Men jailed for conning friends and family out of £9m

Two men who conned close friends and family out of almost £9m in life savings and pensions have been jailed.

Andrew Bird, 60, and Christopher Walton, 67, carried out the fraud over six years – taking huge sums from people who they duped into investing money, which was used to pay back other investors to keep their scam running.

They had denied fraud, but were convicted earlier this year and jailed for eight years and five years respectively on Thursday.

At Nottingham Crown Court, Judge Michael Auty KC said their scam had a "devastating impact" on its victims.

Bird and Walton ran a company called Anglo American Equities (AAE), which claimed to invest people's money in the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.

That is a genuine market where people can buy or sell precious metals, foreign currencies, treasury bonds, cryptocurrencies and financial contracts.

Yet both men were actually running a so-called Ponzi scheme, in which money from new investors was used to pay fake dividends to existing participants.

Derbyshire Police began investigating AAE after receiving a number of complaints from people, who said they had been unable to cash in their investment.

Detectives said they soon established there had been wrongdoing.

Both men denied 13 charges of fraud by false representation, but had admitted carrying out a regulated activity whilst not authorised.

Following a nine-week trial, Bird was convicted on all of the counts of fraud, and Walton on 10, but he was acquitted of three.

The case against them centred on the period between 2010 and 2016.

Det Sgt Richard Foster said: "We have got a lot of victims who have lost a lot of money - their life savings, their pensions.

"They were all friends, family, close relations, where they trusted Bird and Walton to invest their money.

"It's had a profound impact on them - some have not been able to recover financially - they've had to go back into work, or simply can't retire."

Police say it was a classic Ponzi scam - named after the fraudster Charles Ponzi - in which investors are offered high returns.

Yet in reality, very little of the money was invested.

Police said the pair met at Horsley Lodge Golf Club in Derbyshire in 2005 when Bird, of Church Road, Quarndon, Derbyshire, was running the AAE company.

Walton, a former bank manager from Church Street, Kilburn, Derbyshire, had heard of Bird's reported success in trading and investment and the two then joined forces, police added.

They convinced friends and family, many of whom were elderly and vulnerable, of the returns they could expect and lied to them about the risk the investments could see - "playing on the fact that Bird had never lost money trading".

Once investors had paid money, they received documents designed to persuade them that their investment was doing well and encourage them to invest further.

However, the documentation was falsified and the majority of the money that Bird and Walton took from people was not used to trade at all.

The scheme collapsed in August 2016 after running out of new cash, police said.

Bird is said to have traded on his name - and his family's past connections with the Derby-based Birds Bakery business.

Det Sgt Foster said: "Andrew Bird has nothing to do with Birds Bakery, but we have got evidence from some victims that he relied on the reputation of the name to give some credibility, if something had gone wrong, there were some funds they could recoup.

"They were simply deceived. This isn't a cold-calling investment scheme, this is where trust and reliability have been exploited to fund this scheme and keep it going so long, so it's had a devastating impact on its victims."

A spokesperson for Birds Bakery added: "We would like to reiterate the words of Derbyshire Police, that Andrew Bird has no involvement with our business or its running.

"We were saddened and shocked to hear that the longstanding and trusted reputation of Birds Bakery has been exploited in such a way."

As part of a string of victim impact statements, one said he lost £40,000 after trusting Walton as a family friend.

Another said: "I will always remember the day I was on holiday and received the email from Walton to say all the money was lost."

A further victim, who had invested £100,000, said that money was his "life savings for a sustainable retirement - they [Bird and Walton] ruined our lives".

Judge Michael Auty KC, sentencing the pair, said: "You both obtained investors' money and in literal terms, it never really went anywhere."

He said Bird was "deluded" about his skill as a financial trader and that had "tragic and enduring consequences for many hard-working, decent people".

"This had a devastating impact - there will be devastation and lifelong misery of so many people."

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