CITY of London conman Terence Freeman has been sent down for eight years after being found guilty of ripping off millions of pounds from 350 people, including an unnamed Premiership footballer, six Metropolitan Police officers and the ex-wife of golfer Colin Montgomerie.
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“This matter is one of the most serious cases of its kind I have had to deal with in nearly 20 years in this court,” Judge Christopher Hardy told Freeman at Southwark Crown Court yesterday.
“It is so serious because of the sheer amount of money involved, the number of victims, over 300, and the type of victims you were dealing with.”
The court heard that Freeman, 63, swindled &14;M out of his clients and spent the money on the high life, including houses in Cyprus and France and an executive box at Tottenham Hotspur FC’s White Hart Lane ground.
Until 2009, Freeman ran GFX Capital Markets, a London investment company that used Ponzi-scheme methods; that is, it paid returns to existing investors from the money brought in by new investors.
When the bankers’-boom was in full swing, GFX’s promised returns must have seemed believable to investors, but even so suspicions were raised not long after GFX started trading in 2004, four years after Freeman had finished a five-year stretch in prison for bankruptcy-related offences.
The Financial Services Authority was made aware of those suspicions by clients that year and again in 2007 and 2008. It is thought some of the 350 victims of Freeman’s fraud may now sue the FSA.