Eight years added to jail sentence for Oxbridge fraudster

Appearing at Westminster Magistrates’ Court, Rodney Whiston-Dew was ordered to serve a further eight years and ninth months’ imprisonment after failing to pay back the substantial sum from his ill-gotten gains arising as the result of a fake ‘green’ investment scheme.

Whiston-Dew was originally convicted and sentenced in 2017 along with four others (all of whom went to Oxbridge) for cheating the public revenue. Two years later, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) successfully applied to the court for Whiston-Dew to pay back £3,035,192.97 of his ill-gotten gains. This sum was reduced to £2,732,788.96 by the court in October this year. The total amount due is currently £3,463,224.11 with interest.

After having paid back just over £70,409.56, the CPS took Whiston-Dew to the City of London Magistrates’ Court for non-payment of the full amount and requested the District Judge to activate an additional prison sentence instead.

Carbon credits

The fraudsters had told investors in the scheme that their money would be spent on R&D into carbon credits. They duly attracted more than £65 million in investment in the ‘green’ scheme. However, only £16 million of this was spent on planting trees.

Instead, the group stole £20 million of the investors’ money and laundered it via bank accounts and secret trusts, spending it on luxury properties in London, Australia and Dubai as well as hidden offshore investments. They also failed to pay around £6.5 million in tax.

Returned to court

Adrian Foster, Chief Crown Prosecutor within the CPS’ dedicated Proceeds of Crime Division, commented: “Rodney Whiston-Dew failed to pay back the £2.7 million that he owed. On that basis, the CPSA returned him to court and now he has had an additional default sentence of eight years and nine months imprisonment imposed on top of his original sentence.”

Foster continued: “We worked with His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs to make sure Whiston-Dew did not benefit from the proceeds of his crime, but he has only paid back a paltry amount of his available assets.”

Further, Foster asserted: “Even when fraudsters are convicted and sentenced, the CPS will continue to robustly pursue them for the money they owe. They risk remaining in prison for many more years if they fail to pay the amount that’s owed in full.”

Returned to prison

Whiston-Dew’s fellow fraudsters, namely Evdoros Demetriou and Michael Richards, were returned to prison in 2021 to serve an additional nine and six years in prison for failing to pay back £4.6 million and £9.9 million respectively. In total, all five offenders were told to repay £20.6 million.

In five years from 2018, over £480 million has been recovered from CPS-obtained Confiscation Orders, thereby ensuring that thousands of convicted criminals cannot profit from their offending.

The sum of £105 million within that amount has been returned to the victims of crime by way of compensation payments.