Three Indian fraudsters who scammed banks out of a whopping 350 million GBP were sentenced to a total of 25 years and six months in jail by a British court.
LONDON: Three Indian fraudsters who scammed banks out of a whopping 350 million GBP were sentenced to a total of 25 years and six months in jail by a British court late on Thursday night.
Virendra Rastogi, 40, Anand Jain, 43, and Gautam Majumdar, 56, were the front men of metals trading group RBG Resources, and in six years they oversaw a complicated web of more than 300 fake customers who were supposedly ordering metals from the company and raising millions of pounds in loans.
“They created a very impressive front that fooled banks, the metal exchanges in both UK and US and well respected accountancy firms,” said Judge Wadsworth told Southwark Crown Court in London when passing sentence. “They were involved in years of calculated dishonesty and have shown no shadow of regret or remorse or repentance,” added the Judge.
Mastermind Rastogi’s entire family was involved in the fraud with brother Narendra running a parrallel con in the US, Ravindra in the UAE and Subhash in Singapore.
Virendra Rastogi, given nine years and six months in prison, lived the high life with a home in Mayfair and setting up offices in Piccadilly in London in 1996. During the hay days he was named among the UK financial glitterati in the Sunday Times Rich List.
Using ‘boiler rooms’ around the world to manufacture a bogus paper trail to support their metals trading scam, Ratogi was in control of more than 200 supposed trading counterparties at ‘brassplate’ addresses in over 20 countries.
“This was truly audacious and ruthlessly efficient fraud that ranged from the poorest areas of India to the corporate tower blocks of Manhattan,” said Paige Rumble, the lead Special Fraud Office investigator. When the SFO raided the offices of RBG in 2002, Rastogi was caught red-handed stuffing documents into a shredding machine. His London lieutenants Jain and Majumdar were jailed for eight and half years and seven and half years respectively.
Rastogi us likely to have the sentence increased if he does not comply with a confiscation order running into hundreds of millions of pounds. He has been declared bankrupt despite liquidators saying he has substantial assets around the world.
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