Jail for serial liar who tried to buy trust company

Monday 22 June 2015

A serial liar is beginning a 12-month jail sentence over a failed attempt to buy a Jersey trust company, after a landmark case in the Royal Court.

Andrew Crawford Norman Fleming, who was born in Scotland, tried to hoodwink lawyers, investors and banks across the globe into thinking that he was not just a legitimate businessman but a multi-millionaire Monaco resident worth $500m with a collection of trust companies from Geneva to the Cayman Islands.

But in truth he was a serial liar who had been previously declared bankrupt and faced financial ruin.

The 48-year-old’s many sophisticated and not-so sophisticated lies – which included blaming his ex-wife for a conviction in Scotland, claiming that his family had been threatened with kidnapping, doctoring emails from global banks to give the impression of legitimacy, duping Asian investors into giving him money and claiming that he had played golf with the president of Ford – were exposed when he sought approval from the Jersey Financial Services Commission to buy the now defunct Herald Trust Company in June 2013.

Fleming will have the lasting infamy of being the first person ever to be prosecuted and sentenced for providing the JFSC with false and misleading information under Article 28(1) of the 1998 Jersey Financial Services Law.

The JIFC had a number of meetings with Fleming and asked him to fill in questionnaires to confirm that he was legitimate and fit to own a Jersey trust company.

But background checks raised serious questions about his story – not least that he had the millions of pounds he claimed to possess – and attempts to get more answers were met with obfuscation or more lies.

Fleming was sentenced by the Royal Court on Friday. Crown Advocate Matthew Jowitt said: “[His] lies were designed to bolster his false claims to be worth hundreds of millions of pounds, and to conceal what was in fact the prosaic truth: that he had no obvious or obviously legitimate wealth at all, that he was in reality impecunious, had outstanding county court judgment debts in comparatively paltry sums, and had been subject to bankruptcy proceedings in Scotland as recently as 2010 in respect of a debt of a mere £5,617.”

Barry Faudemer, Director of Enforcement at the JIFC, said: “This is the first case of its kind in Jersey and the custodial sentence sends a strong message that the Island will not tolerate criminals seeking to take control of regulated businesses here.

“Jersey operates robust defences to protect those that we regulate and the Commission would like to thank the officers from the Joint Financial Crimes Unit for reacting so quickly to protect the trust company and safeguard the Island’s reputation.”

Passing sentence was the Deputy Bailiff, Tim Le Cocq, and Jurats Kerley and Sparrow.