Adlington conman gets 4 years for failing to repay £500k profit

 
Rebecca Adlington

A fraudster who ripped off music fans and Rebecca Adlington’s parents in a ticket scam has been jailed for an extra four years after failing to repay a penny of his illegal profits.

Alan Scott, from Essex, was ordered to hand back £500,000 he made as one of the ringleaders of a £5 million fraud, in which more than 10,000 people were sold tickets that never arrived.

Victims of the con included Adlington’s parents, who missed the first of the Olympic star’s two Beijing gold medal-winning performances when £1,100 tickets they had bought failed to materialise. Music fans who bought tickets for concerts at the O2 and for the Reading, Leeds and V festivals also lost out, along with others who paid Scott’s agency “Xclusive” for non-existent seats at rugby and football matches.

Scott’s unlawful profits should have been returned by April under a confiscation order imposed by a judge at Southwark Crown Court last year.

But the fraudster, 59, has so far failed to repay anything and has now been given a further four-year “default” sentence on top of his original seven-year term for the crime, after being hauled before Westminster magistrates to be punished for his defiance.

It follows the disclosure by the Evening Standard that his accomplice, Londoner Terence Shepherd, is among 16 millionaire fraudsters, brought to justice by the Serious Fraud Office, who have failed to repay their illicit gains.

Shepherd, 54, from Blackheath, who was given an eight-year sentence, has also missed his deadline for repaying the £1.25 million he gained from the scam.

He has so far avoided an additional six-year prison term because of a pending appeal. Many of the other 15 offenders on the SFO list, who include fraudsters involved in dotcom, metal-trading and other scams, have also escaped further penalties for legal reasons.

But Mark Thompson, head of the Serious Fraud Office’s proceeds of crime division, insisted that the extra four-year term for Scott showed tough sanctions would be imposed on non-payers whenever possible.

He said: “This is an example of the action that the SFO takes to enforce unpaid orders. Mr Scott now has a clear incentive to make payments towards his order.”

Both Scott and Shepherd were found guilty of fraud after a trial at Southwark Crown Court in 2011. They had offered “hard to get” tickets to major events through their firm, but failed to provide them to customers.

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