Ex-Kent Police officer Michael Stanley jailed over betting fraud

A former police officer who funded his lavish life-style by duping hundreds of individuals concerned with a horse racing betting syndicate has been jailed.

Michael Stanley admitted misusing cash from members of the Layezy Racing Syndicate for a number of years earlier than his arrest in 2019.

Terry Wildey, a retired hairdresser from Kent, stated he and his household had put £200,000 into the scheme after he inspired his personal kin to take a position.

“He is a rat is not he,” he instructed the BBC, after Stanley was sentenced to 6 years’ imprisonment at Maidstone Crown Courtroom.

“He consciously set that up with the only intention of taking folks’s cash.”

About £44m was paid into the scheme and an estimated £34m was given again to members, leaving a £10m shortfall which stays unaccounted for.

One sufferer misplaced practically £500,000, the courtroom heard.

The previous Kent Police sergeant, 68, pleaded responsible to working the “Ponzi scheme” in March.

The courtroom was instructed the syndicate began out with household and pals and grew to greater than 6,000 members, and had a ready listing of three,000 folks on the time it collapsed.

It additionally heard that Stanley, from Walderslade, used £4m on private spending, together with to purchase himself a £400,000 property in Spain, Land Rover autos amounting to greater than £600,000 and 23 race horses.

He additionally purchased £1.6m in cryptocurrency and £622,000 value of silver bullion.

The choose instructed Stanley: “Your conduct was not reckless, however deliberate, sustained and repeated. When folks gambled with you, they didn’t know the true odds. They had been instructed lies.”

Stanley, who gained the belief of members because of his background as a police officer, was additionally banned from being a director of an organization for 15 years.

He’ll serve half of his sentence in custody, and the remainder on licence, whereas a five-year Severe Crime Prevention Order will begin on the day he’s launched from jail.

Mr Wildey stated he obtained relations concerned – together with his youngsters, his spouse, his mother-in-law and his brother-in-law – as a result of a monetary incentive was provided to take action, whereby members obtained a proportion of any ‘winnings’ of the folks they referred.

“Initially [I put in] £1,000, simply to strive it out,” he stated.

“And then you definitely get a portal and you’ll watch your cash develop. And I watched my cash develop, and I assumed ‘my cash’s not rising quick sufficient as a result of it’s not sufficiently big’, so I put more cash in.”

Det Sgt Alec Wooden, head of complicated fraud at Kent Police’s financial crime unit, stated the case was largest fraud the pressure had ever prosecuted.

Stanley left the occupation greater than 40 years in the past, and Det Sgt Wooden stated his behaviour didn’t “replicate the present professionalism and dedication” of officers.

He stated Stanley had made “varied guarantees” privately and publicly to members concerning the scheme’s success.

“In the end, once we appeared on the proof this was manifestly false and that was successfully the fraud,” he added.

He described the syndicate as a “clear Ponzi scheme”, including that in a single yr, Stanley misplaced £1m with a betting firm.

Angela Elven, who invested about £5,000 within the scheme, instructed the BBC that whereas members of the syndicate took “of venture”, they believed Stanley as a result of “he appeared like a really real individual”.

“He’s affected so many individuals’s lives, so he ought to pay for what he’s carried out,” she stated.

In a sufferer assertion learn out in courtroom, one other member instructed of how he joined to fund a secure setting for his son, who has Down’s Syndrome, as he obtained older.

He described the “deep, sick intestine feeling” he had realising that they had doubtless “misplaced all our cash, all our plans, hopes and desires gone”.

Defending himself, Stanley stated because the scheme grew he was overwhelmed by the workload within the face of his spouse’s most cancers prognosis in 2014.

“I’m very sorry for the harm I’ve brought about members and my circle of relatives, I can’t perceive how I let it occur other than my very own concern of discovery,” he stated.

He was arrested in August 2019 and charged with dishonestly making false representations to members of the syndicate.

He was accused of knowingly working a enterprise for a fraudulent objective opposite to the Fraud Act 2006.

And he was additionally charged with three counts of knowingly working a enterprise for a fraudulent objective opposite to the Corporations Act 2006.

The three counts associated to the working of Layezy Ltd, Layezy Racing Ltd and Number one Information Ltd.

Stanley pleaded responsible to all 5 offences.