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Magazine fraudster George Williams jailed for seven years Magazine fraudster George Williams jailed for seven years
(about 3 hours later)
A man who conned small firms into paying for adverts in a fake magazine has been jailed for seven years. A man who led a £5.2m magazine fraud affecting up to 15,000 victims has been jailed for seven years.
George Williams, 51, led a Liverpool-based team that made £5m over three years by telling potential clients that the publication was distributed to all members of the UK emergency services. George Williams, 51, controlled a Liverpool-based team conning firms into paying for adverts in a publication called "Emergency Services News".
In reality, only a small number of magazines were ever printed. They should have produced about 1.2m copies to fulfil their promises to clients but instead police found they only printed 30,000 copies.
Judge Robert Warnock said Williams, from Linacre Road in Liverpool, was a "predatory industrial-scale fraudster". Four other men were sentenced at Liverpool Crown Court over the scam.
Williams and his operations manager Gayle Leahair were convicted after a trial at Liverpool Crown Court. Mortgage defaults
Both denied conspiracy to commit fraud by false representation and fraudulent trading throughout their 12-week trial last year. The defendants, who called themselves Weinstein Williams Associates Ltd, were found to have falsely claimed that they worked for the emergency services.
Four other defendants who were accused of being sales reps and knowingly involved in the scam pleaded guilty during the trial. Detectives believe as many as 15,000 victims paid for adverts in publications that either did not materialise or never reached the audience that the team had promised.
A fifth person, who acted as the sales manager, also admitted offences of counselling and procuring the four reps to commit their fraudulent sales pitches. Some victims defaulted on mortgage payments to settle bills after being threatened with legal action, Merseyside Police said. One man even sold his work van.
The team were arrested after a five-year investigation instigated by Trading Standards and Consumer Direct, who spotted a pattern of complaints and contacted Merseyside Police. Det Cons Lee Egerton said: "George Williams and team meanwhile lived a life of comfort and luxury on the back of their crimes."
Working from a rented office in Dale Street, Williams and his team called themselves Weinstein Williams Associates. Williams, from Lineacre Road in Liverpool, and his operations manager Gayle Leahair were found guilty at an earlier trial of fraudulent trading and conspiring to commit fraud by false representation.
They used contact lists obtained from other fraudsters to pressure small and medium-sized businesses into taking out adverts in their publication, Emergency Services News. Leahair and another woman who pleaded guilty to conspiring to commit fraud by false representation will be sentenced at a later date.
They did print a small number of the magazine, but only as a front so they had copies to send back to the advertisers. Sales manager Ronnie Lloyd, who pleaded guilty to conspiring to commit fraud by false representation, was jailed for 12 months.
Police said about 30,000 magazines were printed over three years, but to get the amount of exposure they were promising their clients, they would have had to have sold 1.2 million per year. The other men, who admitted the same charge, include: