Brian O’Brien and Lynne D’Albertson controlled the operation centred around Secure Trade & Title Ltd in Sussex. James Pye was a “boiler room” manager in Barcelona, Spain.
The defendant yet to be sentenced is Damien Rodney Smith, (son of D’Albertson) who managed a boiler room in Limerick, Ireland. He pleaded guilty this morning and was remanded in custody.
The sentences are:
- Brian James O’Brien, of Illinois USA, eight years’ imprisonment.
- Lynne Jane D’Albertson of East Sussex, four years and a half years’ imprisonment.
- James Pye of Swindon, six years’ imprisonment reduced to four years’ imprisonment for an early guilty plea.
Damien Rodney Smith of Dartford will be sentenced in May on a date to be fixed.
Confiscation and compensation proceedings are provisionally arranged to commence against all four defendants on 8 October 2012.
Commenting on the case, senior SFO lawyer Jane de Lozey said:
“Boiler rooms trade in deception and ruin lives. They misrepresent investment opportunities to prey on people who aspire to improve their lives through investment. The key players in this fraud have been brought to justice despite their attempts to disguise their identities, conceal evidence, hide assets and put themselves beyond the jurisdiction of the UK courts.
"Some investors have lost thousands of pounds and may have to sell their homes as a result of the deception perpetrated on them. Having brought the orchestrators of this fraud to justice we will continue to work to recover the proceeds of crime in an effort to compensate those who have lost so much."
Detective Sergeant Sally Smith of Sussex Police said:
"This was an unusual case for us and involved officers travelling abroad on several occasions to secure evidence and arrest suspects. It was a good working relationship with the SFO and it is good to see the results of this partnership."
Brian O’Brien and Lynne D’Albertson
Brian O’Brien, a US national and his wife Lynne D’Albertson, a UK national ran a business, Secure Trade & Title Ltd (“STT”), from their home in East Sussex. The business acted as a supposedly secure payment funnel for share purchases. The period concerned with the offences span 2005-2007.
O’Brien, who has lived in Europe (UK, Spain and Ireland) for around 20 years, was the brains behind the scheme. In addition to running STT, he controlled and operated a boiler room in Barcelona, Spain called Black & White Investments SL and later its replacement company, Cardinal Securities SL. He also controlled a boiler room , DML, in Limerick, Ireland.
O’Brien set the strategy, devised the supporting documentation, drew up the agreements and had general oversight of these share-pushing operations. He was in charge of the money though D’Albertson dealt with the administration and was very closely involved in the day-to-day running of the business, calculating commissions to sales staff and making bank payments/transfers overseas.
None of the defendants or those they employed were registered with the Financial Services Authority to conduct investment business. They therefore evaded the checks and controls that regulatory scrutiny provides.
James Pye
James Pye, a UK national, of Swindon was a senior manager at the Black & White office in Barcelona responsible for making sales and supervising a team of sales people. He used the alias James Richardson.
The FSA heard from a cold-called complainant and published an alert on its website that the company was not authorised to carry on investment business. By December 2005 business through Black & White had begun to wane.
Later that year, Pye bought a Spanish company, paid for by O’Brien. Renamed Cardinal Securities it replaced Black & White as the fraudsters’ vehicle in Spain and began trading in January 2006. Cardinal represents the kind of sales success these operations achieved. For example, over a three month period following its start up, Cardinal sales staff persuaded over 40 investors to part with more than £300,000.
Damien Smith
Damien Rodney Smith is the son of D’Albertson. Before becoming involved in share sale schemes he was a chef living and working in Ireland. He moved to Spain where he worked as a salesman at Black & White learning the trade. He moved back to Ireland in order to set up a boiler room called DML which he ran for O’Brien and D’Albertson.
He was the manager of DML and the main point of contact with O’Brien and D’Albertson.
DML operated as a “recovery room,” targeting victims of Black & White who had already purchased restricted Regulation S shares. Smith offered investors a cheap and quick route out of their restricted stock provided they purchased new shares via STT. In a six moth period between September 2005 and March 2006 DML had taken over £434,000 from investors.
Outline
O’Brien had entered into exclusive agreements with two companies to help them raise capital through the sale of their shares.
One was Golden Dynasty Resources Ltd, an oil and
