Two crooks who used hard sell “boiler room” techniques to defraud investors into paying large sums of money for worthless or grossly overpriced goods have been jailed for thirteen years each.
Dylan Creaven and Andrew Rowe sold worthless carbon credits and very low quality or non-existent diamonds from very smart offices in St James Square, London. Both were also involved in fraudulent land deals, Creaven with a company which sold land packages for 31 times their value and raked in £3.2 million before being closed down by the Insolvency Service, and Rowe with a firm that raked in £10 million selling overpriced land.
For those interested in how these scams work see two excellent and enjoyable films, Glengarry Glen Ross and Boiler Room.