A bogus financial adviser has been jailed for running a pensions scam that earned him over one million pounds.
UK based Colin Pearson posed as a financial adviser and presented unwitting ‘clients’ with a phantom QROPS pension scheme, which they would then plunge their money into. Going to extraordinary lengths to carry out the scam, Mr Pearson created fake documents to register two overseas pension schemes. Then, using fabricated identities, signatures and addresses, he submitted fake documents to have the pension funds released without any suspicion, into his own bank accounts.
He sold the products by creating bogus PowerPoint presentations with information ripped from the internet to present the products to the clients. Pearson managed to convince more than thirty UK pension holders to make illegitimate pensions transfers worth around £3.4 million, from which he made around £1.9m profit.
With this illicit money he lived what was described as a lavish lifestyle, living in luxury homes and driving luxury cars. His reign of financial fraud came to an end when he was arrested in 2009.
He has now received a jail sentence of three years, after Judge Richardson QC deemed him to be “totally dishonest in his deceitful actions”.
Unfortunately, as with virtually all businesses and services, the danger of falling victim to a scam is sometimes a possibility. For this reason it is vitally important that you have complete confidence in your financial adviser. If you need financial advice feel free to get in touch with our receommended adviser over at the Contact an IFA page.