A THIRD Grays man has been jailed for his involvement in the mis-selling of carbon credits to 130 victims.

The profits made were used to buy luxury items, including an Aston Martin worth £33,000 and a £4,000 Rolex.

Sami Raja, 32 of Grays, was sentenced to eight years in prison at Southwark Crown Court after being found guilty of six counts of conspiracy to defraud and money laundering last week.

He, along with four others, miss-sold carbon credits to unsuspecting victims through two companies, Harman Royce Ltd and Kendrick Zale Ltd, between January 2012 and August 2013.

Two of the other four are also from Grays, and were sentenced in September last year.

Victims of Harman Royce would receive telephone calls from ‘brokers’ of the company, who, often using fake names, would persuade them to invest in voluntary emission reduction; a type of carbon credit.

Brokers at Harman Royce sought the contact details for homeowners, over 50-years-old, living in affluent postcodes in order to target their victims. Between January 2012 and October 2012, 130 victims were charged between £5.26 and £6.50 per carbon credit, totalling a loss of £1.5 million.

The money paid into the Harman Royce bank account was used in many ways, including paying staff wages and buying luxury items.

Victims were told they had to keep their investment in carbon credits between four months and 10 years. They would then receive a ‘contract note’ which detailed the investment sum and how many credits this reflected.

During a warrant in September 2013, items including client lists, contract notes and company brochures were seized.

Hayley Wade, of the City of London Police’s fraud squad, said: “The set-up of Kendrick Zale just months after clients of Harman Royce had been defrauded shows the callous nature in which these fraudsters operated. Raja cruelly targeted often elderly individuals with the intention of defrauding them of their life savings. He clearly felt no remorse for their actions, closing one company, only to set-up another and commit the same offences.”

Four other men were sentenced in relation to this case in September 2018, including:

Sandeep Dosanjh – 30, of Allenby Crescent, Grays, pleaded guilty to two counts of conspiracy to defraud and was sentenced to four years and six months for each count to run concurrently.

Charanjit Sandhu, 28, of Mayfield, Grays, pleaded guilty to two counts of conspiracy to defraud and was sentenced to three years. As a result of Sandu’s offences that were investigated by the FCA and other law enforcement agencies, he received a total sentence of nine years.

James Lanston, 28, of The Boulevard, Kent, pleaded guilty to two counts of conspiracy to defraud and was sentenced to two years and three months.

Michael Nascimento, 41, of Green Lane, Belmont Parade, Chislehurst, Kent pleaded not guilty and was sentenced to two years for each of the three counts of money laundering to run concurrently.