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help@frenkels.comA City Financier has been jailed after being convicted of conning tens of millions of pounds out of investors. Nicholas Levene was sentenced to 13 years imprisonment for the fraud earlier this week at Southwark Crown Court. The judge in the case commented that the scale of the deception Levene had undertaken was ‘unprecedented’.
Levene, nicknamed ‘Beano’ after his favourite comic book character, admitted all charges of which he was accused – 12 counts of fraud, one count of false accounting and one of obtaining a money transfer by deception.
Levene’s crimes, which he is thought to have committed over a four year period between 2005 and 2009, saw him con more than £32 million out of his investor clients. Taking into account the lost revenue of his clients, the value of the fraud is actually estimate at closer to £101 million.
During his trial, it was revealed that Levene had defrauded a number of high profile business people including Stagecoach founder Sir Brian Souter, Richard Caring, the owner of The Ivy and Le Caprice restaurants in London and Russell Bartlett, director of the R3 Investment Group and former owner of Hull City Football Club.
All the while, Levene was using the money to fund a lavish lifestyle and his addiction to gambling. It was revealed that Levene spent the embezzled funds on luxury holidays, yachts and properties, including a home in Israel. The 48 year old father of three also once spent £588,000 on a family celebration.
Commenting on Levene’s crimes, Judge Martin Beddoe said: “You were responsible for a fraud on a massive scale with a huge panoply of aggravating features, well planned and professionally executed, involving huge sums and huge profits with multiple victims whose trust in you was grossly abused”.
As expert forensic accountants, Frenkels Forensics are often instructed in cases of fraud. Our forensic accountancy firm can act to investigate any accused fraud by way of examining an individual’s computer or compiling forensic accountancy reports to substantiate an accusation. Such reports play a pivotal role in any fraud investigation.