House scam bosses are sentenced
Five Gateshead company directors who conned property investors out of almost £80m have been sentenced. John Potts, Peter Gosling, Natalie Laverick, Eric Armstrong and Peter Graham ran Practical Property Portfolio (PPP), which was closed down in 2004. Investors were told their properties would be refurbished and rented out but much of the work was not done. The five admitted fraud charges - four were jailed and one defendant was given a 21-month suspended sentence.
The five had faced a four-month trial charged with conspiracy to defraud between January 2001 and March 2003. However, last month Potts of Silksworth Hall Drive, Sunderland; Gosling, 57, of Rothbury Gardens, Lobley Hill; and Laverick, 28, also of Silksworth Hall Drive, admitted the conspiracy charge.
Graham, 62, of Topcliffe, Sunderland, admitted three counts of fraudulent trading and Armstrong, 55, of Moorside North, Fenham, Newcastle, two fraudulent trading counts. Potts was jailed for five years; Gosling was jailed for three years and both Armstrong and Graham were jailed for two years.
Brazen fraud
Laverick was given a 21-month prison sentence suspended for two years for offering to give evidence against the others. The court heard PPP had been set up in the late 1990s and its offices were based at the Team Valley Trading Estate. The hearing heard that investors were asked to put money into derelict properties, but they were just left unoccupied. Judge Guy Whitburn QC said: "Where did the money go? The nature of what has been termed a pyramid scheme is that it may disappear into a black hole.
"It is abundantly clear - Potts in particular, Gosling to a lesser extent, and the others - led an extraordinary lifestyle.
"It was in particular a brazen fraud."
Courtesy of the BBC
