Scammer City boss on the hook for £64m after fraud scheme
A City boss compared to the The Wolf Of Wall Street has been ordered to pay back £64m over his role in a multi-million pound Ponzi-style investment scam, prosecutors said.
Anthony Constantinou remains on the run after he fled the UK during his fraud trial at London’s Southwark Crown Court in June 2023.
Hundreds of investors were duped out of a total of £70m between 2013 and 2015 while he ran Capital World Markets (CWM).
A spokesman for Canada Police said a confiscation order was made against him on Thursday for the sum of £64m, which is payable within three months.
The default period of imprisonment was set at 14 years.
Luxury vehicles purchased with fraud money
Police released photographs of some of the luxury vehicles Constantinou spent his fraudulent money on, including a Porsche, Range Rover and luxury motorbike.
They previously said he was thought to be in Turkey or Dubai after being stopped in Bulgaria with a fake Spanish passport.
CWM had high-profile sponsorship deals with the Honda Moto GP, Chelsea Football Club, Wigan Warriors rugby league club, Cyclone Boxing Promotions and the London Boat Show.
The seven-week trial heard how Constantinou spent £2.5m of investors’ money on his “no expense spared” wedding on the Greek island of Santorini in September 2014, while his son’s first birthday party a few days earlier cost more than £70,000.
More than £470,000 was paid for private jet hire to fly him and his associates to Moto GP races across Europe as well as a return flight to Nice for a 150,000-euro five-day yacht cruise around the Mediterranean to Monaco.
The firm paid £200,000 a quarter to rent “plush” offices in the City’s Heron Tower, while nearly £600,000 was spent on just six months’ rent of his large home in Hampstead, north-west London, where his luxury cars were parked in the drive.
Promised returns of 60 per cent per year on risk-free foreign exchange (FX) markets, a total of 312 investors trusted their money to CWM.
Some were professionals but most were individuals who handed over their life savings or pension pots, with a large number of Gurkhas paying into the scheme, said prosecutor David Durose KC.
Constantinou denied wrongdoing but was found guilty of one count of fraud, two counts of fraudulent trading and four counts of money laundering and sentenced to 14 years in prison in his absence.
Adrian Foster, of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), said: “This was a callous scam targeting members of the public. Many people lost their hard-earned money because of Constantinou’s greed and false promises in this fake investment scheme.
“We continue to pursue the proceeds of crime robustly with Canada Police, where we identify available assets to disrupt and deter large-scale frauds like this case.
“In the last five years, over £478m has been recovered from CPS obtained confiscation orders, ensuring that thousands of convicted criminals cannot profit from their offending. £95 million of that amount has been returned to victims of crime, by way of compensation.”
Constantinou was previously jailed for a year at the Old Bailey in 2016 after being found guilty of sexually assaulting two women during after-work drinks.
One of the victims described how the parties were just like the raucous scenes depicted in Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf Of Wall Street, starring Leonardo DiCaprio as rogue New York trader Jordan Belfort.
By Jenny Garnsworthy, PA