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Two "arrogant and ruthless" con men who took millions of investment dollars from people who trusted them, have been jailed for six and a half years.
Alan Victor Jones and Roderick Bernard Harrison, both 58, were told by a judge in the High Court at Auckland today the millions of dollars they stole from people they befriended, dined and holidayed with, was "an old fashioned con job" which did an immense amount of harm.
Jones and Harrison were appearing before Justice Patricia Courtney for sentencing after a jury had earlier found them guilty of one charge of conspiring to defraud and two charges of using a document with intent to defraud.
The court heard victims lost $4.2 million and that did not include the loss of profits from the schemes the pair promised could return up to 60 per cent.
They promised their victims the investments were safe but the overseas investments they spoke of did not exist, the judge said.
They invested some money in New Zealand but some of the companies they invested in had failed and others carried no prospects of a return in the forseeable future.
They painted a picture of overseas investments so large, it made the New Zealand investors "look like small players indeed," the judge said.
Some investors were lucky and got their money back but that was paid out of money new investors put in.
Jones and Harrison made investors feel they were doing them a favour by allowing them to invest through the elite Harvest Trust which they had set up.
"It was a brazen con."
The judge said some of the victims were elderly and vulnerable including one recently widowed and one whose marriage had ended.
They had worked hard and invested prudently all their lives but the enjoyment of their later years had been utterly ruined.
One, a woman in her 60s, had sold her house and invested $425,000. She had lost it all, was devastated and was working several part time jobs.
When the Serious Fraud Office began investigating the case the men told one of their victims how to answer questions and blamed the SFO for their demise.
"That was cowardly behaviour," the judge said.
There was no letter of apology despite the victims' repeated pleas for details about their money.
She said the men's behaviour was arrogant and ruthless.
The con was "an insidious and destructive force which leaves misery in its wake."
- NZPA
