All language subtitles for Special.Ops.To.Catch.a.Criminal.S01E04.1080p.WEB.h264-CODSWALLOP_[English] (SUBRIP)

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OVER PHONE:Police.
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..we explore for the first time
their investigations...

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of evidence.

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The most bizarre investigation
I've been involved in.

..and the evidence
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They were clever,
and they're dangerous.

CHAIRMAN:We're proud to announce
that Harlequin Hotels and Resorts

is a five-star brand,
has been officially launched,

and the fact that Buccament Bay
will open on time.

Buying a luxurious property
abroad in the sun

is probably
on everyone's bucket list,

but that dream
can become a nightmare.

Harlequin was
the biggest investment scandal

in terms of investment schemes
gone wrong

that's ever happened in the UK.

He'd received £400 million.

Exactly how did he spend that,

and was it a fraud
or was he a poor businessman?

I'd lost a lot of money - £150,000.

It's the opposite
of winning the lottery.

You check your numbers
and you think,

"No, this can't be me.
This isn't happening to me."

There is an awful lot
of dogged investigation work

involving vast amounts of data.

So, when you start to say, "Well,
where has all this money gone?"

They funded the lifestyle
of a rogue Irish builder,

and they paid for a private plane
and for a marriage,

and they brought in sand
from the Sahara.

What looks like a great deal
on the surface

can disappear before your eyes.

You know, "He would sell ice
to Eskimos," is the expression.

A Walter Mitty-type figure
who has caused irreparable loss

to thousands of people.

I believe it was 8,000 investors,

and it's gone under the radar
until now, really.

It wouldn't matter if you were
probably going to die

in the next five years.

They were taking your money
and putting you into the scheme.

CHAIRMAN:He's doing the work.

It's estimated the amount of fraud
committed in the UK

more than doubled in 2023
to a staggering £2.3 billion.

My name is John McCarroll.

I was the case controller

for the SFO investigation
into Harlequin.

The Serious Fraud Office is
a non-ministerial department,

and our remit is basically
look at the most complex cases

of fraud, bribery, and corruption
that impact on the UK economy.

Harlequin as a potential case

first landed at the Serious
Fraud Office in August 2011.

This one came to us initially

as a report
from an Irish building firm

saying, "We've been doing
some work for Harlequin

"and we think it's a fraud."

On initial investigation,

John and his team discover
an intriguing anomaly.

It turned out
that the Irish building firm

was actually in litigation
with Harlequin,

and Harlequin was suing them
for fraud,

which put
a slightly different light on,

you know, "Are we going
to take this case on or not?"

When the intelligence unit
looked at it,

they were very much
of the opinion that,

"This is a spat
between company and contractors.

"It's nothing
that we should get involved in."

You know, one company is just
throwing mud at another.

So, we were sceptical.

Yet despite the scepticism,

something doesn't sit right
in the team.

There are some big numbers here.

We had, in total,
20 to 30 people working on the case

over its entire lifespan.

Thankfully, one person,

who was our principal investigator,
Ashraf,

was on the case from the very start
and was there at the very end.

My name is Ashraf Isroliwala.

I am a principal investigator.

I've been at the Serious
Fraud Office for 26 years.

A principal investigator basically
leads the investigation.

When it first landed on my desk

and you looked at some
of the initial documentation,

you could see it was
a very, very big case.

The kind of information we had
were principally statements

from various investors
who'd made complaints to the FCA,

Action Fraud, and to our offices.

First steps involve peeling back
the layers of the claims,

sniffing around Harlequin -

the company claiming fraud
by the construction firm.

The chairman started
legal proceedings in 2012.

There was then a second report

from a firm of accountants
who had worked for Harlequin,

saying, "You should be aware
this is a fraud."

So, whilst it was on our radar,

we were slightly wary
of taking this on

and announcing
a major investigation.

My name is Jack Gilbert.

I'm a journalist at Citywire.

We write about investments
and investors around the world.

The building contractors did take
the Harlequin chairman for a ride.

He put his faith in these guys
and they did swindle him.

They took him for all he was worth.

He was paying huge sums of money
to the building contractors,

in some cases £500,000 a week,

for works that weren't happening
or weren't being done on time.

Basically, they were
in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines,

thousands of miles from Essex.

They just had to pick up the phone
and say, "We need £100,000,"

and Harlequin would send it to them

with no questions asked

and no financial oversight.

Funnily enough,
the builders thought,

"Wow, this is a really easy gig,"

and so they were buying
all sorts of things,

like racehorses and spending money
on private jets and jewels,

and basically having a party
on investor money.

The chairman of Harlequin
was not sure why his resort

wasn't being built as quickly
as he'd been promised,

so he dispatched his accountant
from Essex

to go out and give some oversight
and find out what was happening.

And I think the accountant got
a little too close to the builders

because he turned up in paradise
and they went, "This is fantastic.

"Come on over here.
We just ask for money, it turns up.

"Let's go to Barbados
for a holiday."

And he was subsequently sued,
as well,

by the chairman for negligence.

There was a huge
conflict of interest

because the accountants acted
both for Harlequin

and also
for the building contractors.

As a building fraud case
is happening in Ireland,

the SFO let it play out
and wait for the results.

But in the meantime,

they also dig deep into the chairman
and his business, Harlequin.

Harlequin was founded in 2005.

It set itself up to be this
grandiose hotel property scheme...

Their business model was
to develop resorts

in a range of fantastic locations
around the world -

Thailand, Brazil, Jamaica,
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.

..where there'd be
these luxurious resorts

which investors in the UK
could invest in

and own an individual cabana
or bungalow,

and then they'd get rental income
and returns on that investment.

The chairman of Harlequin
was an Essex businessman.

His background was
principally in sales.

He'd done a lot of time-share sales,
sold garden furniture,

all sorts of bits and pieces.

But ultimately, he was a salesman.

You know, "He would sell ice
to Eskimos," is the expression.

CHAIRMAN:So, it's no good
me standing here today

and saying to you, you know,

property in the Caribbean
is £1 million

when the majority of people
haven't got £1 million to invest.

So, what we've had to do is come up
with a different type of model

that works for everybody,
as I've mentioned earlier,

and how it works for our investor

is the fact that we make it
very affordable to them.

At first glance,
the company structure looks simple,

but it also looks like
they're selling paradise

at a price
that's too good to be true.

The chairman, he talked about
helping the local economies

and it being great for investors.

It was all set up to be
this win-win scheme.

CHAIRMAN:In Buccament Bay,

we're already,
at this moment in time,

employing just under 1,000
local people building the resort,

and when the hotel is open,

we expect to be employing
a further 1,500.

One man who was tempted
was investor Steve Perriam.

I am semi-retired,
working in the oil industry.

At the time of Harlequin,

I was married
and had been for 25 years.

And we both had to sign the papers,
and she will tell you,

even when she was
signing the papers,

she had a bad feeling about it.

Harlequin was selling

multiple resorts in the Caribbean,

but only one was actually
being built.

That was Buccament Bay
in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.

Do your own due diligence.
Don't trust anybody.

If it's too good to be true,
then it really is.

It's a fact of life.

So, Buccament Bay started receiving
paying guests around 2010.

Seemed like a resort that all of us
would want to go and stay at.

You saw blue seas and sand
and sunshine and everything.

It was heavily focused on sports.

We had tennis academy,
football academy.

Everything was available -

a range of different restaurants
and bars, different themes.

And you had a variety of options
for what sort of cabana you'd like -

would you like a one-bedroom one,
a two-bedroom one, an apartment.

The world is your oyster.
You could choose anything.

But the big issue for us
was he'd sold 9,000 units

and only built 120 or 150 units.

There were some cabanas,

and it functioned as
a very small resort,

but in the idea of the chairman
of Harlequin,

this would have 2,000 cabanas.

It looked amazing from the pictures
of the initial marketing,

but what actually came out

was nothing like
what was initially sold.

In the end, what was built was
on a much, much smaller scale.

By August 2013, over in Ireland,

the building firm that Harlequin
pursued for fraud have to settle.

The judge ruled
in Harlequin's favour

in a lawsuit
against the contractors,

and they were ordered
to pay £1.4 million.

But there's still a smell
around Harlequin and the chairman.

The owner of the building firm
enjoyed a lavish lifestyle

with investor money.

I think in total,

it came to about 20 million.

And, yes, the builders
had been fraudulent.

That didn't mean Harlequin
wasn't a fraud, as well.

The project was a complete shambles,

and things were completely
out of control.

A lot of the problems
did stem from the contractors.

By 2012, we'd spoken
to enough individual investors

to see that there was
something very, very wrong,

and we opened an investigation.

It wasn't a public investigation
at that point.

Again, we were still
information gathering.

The case in Ireland was closed,

but the chairman's litigation
against his accountants

is still ongoing in the UK,

so the SFO doubled down
on a covert investigation.

One of the problems we have is that

if you are opening
an SFO investigation

with a big splash of publicity,

you could end up destroying
what was a legitimate business.

You know, investors, banks
would run a mile from a company

that was under investigation,

so we were very much
in covert mode at that point.

What was certain,
Harlequin wasn't all it seemed.

One look at the bank statements

and when you saw almost
half a billion pounds

going through the bank account

with very little
sort of end product,

this was really about individuals
and the money that they lost,

and the only money coming in
was their money.

It started ringing alarm bells,

and you immediately
sort of thought, "Ponzi scheme."

The whole thing was a total mess.

It was a house of cards
that came tumbling down.

But it was the people
who were borrowing off family,

friends, bank loans,
second mortgages,

they're the ones who really
came out of it badly.

Harlequin, a holiday home company
offering exclusive residences

for sale in the Caribbean
and other exotic locations,

is under covert investigation
by the Serious Fraud Office.

We actually went out and spoke
to a couple of investors,

and it was only then
that we started getting an idea

of how much money
individual investors

had put into this business.

Thousands of small-scale investors
could be at risk

if Harlequin's business model
didn't stand up.

CHAIRMAN:What I'd like
to explain to you now

is the success
of the Harlequin model

and how it's come together
over the last four years.

The chairman is very charismatic.

He was a good salesman.

He told a really good story,
a very believable story,

which is why he managed
to persuade people like me

who had sacrificed pension pots.

So, the way Harlequin worked

was investors had
to pay up a 30% deposit

for one of the cabanas.

The rest of the 70% was
through a mortgage or a loan,

which Harlequin provided.

And the sales pitch
to the average investor

was basically,
"It's going to cost you £1,000.

"That is it.
That locks you into a contract."

CHAIRMAN:We ask our investor
to raise 30% of the property price.

So, let's just say
they invest £100,000,

what we look for them to do
is to raise 30% of that,

which is £30,000.

What they were offering was
a fractional ownership -

"However, the way we do it is,
we'll build it in stages,

"so at the moment,
all we need from you is £30,000."

But to get 30% deposits, I mean,

in some cases,
it was £50,000, £100,000.

Not everyone's got
this money lying around,

and there were cases
where people took out mortgages

or remortgaged their house
in order to invest in the scheme.

And here's the most attractive
part of the deal -

Harlequin is going
to pay the interest on that.

CHAIRMAN:To get a mortgage or
a loan, let's say it's £250 a month.

Well, what we then do,

we actually pay that money back
to the investor.

So, the time during the build,

it doesn't actually cost them
a penny out of their own bank.

"And we'll pay it
right the way through

"until the property is finished,
at which point you own it.

"It's in our resort.

"We'll run it for a management fee.

"Everyone makes their money."

There was a return on investment.

They guaranteed 10%,
so almost an exponential return.

It was an attractive proposition,
but there was no rationale for it.

CHAIRMAN:For every, say, £100,

our investor gets 50
and the resort gets £50.

So, it's in the hotel's interest,
as well as our investor,

to get as much money
for that room as we can.

Trying to understand
how the business operates is key.

If the chairman's vision is
a legitimate business plan,

investigators had
to tread carefully.

Our problem was
the investigation was covert,

so it wasn't in the public domain.

We knew once we contacted investors,

there was the high probability
that they will contact the company.

It's human nature to speak about it.

One investor did contact Harlequin
as a result of that.

So the chairman knows
he's under investigation,

possibly aware of what
an SFO inquiry could uncover.

The chairman had
no profile whatsoever.

You would think if you were running
a multi-million-pound business

that had hotels and resorts
all around the Caribbean,

they would have some sort of profile

other than stuff
that was generated by themselves.

Perhaps there's a reason
he's a ghost in the system.

He wasn't, however,
a very good businessman.

He was twice bankrupt,
and that's one reason

he wasn't on the paperwork here
in the UK.

He was very much front and centre,
the man running the operation.

He was the public face of Harlequin.

He would go out and do sales
presentations, conferences.

But he wasn't on the books
as a director.

If the chairman had been barred
from serving as a company director,

how was he running Harlequin?

It is suspicious
because he'd put his family,

so his wife and his children,
forward as the company directors,

when in fact
he was running the company.

And relying solely on many
small individual investors' money

to fund his whole business
is incredibly risky.

When we did the bank analysis,
95% of the money was investor money.

All that came into the bank account.
That did ring alarm bells.

We hired an expert and he confirmed
in order for this model to work,

you need external funding.

You can't just rely
on investor funds.

The early investors
who took out £30,000 as a loan,

they were getting
the interest paid by Harlequin,

so that was fine.

The problem was
it wasn't Harlequin's money.

It was other investors' money

that was being used
to pay the interest.

The whole thing was a total mess.

Hardly any contracts
were in place, as well.

It was a house of cards
that came tumbling down.

It feels like
it may be a Ponzi scheme.

The classic definition of a Ponzi

is where you are paying off
the earlier investors in the scheme

with other investors' money.

Because you will run out
of investors,

it will collapse inevitably.

Once we spoke to the individual
investors on the ground

and we got the story about
what they had been promised,

at that point,
this seemed like a fraud.

Looking into investors,

it's clear the word has gone out
to a lot of people.

The typical investor in Harlequin

was just an ordinary person
in the UK.

It's your Joe Public.

It's people like myself, you.

It's not people
who are extremely rich.

People who had moderate savings,

a little bit of money
in a pension somewhere,

and a lot of cases, people putting
all of their retirement savings

into the scheme, you know,
hundreds of thousands of pounds.

People invested into it,
just like I did,

on the basis of this aspiration,
I suppose.

You were thinking,

"Well, I get these trips
to the Caribbean,

"I get return on investment,"
and all the rest of it.

That's how so many people
got sucked into it.

It was all
very beautifully produced.

Glossy brochures with all of
the finished artist impressions

of numerous resorts.

The marketing was very clever.
It was very glossy.

There were a lot
of celebrity endorsements.

So, they used
big celebrity endorsements

to give it some validity.

And a lot of our investors did say,
"We bought into this scheme

"because we saw certain individuals
were endorsing it,

"and therefore
it had to be legitimate."

So, for example, Buccament Bay
had theBLEEPTennis Academy.

There were links
toBLEEPFootball Club.

They would take out players
and have a training camp there.

So, you as an investor,
you'd get a chance to go out

and your family could play football
with international footballers.

It was very convincing.

The money I had,
it was in a pension pot.

It wasn't like
you could touch the money.

It was somewhere ethereal, almost.

And the rules at that time

were very different
to how they are today.

You just get carried away
with the hyperbole

and the images and the Caribbean

and the weather,
and all the rest of it.

To market the project,

the chairman relied on so-called
investment professionals.

Crucially, the way
he got the message out

was through a network
of independent financial advisers,

or IFAs,
because he legitimately said,

"I'm a twice-bankrupt
double glazing salesman from Essex.

"No-one's going to give me
the time of day.

"But if I get financial advisers

"who are professionals
to sell it to their clients,

"I will do much better."

So, you had a small minority
of unscrupulous financial advisers

who were selling
the Harlequin investments

in self-invested personal pension -
SIPP - pension products.

The way it should work is
when you sell a product,

you should get a proportion
of your commission

during the contract period.

So, the IFA should get 10%
at the beginning,

then 25% once the walls
and everything's constructed,

another 25% when the roof is put on,

and the final payment once
the contract has been fulfilled.

But what the IFAs
were getting paid by Harlequin

was the full 100% at the beginning.

So, the IFA
that I was engaging with,

when he delved
into my financial situation,

he realised
that I had a huge pension pot.

It was over £300,000, as security.

Then obviously
he put two and two together

and came up with Harlequin.

It's a gravy train.

There's a huge and growing network

of individuals benefiting
from Harlequin.

From 2010, people started investing
in Harlequin through their pensions,

which was obviously a huge concern,
because to be investing in something

like an unregulated overseas
investment scheme like Harlequin

was a huge risk back then.

IFAs were falling over themselves
to sell the Harlequin product

because they were getting
all the money in one hit.

I think in one case,

one of the salesmen earned
£3 million from selling it.

So, as a result,
the financial advisers

were bringing in anybody they could.

It wouldn't matter

if you were probably going to die
in the next five years.

They were taking your money
and putting you into the scheme.

Could it be a massive con,

or was the chairman
completely out of his depth?

The Serious Fraud Office
has connected the dots

on what seems like a fraudulent firm

who've been selling
luxury Caribbean properties

they had no way of building.

The maths never worked
in the Harlequin scheme

for the simple reason the only money
coming into it was investor money.

It became apparent pretty early on
that there was no outside finance,

and that was something that
the chairman was quite proud of.

Saying, "This is just me
and the investors.

"We don't owe anything
to anybody else.

"It's you and me in this together."

But throughout
the life of Harlequin,

we know that he was going out
and trying to raise finance,

and he was very plausible
and very compelling

when he was giving his speeches.

The Harlequin held
regular investor meetings,

and in the early days,

it was all sort of pomp and glory
and celebrities walking on stage.

Now, the investors thought

when they were handing over
their cash,

it was going to be used
to build their dream cabana.

What they didn't realise was
it was being used to buy the land,

build the resort -
so, the bars, the swimming pools.

It was being used to pay the staff,

it was being used to pay
the chairman and his family,

and it was just being wasted

on vanity projects,
architects, builders, engineers -

the whole nine yards.

So literally, by the end of it,

what was left of your
individual investor's £30,000?

About seven quid.

The scale of the financial chaos
is huge,

but they need to prove the chairman
is deliberately defrauding people

and not just a bad businessman.

It makes it a lot easier

if you can see a person buying
a Ferrari or a Rolex watch

or having invested
in £2 million houses.

It's a much more jury-friendly way
of selling a fraud.

And yet, there were
no visible signs of extravagance

by the chairman and his family.

He was paying himself
a very nice salary.

He was paying his two sons

and his wife a salary.

On the face of it,
that wasn't a problem.

This was
a multi-million-pound business,

and you would expect the chairman
and the people running it

to basically be paid
an appropriate wage.

For example, one of the sons
was a former postman

before he joined Harlequin

and then was all of a sudden earning
hundreds of thousands of pounds.

The chairman and his family
made £6 million from the scheme

but, in addition, they lived
a very nice millionaire lifestyle.

They travelled around the world
first-class,

stayed in the best hotels,

and everything was charged
to the business

over and above the six million
they paid themselves.

One extraordinary vanity project
never took off.

He bought planes.

Cos there was no major airport

in Saint Vincent

and he had to bring people there,

he was going out and buying
these small jets

and flying them in
from nearby islands

that had airports.

And he was proposing
to start an airline

and build an airport
at the resort,

and again, he was proposing
to use investor money.

Once there is a break in a chain,
a Ponzi scheme stops feeding itself.

A Ponzi scheme is where
investors' money

is not used for the investment
it says it's going to be used.

It's used to pay off
other investors.

But then Harlequin couldn't pay
the interest that it promised,

which was when things started
to really fall apart.

They were robbing Peter
to pay Paul to pay the IFAs,

but they still got away
with the millions

that they appropriated.

The whole thing came crashing down
because the money ran out.

People were aware there was
a serious fraud investigation

at that point.

There were also investors
from all around the world

who were taking legal action,
saying,

"I was promised this
and I haven't got it.

"I'd like my money back."

In 2013, Harlequin goes
into administration.

And that's when you knew
that it was game over.

At that time, it wasn't apparent
there'd be any form of compensation.

It was a total loss.

We first spoke to the chairman
as soon as we'd gone over.

We went in and introduced ourselves
and said,

"We would like to come
and interview you under caution,"

and he was very cooperative.

We then got their physical books
and records.

The administrator gave us

about 150 boxes' worth
of information.

Even though the business
is red flagged in administration,

it doesn't automatically stop it
continuing operations.

It is just the UK business
that went into administration.

It still had a number
of overseas companies

which were operational,

and the chairman swapped
to a Cayman-registered company.

So, although one company
went into administration,

another company had already
been set up to take its place.

For the investigators,

it was a struggle to unpick
the poor business decisions

from acquisitive fraud.

The more things we found out
that were, frankly, sheer lunacy...

To give you an example,
Saint Vincent is a volcanic island.

There is no golden beach there,

and so he shipped in
some dredger full of sand

to create a beach
for a vast amount of money,

and it got washed out
at the first tide.

That was it.

A million quid, just gone.

Another decision sinks
without a trace.

He wanted a pirate ship.

Pirates of the Caribbean was
big at the time,

and he decided this would be
a fantastic selling point,

to have a pirate ship
in the bay

which could act as a restaurant,
a dive platform, whatever.

Which, on the face of it,
that sounds fantastic.

I'd go there.

They built this thing in Thailand
with no insurance.

It sailed as far as Florida,
I believe,

and then got caught up
in a hurricane.

Again, vast amounts of money
just wasted.

The ship's no longer there,
the sand is no longer there,

and it does sort of upset you
that it's investors who paid in,

and it's all gone.

It's December 2016.

Three years have passed,

and SFO investigators are waiting
to make their move.

The accountant case
looks about to settle.

We'd done our work

and, yes, we were convinced
that there was a major problem.

We were ready to charge in 2016.

However,
our counsel advised at the time

that we should wait before
we charged anybody in this matter.

If this all turns out
to be the accountants' fault,

we don't have a case
against the chairman,

so it was a risk
we were unwilling to take.

The judge said the chairman
described himself as a visionary,

but in his view, he referred to him
as a Walter Mitty-type character

who was incredibly dishonest
and incompetent, led people on,

and had these grand visions
that never came out in reality.

The judge's summing up
of the chairman was so damning,

it gave us confidence
to proceed with our case.

The judge was in agreement
with the chairman.

He agreed that the builders
had defrauded him.

He agreed that the accountants

had certainly been
professionally negligent.

However, before he awarded
vast amounts of money in damages,

he was quite clear,

and he said,
"They cost you about 20 million,

"which is a drop in the ocean

"compared to how much money
you've taken from the investors

"and basically wasted."

In the end, the judge
awarded Harlequin 11 million,

but it wasn't given to Harlequin.

It was held in a separate account
to be used to help investors

who'd lost out
because of the scheme.

Brilliant.

We could not have hoped
for a better result,

and it immediately cleared
the way for us

to go ahead and charge him,
which we did in early 2017.

At the beginning, we had no idea
what was going through his mind.

It could have been just another
investment scheme

that went wrong with no criminality.

However, what we managed
to identify was that,

at a certain point in time,

he was told his scheme
wasn't working,

and therefore we charged him
from that date onwards,

saying, "At this point,
you knew it wasn't going to work."

But for about three years
he carried on trading,

he carried on taking money
from investors,

even though he knew he was never
going to be able to deliver.

The killer piece of evidence
suggesting it was fraud

emerged after a series of meetings.

He ended up back in London
trying to raise money in the city,

and he brought in some consultants
to do that who were very clever,

very smart, took one look
at this thing and said,

"You have a real problem.
You are trading whilst insolvent."

And so they said, "Look,
with the best will in the world,

"this scheme doesn't work.
It's a train wreck.

"Everyone is going
to lose their money.

"You've got to stop,
and you've got to stop now."

And he didn't.
He said, "You've got it wrong.

"You don't understand my vision.

"You don't understand
the business model."

And he immediately sacked
his finance director,

saying it was all his fault.

So, he went and got
a second opinion,

and the second opinion was,

"Either give everyone
their money back

"or go into liquidation,

"but just stop doing
what you're doing."

And when he then came back
to the office in Basildon,

he said, "It's fine.
They got it wrong.

"We don't have a problem.
Carry on selling."

He was in denial in many cases

about the state
of what was going on,

but he still managed to take in
millions of pounds from investors,

even when things were really bad.

That was huge.

That was the point
where the investigation

could absolutely pin him down
and say,

"On this specific date,

"you and your organisation
were all told

"this thing was not working
and you had to stop immediately."

And so fraud by abuse of position
was the charge,

because basically, "At that point,
you knew you couldn't deliver,

"but you carried on
taking people's money."

Before that,
he could claim ignorance.

But the chairman
was having none of it,

and was happy
to tell investigators just that.

With most cautioned interviews
at this office,

most people do
a pre-prepared statement

and do a "no comment" interview.

The chairman decided
not to take that route,

and spoke throughout
the whole interview.

He loves the sound of his own voice.

We could not shut him up.

His background was sales,

and what I felt was he thought
he could talk his way out of this,

he could sell to us that it was
a genuine business model.

The chairman was delusional.
It was all just fantasy.

When things started to go wrong,
he didn't stop.

He just kept taking money in.

Holiday property company Harlequin
and its chairman

are now under
official investigation...

..and the SFO can start
number-crunching

and reaching out to investors
who have become victims.

We had access
to Harlequin's database.

It was just the scale
of the whole thing

that set it apart.

You know, maybe 800,
1,000 investors is about standard.

8,000 people,
so it was off the charts.

So, we knew where all the investors
were at this point.

We could say, "Right, tell us,
where was your investment?

"When was it made?

"Which resort did you think
you were buying into?

"How were you approached?
Was it by Harlequin directly?

"Was it by a financial advisor?"

And crucially, "Are you willing
to give evidence in court?"

An awful lot of people who are
caught up in this sort of scheme

are very reluctant to go to court.

In some cases, they're reluctant

because they haven't
told their family that,

you know, the savings are all gone

and they've lost everything.

I don't think anybody could afford
to lose any of the money.

It's a decision
you should take really seriously,

and clearly, in hindsight,
we didn't take it seriously enough.

You just get carried away
with the hyperbole

and the images and the Caribbean.

In terms of the type of investor,

it tended to be
the more mature person,

simply because they have access
to disposable income.

And at a certain stage in life,

you need to start thinking
about financing your retirement.

Maybe you want to get your kids
on the property ladder.

And when it went wrong,
the knock-on effect was

your kids are moving
back into the home with you

and you can't retire
for ten years.

My investments in Harlequin
were around about 150,000.

There's a consequential loss,
because I'm retired now,

more or less retired,
and I'm not getting the pension

that I would've got if I hadn't
had made that investment.

So, a consequential loss is

you're never, ever going to get back
to where you would have been

without the investment in Harlequin.

It's impossible.

The Harlequin group ultimately
took a total of £398 million

of people's money.

A lot of people suffered terribly
down the line,

really badly,
with losing their houses,

losing their marriages,

and I think some people
committed suicide as well.

A lot of people were trying
to speak out about this,

and there was a website
called HarleCON,

which was up on the internet saying,
"This is a horrible scam.

"Don't go near it with a bargepole."

I have very close family
and they saw me very bitter,

very angry, and became mildly
obsessed by the whole thing.

And lots of people did.

There was a chatroom and you'd
kind of log on it every day,

and you'd sort of vent your anger

and you'd try and glean
anything you could.

The chairman was not above
threatening those people

who complained
about the Harlequin scam.

So, whenever a complaint was put
to the chairman of Harlequin,

he would often be very litigious.

He would get lawyers involved.

He would try and shut
the complaint down,

be quite aggressive in his tactics.

There was one lady who was hit
with basically threats

from a very well-known
London law firm

and by the lawyers working
for Harlequin in house,

threatening to bankrupt her,
to take her home,

financially ruin her,
unless she shut up.

And it was the same
with journalists.

Any time a journalist
wrote a story about him

or what Harlequin was doing,
he would be very litigious.

He would get lawyers.

He'd be threatening
and trying to bully people

into not writing about him
or what was going on.

And what you have to remember is
that 8,000 people invested money

they couldn't afford to lose,
and lives were destroyed,

and that's one of the hardest things
in this job.

The feelings
when you've got an inkling

about what was happening
to the money,

it was just anger,
frustration, really,

because we couldn't get
the money back.

It had all been appropriated.

So, it's your money
that they're spending

and you're looking for answers.

And then at the end of the day,

you just realise
that there was no hope.

There was no money left
in Harlequin. It had all gone.

In the early days,
the obsession was terrible.

It became so toxic
and so unproductive

and so pointless in the end,
I just stopped it.

There was one guy I remember

whose wife
very sadly died of cancer,

and he approached Harlequin
and said, "I need my money back.

"I need my money back
because my wife is dying.

"I would like to do something nice
with her before she dies."

"No."

"Could I have the money
for the funeral?"

"No."

And then he himself died of cancer
before the thing was concluded.

We read his statement out
at the trial

because we felt we owed it to him.

Because of Covid,

it takes five years
from charging in 2017

to get the chairman in court
by spring 2022,

and it's a 12-week trial.

I have to admit,
when the trial was about to start,

I was nervous, because I'd been
working on it for ten years.

And once you get to trial,
it's out of your hands.

You present your case
and it's in the hands of the jury.

The chairman did not give
evidence in court.

Once we had presented our case,
his counsel played a video,

and it was a promotional video
of Buccament Bay,

which is the only resort

they actually managed
to build and run,

showing all the wonderful things
that were at Buccament Bay

to the soundtrack of Under The Sea
from The Little Mermaid.

And at the end of the video,
the barrister said,

"Yeah, the defence rests,"

at which point the jury were looking
at each other going,

"What the hell? Was that it?

"We've been here for, like,
two and a half months

"and that's the defence?"

We had an expert witness who came in

and gave a very good breakdown
of the scheme,

and crucially,
he was able to bring in

some fantastic graphics,

which made it very simple

and very clear to the jury

that the cost of building

just one of these properties

had gone so far over budget.

To deliver what Harlequin
was purporting to build

in these resorts around the world,

the judge actually said
that they would need

an extra £1.2 billion to do this,

so there was a £1.2 billion
shortfall in the funding.

The jury had endured
the back and forth

of the fraud trial
for the best part of three months.

They deliberate
for a day and a half.

The verdict was guilty
on all counts.

He was sentenced
for just over 12 years.

It was a surprise for me
that he got 12 years.

That was the outcome that most
people would have wanted, I suppose,

cos he was the fall guy.

The length of the sentence is longer
than we would normally expect,

but the judge said, you know,

"This is huge,

"and the damage you've done to
so many individuals is incalculable,

"and that should be recognised
in the sentence."

It was relief and exhaustion,

because the whole team
had worked so hard.

I was so happy for my team,
and also for the investors.

Some investors, even those
who weren't giving evidence,

came to the trial
and sat in the gallery.

They knew they weren't getting
their money back.

Their lives had already been
damaged irreparably

by what had happened,

but finally
they got to have justice,

which meant a huge amount to them,

and that is what makes
the job worthwhile.

I think, even to this day,

he believes
that what he did was genuine

and it wasn't fraud, it was just
he received poor advice.

He also claimed that thieves don't
stay at the scene of the crime,

and pointed to the fact
that 20 investors

had managed to secure cabanas,
but this was ludicrous,

because out of the 8,000 people
who had invested in Harlequin,

only 20 of them had actually
really seen a return

on their investments.

The total loss to the investors
in the Harlequin scheme

was approximately 400 million.

The Serious Fraud Office
got involved

and they kept me informed
all the way through,

right the way through
to the court cases.

They were brilliant.

I think they did a great job.
They really did.

They plugged away
and they stuck at it.

It was funny, because
my daughter mentioned something.

She said, "Dad, when you started
this case, I was at primary school."

When my daughter put it that way,

it shows how long
this case actually took.

She was 11,

and by the time it finished,
she was 21, finishing university.

The chairman of Harlequin
and his family,

they benefited from this
to the tune of about £6.2 million.

I'd have liked to have seen

some of the others
held more accountable

down the line, but they weren't.

Some of the sales guys

who were selling
the property scheme,

they made millions
of pounds themselves.

So, people made huge
amounts of money,

but in the end,
it was the investors who lost out.

It was the people who were
borrowing off family, friends,

bank loans, second mortgages -

they're the ones who really
came out of it badly.

And the tragedy is,
nine times out of ten,

people don't get their money back.
It's gone.

In this instance, he wasn't going
to ride off into the sunset

and have plastic surgery and vanish.

No. It was just wasted.

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