On 28 November 2018 Obiamiwe was convicted of three counts of
converting criminal property and on Friday 27 September 2019 was
sentenced to two years and six months in prison.
Three money launderers who pocketed a share of a £1 million ‘rare
earth’ metal scam have been jailed.
The Commodities Link gave customers the opportunity to invest in
baskets of valuable elements - known as ‘rare earths’ - when in
reality the metal they were selling was almost worthless.
A group of South East-based tricksters charged between seven and two
hundred times the actual value of the metal, and asked their victims
to pay some of their investments into accounts owned by Ike Obiamiwe,
56 and Daniel Jordan, 36 and Tarun Jain, 50.
On 28 November 2018 Obiamiwe was convicted of three counts of
converting criminal property and on Friday 27 September 2019 was
sentenced to two years and six months in prison.
Obiamiwe insisted that he was a consultant who gave advice to
businesses and told investigators the money in his bank account had
come from a trading company in Dubai.
On 29 November 2018 Jordan was convicted of two counts of converting
criminal property and on Friday 27 September was given a 12-month
suspended sentence.
However, the CPS was able to prove the £87,000 in his account was part
of the proceeds of the fraud.
Jain tried to deny his involvement by insisting the money had been put
into an old business account, but the CPS were able to prove his role
in this money-laundering operation.
On 15 August 2019 Jain was convicted of three counts of converting
criminal property and on Friday 27 September was sentenced to two
years and four months years in prison.
Alongside some purchases on iTunes, further investigation found that
Jordan had siphoned £80,000 through his accounts.
At Kingston Crown Court on September 27, Jordan, Obiamiwe, and Jain
were sentenced to a collective five years in prison for three counts
of money laundering.
Libby Clark of the CPS, said: “These men tried to hide what they were
doing through lies or multiple bank accounts, covering the fact they
were actually laundering money that had been gained through an
elaborate fraud.”