Former in-law of Victoria Beckham jailed for fraud
VICTORIA BECKHAM’S exbrother-in-law has been jailed for his role in a near£1m fraud that saw the famous family’s name used to con vulnerable victims to hand over their savings.
Darren Flood was a director in a firm that cold-called unsuspecting members of the public, mainly the elderly, and persuaded them to invest thousands of pounds in practically worthless materials, falsely promising big returns.
The 40-year-old, who was previously married to the former Spice Girls star’s sister Louise Adams and is the father of her eight-year-old daughter, was given a 30-month jail sentence at Kingston Crown Court.
The Beckham name was mentioned to some potential investors to make the scheme seem legitimate, although Flood’s barrister argued he had not personally sought to capitalise on the family link.
The group targeted vulnerable people, including an 83-year-old woman who lost her life savings, phoning them from rented offices in London’s Canary Wharf.
The scammers even wined and dined some of the victims as they ramped up the pressure to invest more money into buying rare earth elements, metals and oxides which are used in products such as mobile phones and computers, which police said may as well have been flour, such was their value.
While Surrey Police said the force is aware of 24 victims who invested more than £800,000, the true scale of the crimes is believed to be much larger, with up to 30 more victims, who officers believe did not wish to come forward due to embarrassment at having been fooled.
Some people took out loans to cover their investments, meaning the true total sum lost to investors is likely to be more than £1m, the leading officer in the investigation said.
The father of footballer Joe Cole was discussed at one point by the gang as someone who could be a potential investor, police said, as the group sought to attract “high net worth clients”.
Flood was responsible for marketing The Commodities Link (TCL), police said, as it claimed to be a “truly global brand” made up of commodities brokers with high value offices.
In reality the firm was run by a gang of what police described as “criminals in suits”.
Deputy circuit judge Michael Carroll, sentencing, said the investment scheme Flood was involved in was “fraudulent from the outset”.
Flood, of Ware Road in Hertford, who owned almost a quarter of The Commodities Link (TCL), was part of the business alongside his halfbrother Jonathan Docker and their cousin Gennaro Fiorentino.
Docker, 32, of High Road, Chigwell, Essex, was jailed for 30 months and disqualified from being a director of a company for three years.
Fiorentino, 38, of Wetherell Road in Hackney, played “the leading role” in the company, Judge Carroll said, jailing him for five years.
Qualified accountant Mark Whitehead, 60 from Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk, who had acted as the company’s finance director, was handed a three-and-a-half-year sentence.
TCL’s office manager Vikki King, 39, from Basildon, broke down in tears as she was jailed for 27 months.
Stephen Todd, 37, of Blackwall Way in Tower Hamlets, who was brought in to help run the company, and is currently in prison for a similar fraud, was sentenced to one year behind bars, to run consecutively with his current term.
TCL’s main salesman Paul Muldoon, 34, of Basildon in Essex, was handed a four-year sentence.