Fraudsters jailed for £17m solar panel scam

Six men have been sentenced to a total of more than 30 years imprisonment for a £17 million solar panel scam.

The con artists defrauded 1,500 victims, many of them elderly or vulnerable, by promising extra payments from the solar panels they supplied and installed on top of those from the government’s feed-in tariff scheme.

The Serious Fraud Office (SFO) said the men used “deceitful sales techniques, outright lies, and false guarantees of reimbursement to misrepresent the offer and maximise their sales”. As a result, the victims each lost between £10,000 and £20,000.

The imprisonments follow a nearly four-year investigation into the company Solar Energy Savings that began in December 2014.

The trial commenced in April this year after the ringleaders were arrested during a routine traffic stop following seven months on the run. They and their accomplices were convicted by a jury at Liverpool Crown Court in April and were sentenced earlier this week.

Lisa Osofsky, director of the SFO, said: “These men built predatory schemes to steal thousands from the hard-earned savings of vulnerable people while pretending to offer them a chance to improve their own financial security.”

The SFO thanked the Insolvency Service, Police Scotland, Greater Manchester Police, the Trading Standards Agency, and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy for their assistance with the investigation.

Scott Crighton, chief investigator for the Insolvency Service, said: “The tactics used by these scam artists were particularly malicious and they shamefully targeted thousands of vulnerable people to secure a vast sum of money to fund their extravagant lifestyles.”

Speaking in Utility Week last year, Powerflow Energy managing director Ian Murray warned that the misselling of domestic battery storage systems by rogue traders could inflict long-term damage to the reputation of the sector.