbeknown to investors, was also owned by Haddow.

According to court documents filed by the FBI, money from investors was meant to buy shares in Bitcoin Store but “Haddow appropriated all or nearly all of the funds” for expenses and commissions.

The UK arm of this operation, Bitcoin Store Limited, arranged to give £528,000 of investors’ money to InCrowd to pay its cold callers – a deal that was not revealed to investors.

The documents add that investors’ due diligence was hampered because the sales prospectus omitted Haddow’s name “and therefore his negative regulatory history”.

Last month, several judgments were issued against the operations by a New York district judge.

Bitcoin Store was given a civil penalty of $1.5m while the office rental operation, Bar Works Inc, got hit for $42m in penalties and orders to return profits – a total of more than £31m.

According to online reports, Haddow is currently in Morocco awaiting extradition to the United States.