Convicted fraudster Kevin Phelan, from Omagh, Co Tyrone, has been sentenced to seven years by the Crown Court in Leeds.
At a hearing on Thursday, Judge Penelope Belcher said half the sentence should be served before any question of release on licence arose.
Phelan (63), along with two co-conspirators, was found guilty last year of conspiracy to commit fraud by false representation, and conspiracy to cheat the revenue.
Between late 2013 and late 2014, 74 victims were persuaded to transfer £3.7 million of their pensions, in full or in part, into bank accounts controlled by Phelan and others.
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The judge said the matter of home detention and curfew would be a question for the prison authorities.
Phelan, dressed in a dark suit and a shirt and tie, did not show any emotion as he stood in the dock while the judge delivered her decision.
She said she took into account the plea for mitigation from Phelan’s counsel, Anand Beharrylal, who said Phelan had recently been fitted with a cardiac stent and was suffering from depression and anxiety.
Older inmates find it more difficult to be in prison, Beharrylal said, and, for Phelan, going to prison for the first time will be “a shock to his mental wellbeing.”
Phelan was carer to his wife, Paula, who had significant health issues, he said, and a letter she had handed into the court was “a plea for mercy.”
The judge said the various references submitted vouching for Phelan’s character had to be seen against the context of the fraud he had committed.
“Society needs to punish serous crime” she said.
Prosecution counsel Tim Hannam said Phelan was a figure involved in overseeing the scheme which targeted people who wanted to get early access to their pension savings.
Phelan and his co-conspirators were involved in “sophisticated and persistent dishonesty” in the years 2013 and 2014, and had plans to substantially grow their criminal scheme before it was brought to a halt by a police investigation, he said.
Phelan was involved in text exchanges where he speculated about earning millions from the fraud and “never have to work again,” the court heard.
He was interviewed by the police in 2015 but not charged until 2023. It took a lengthy analysis of the complex scheme in order to make it “prosecutable”, Hannam told the judge.
Last year Mohammed Bashforth (62) of Spen Lane, Gomersal, formerly of Wakefield, Daniel Giles (51) of Jacob Drive, Coventry, and Phelan, were found guilty of conspiracy to commit fraud by false representation, and conspiracy to cheat the revenue.
Between late 2013 and late 2014, their victims were persuaded to transfer their pensions, in full or in part, into bank accounts controlled by the Giles, Phelan and Bashforth. The total amount transferred was £3,701,813.92.
At a sentencing hearing in January, which Phelan was unable to attend for medical reasons, Giles was jailed for eight years and Bashford for five, for their parts in the pension fraud.
Investor money was “stolen” by the conspirators who laundered it through a complex web of accounts, the court was told. At the time Phelan was an undischarged bankrupt and did not have a personal bank account. Some investors lost their entire pension.
The judge, in sentencing Phelan, said she was not taking into account his having been fined £1,500 in Northern Ireland in 1998 for fraud and false accounting, and was treating him as “effectively a man of previous good character.”
The Omagh businessman featured in the proceedings of the Moriarty tribunal as he acted as a land agent for Independent deputy Michael Lowry and businessman Denis O’Brien in property deals in England in the 1990s.
Phelan did not give evidence to the tribunal, which found the land deals were linked to efforts by O’Brien to convey a financial benefit on Lowry, a finding that the two men disputed.
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One of the deals involved the purchase of the lease on the stadium used by Doncaster Rovers Football Club, with a view to developing the site.
After the police began to investigate the pensions fraud scheme, Phelan was involved in creating false justification for the transfer of investor money to Sequentia Capital SA and other companies associated with the fraudsters.
Included in the bogus material was false claims that the investors’ money was used to invest in loan notes associated with the ownership of the Doncaster Rovers football team, even though the team was, at the time, “hopelessly insolvent”.
