Carbon credit investment scammer Paul Seakens forced to repay £1 million to victims

Seakens also sent £3.2 million to overseas accounts

Paul Seakens is a convicted carbon credit investment scammer currently serving a 13 year jail sentence. Seakens was director of a company called Carbon Neutral Investments that bought carbon credits cheaply to be sold by boiler room operations as investments for a mark-up of between 200% and 1,000%.

The carbon credits were worthless as investments and the victims lost everything. A network of boiler room scam operations scammed retail investors out of a total of £36 million.

About 90 companies were involved in the scam. Carbon Neutral Investments operated a “List of Clearing Members”. This was a list of the boiler room operations that were selling the carbon credits to retail investors.

Carbon Neutral Operations took a commission and paid the rest of the money to the boiler rooms.

In its press release about the sentencing, the Crown Prosecution Service described this list as “simply a money laundering device”.

Seakens was also a director of a company called Enviro Associates. His accomplice, Luke Ryan, was exposed by the BBC in 2012. Ryan was filmed claiming that, “In the next four to five years the market could go from anywhere from 100 to 500%”.

Astonishingly, Carbon Neutral Investments was registered by the Financial Conduct Authority . When Carbon Neutral Investments changed its name to Opus Capital Limited, that company was registered by the FCA until March 2017 - more than four years after the BBC exposed the scam.

In January 2022, the Financial Conduct Authority finally banned Seakens from any financial activity. The FCA concluded that,

“Seakens lacks honesty and integrity, such that he is not fit to perform any function in financial services.”

Seakens and Ryan jailed

Seakens and Ryan were convicted on 28 May 2021, almost a decade after the scam was exposed. Ryan was sentenced to six years for fraudulent trading.

In a statement after the sentencing, Jane Mitchell of the Crown Prosecution Service Specialist Fraud Division said:

“This was a particularly hideous scam operation, where vulnerable victims lost their life savings on so-called investments that had greatly inflated return claims and no resale market.”

Many of the victims were elderly and were cold called. They were pressured into buying worthless carbon credits as investments. The carbon credits could not even be sold to return the money invested, let alone make a profit. Some victims had to re-mortgage their homes, others were forced to carry on working past the retirement age, and some suffered ill health.

REDD-Monitor wrote a series of posts about Seakens’ scam operations, summarised in this 2021 post - Enviro Associaties and Carbon Neutral Investments were far from the only scam that Seakens was linked with:

Seakens ordered to repay £1 million

Following the sentencing in 2021, the Crown Prosecution Service took Seakens back to court to get a Confiscation Order issued against him. Under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, a Confiscation Order forces criminals to return money and assets they scammed from their victims. If they fail to return the money, criminals face a longer spell in prison.

In Seakens’ case, if he failed to repay the £1 million within three months of the order, another seven years would have been added to his prison sentence.

The Crown Prosecution Service managed to recover £1,037,948, which has been distributed to 222 victims. The largest amount paid was £38,482, and the average that victims received was £4,675. 28 of the victims died before the payments were made so the money went to their families.

In a press release, Portia Ragnauth from the Crown Prosecution Service said,

“Paul Seakens did untold damage to the lives of his victims, some of whom were old and frail. We have made sure that he has paid his £1m order in full following the sale of his pensions, a Rolex watch, along with money in a bank account from one of his fraudulent businesses, which has now been distributed to his victims. 

“He will continue to be monitored in case any new assets can be identified that would allow us to apply to the court to increase the value of his confiscation order.”

In the 2021 court case, the judge, Sally Cahill QC, told Seakens he was “a man completely without credibility”.

She also noted that Seakens also sent money abroad:

“During the evidence we heard that money has been sent abroad. It is not clear exactly how much, but at least £5.6m. When asked about this by the Insolvency Service, you produced invoices for £2.4 million . . . which leaves £3.2 million unaccounted for. In evidence you said you did not know where this money is. . . . One thing that is certain is that you know where that money went. You were in sole control of the bank accounts and you authorised it being sent abroad.”

So Seakens managed to squirrel away £3.2 million of victims’ money to overseas accounts. He has failed to explain where the money went or who the beneficiaries of these accounts are.

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