U.K. Prosecutors Raid Homes, Cars in $100 Million Boiler-Room Fraud Probe

U.K. prosecutors searched five homes in southeast England and several vehicles seeking to recover more than $100 million that British investors lost in an alleged investment fraud.

The raids were the first conducted by the Serious Fraud Office’s “proceeds of crime unit” seeking only to recover assets rather than also looking for evidence in the case, the agency said in a statement today. The agency didn’t say what, if anything, the 40 investigators involved in the raids recovered.

The raids were related to the SFO’s prosecution of six people charged with conspiracy to defraud for conducting a boiler-room scheme from Spain that marketed shares to investors in the U.K., the agency said. Boiler-room frauds typically involve aggressive sales campaigns and the cold-calling of prospective investors touting worthless securities. The defendants are to be tried next year.

“We are determined to identify and recover assets from those we convict,” SFO investigator Dick Gould said in the statement.

The companies involved, which marketed the shares between 2003 and 2007, operated under the names Tresaderns & Partners SL, Price Stone Group SL and Anderson McCormack SL, according to the SFO. All three are on the Financial Services Authority’s list of unauthorized overseas firms operating in the U.K.

To contact the reporter for this story: Lindsay Fortado in London at lfortado@bloomberg.net.

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