Couple £120k out of pocket after 'dishonest' family friend convinced them to hand over cash
A fraudster convinced a childhood friend's parents to part with the proceeds of their family home to make bogus investments of £120,000.
Mr Smith was impressed by the plans and on August 8, 2009, made two transfers of £10,000 each from his HSBC account to Harvey's with the intention that the money would be invested into the two plans. The following day, Harvey sent an email confirming the transactions had taken place. He said: "This was the start of the saga of trying to recover our investment. I started to doubt he had even invested in this company. I was still unsure but I continued to believe him. I now suspect he simply banked the money, and any money he did send back was my own."
On January 15, 2014, Mr Smith was offered compensation for his inconvenience, signed by 'Matthew Harding', but once again, the correspondence was false. Harvey had created the email as a direct result of Mr Smith asking about his investments, the court heard. In 2021, Harvey was questioned by police on suspicion of fraud by false representation. He accepted Mr Smith had sent him £120,000 but claimed there was no formal agreement about how it would be invested. He said he was a hobby trader and had invested in a number of different trading schemes, telling officers he had made money but ultimately lost money.
David Traynor, defending, said Harvey had taken steps to pay back what he could, reducing Mr and Mrs Smith's loss to around £70,000. He said his client was expecting large commission payments from his job as a software salesman in the next two months and had placed his house in Leyland on the market, to generate more money.
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