Original subtitles

He was charming, he was well-spoken.

He became a person you would consider to be a supportive friend.

No red flags, nothing to worry about.

I trusted him.

When I saw the FCA warning, I felt sick.

I was frightened.

It was a terrible feeling.

I've suddenly realised I've lost a lot of money.

It makes me hugely angry.

They have no idea about my parents.

They have no idea about what they've sacrificed.

This was not their money, whoever these people are.

I've lost everything. I've lost everything.

Gareth Hamblin has worked at sea as a ship's engineer

in the Merchant Navy and on cruise liners for over 50 years.

I've always enjoyed what I do.

I spend my time away to be able to provide for my family

to give them a good life.

And that's the driver.

That's the driver for going away.

We have a really happy family life.

Got a younger sister, four years younger than me.

Dad has always worked really hard.

And when we were kids, Dad was away a lot -

like, between six and nine months.

Me, Mum and Lizzy spent a lot of time on our own.

Dad misses loads of family events

and, you know, Christmases and all things like that.

I wasn't cross that Gareth wasn't there for Kate's birth.

I was too busy, to be fair!

But, yes, it's a sacrifice,

but whatever profession that you marry into, you have to adapt.

It seems like an odd lifestyle to other people,

but you just learn to accept it.

And we've spent long periods at sea with Dad

and, you know, we're really proud of him.

In 2017, Gareth decides he wants to retire in the next two years.

In terms of Dad retiring,

I think he spent a long time away, especially from Mum.

And quite obviously they're not getting any younger

and I think they were hoping to spend more time

just doing all the things that you look forward to doing in retirement,

you know, going on holiday more,

spending time with children, with the grandchildren.

So, yeah, you know, Dad was definitely looking forward

to retiring and spending a bit more time on dry land.

With Gareth's retirement fast approaching,

he and his family looked to secure their financial future.

Mum and Dad have always been careful with money.

They've always been thinking about the future.

They're of that generation, you know, saving is a massive thing.

As you get older, you've hopefully paid your mortgage,

so the money that you earn is more available to you.

So I started looking around at what the investment opportunities were.

Gareth looks online and finds a website for an investment company

called CEX Markets, based in London.

I looked at what they did.

They were involved in currency trading -

not Bitcoin - straight currencies, major currencies and other equities.

Their website was very professional-looking,

and I did feel that this looked like an organisation

that I could probably trust.

Gareth applies to open an account and promptly receives a phone call

from a representative named Paul Kingsley.

When I spoke to Mr Kingsley,

I made it clear that I wasn't interested

in trying to make a quick profit.

I was looking at something long term.

I wanted it to become some kind of steady income stream

and he gave me the reassurances that their businesses

were a long term view.

I felt the returns were very reasonable.

And it just seemed very secure.

Dad's always been interested in these things.

He loves researching them.

And I think he obviously felt that he had found, you know,

a good investment scheme.

So, yeah. No initial concerns.

Obviously, there must be some degree of wariness

about when you invest money.

But to alleviate that, Mr Kingsley said,

"Well, why don't you make a small investment first,

"then you can follow the returns

"and become confident that what we're doing is reliable?"

This chap obviously knew what he was talking about.

So, he was able to make Gareth feel relaxed

and confident that all would be well.

When you phone up and you can speak to the same person again and again

and again, you think, "Yeah, yeah, they're in control of it.

"They'll answer my questions.

"They've totally got a handle on this."

Paul Kingsley, I think, fairly quickly became a person

you would consider to be a supportive friend

and you felt confident about.

To convince somebody to give their money,

you have to be a really smooth operator.

You have to be really great with language

and you have to be confident.

So you have to be very personable, not too pushy,

but direct and professional and believable.

Filled with confidence, Gareth decides to invest £5,000.

We talked about anti-money laundering requirements

from their side, so again I felt this was realistic.

He said it all had to go through their people,

make sure it was all legitimate,

and when that was all passed, then the money was actually transferred

and the first investment was started.

The thing that I liked about CEX

was you had a website to be able to check in on,

and you could see how your money was growing.

You could look at it any time.

You could check these things.

You could log in and check that everything was fine.

You can phone up and somebody responds to you

and it's the same person, someone with a name, you know?

It makes you think, "Yeah, this is all completely legitimate,

"all fine."

Regular checks on the account

confirmed that it was generating about 1.5% a month.

On the 5,000 I initially invested,

I think I saw in the first few months

growth of somewhere around about £500 or £600.

So of course, you'd be thinking, "This is great.

"Really glad I took the money from here and put it in here."

Three months after transferring £5,000 into CEX Markets,

Gareth decides to invest even more money.

With the confidence of the 5,000 growing

and having spoken to Mr Kingsley and realised

that there were opportunities to increase the investment,

I decided to invest a large sum of money.

That investment then continued to grow.

So once you see it building, once you see it doing well,

you then think, "I'd be crazy not to add to this."

So the decision was made, having given it a lot of careful thought,

to put in £140,000.

So now I've got approximately £145,000 invested in CEX.

It all looked good.

And it continues to do well.

It continues to all look completely legit.

So no red flags, nothing to worry about. Still very happy.

It looked really good.

But if I'd only known.

If I'd only known.

In Oxfordshire,

Gareth Hamblin has transferred £145,000 from his life savings

to investment firm CEX Markets,

aiming to make long-term returns for retirement.

I felt that I could look forward in a few years' time

to having a decent pot of money that I could rely upon.

And then retirement would be literally around the corner.

140 miles away, in South Devon,

Jenny and Jeremy have also spent years saving for retirement.

Jeremy was a very kind, lovely gentleman and it was, you know,

it was a wonderful relationship.

Mum and Jeremy had a relationship I think very few people get.

They were very happy. Incredibly happy.

Very clear to see how much they both loved each other.

In 2018, Nicola's stepfather Jeremy is suddenly taken ill.

He had a stroke and that affected his speech.

It was a shock. It was a big shock.

The damage from the stroke then came out over hours and days.

There was some confusion with a few words.

But that got worse and his speech was affected far worse

as time went on.

We're all very worried as a family.

And clearly Mum was, you know, devastated from it,

as was, I think, Jeremy, from what he could, you know,

comprehend and understand. He knew what had happened.

When it came to finances,

I was lost because he was the one who always dealt with it.

They were together for 30 years, and that's a long time.

And then for Mum to all of a sudden

have to start doing the day-to-day things that she'd never done -

paying all the bills.

I was terrified, absolutely terrified.

He was really unable to advise me.

Say yay or nay.

Only a month after Jeremy's stroke,

Jenny is faced with the responsibility

of managing one of their investments.

Mum receives a letter to say that some of her shares are expiring,

and if she doesn't cash them in, she will lose them.

I think it would have been about £3,000,

the value of the shares at the time.

It wasn't a great amount, but it was an amount that I thought,

"Right, I don't want to lose that."

So she cashes the shares in,

and within a month, the £3,000 is paid to them

and is in her bank account.

Two weeks later, Jenny receives a call from a man named David Clark,

a representative of an investment company called Atwood Stanley.

He says that he knows that she's recently cashed in some shares

and offers her the opportunity to buy new shares

with the money for a good return.

Mum was told that she would have a 6% return on the money

and she will have twice-yearly interest.

She feels that this is something that would be worth considering.

But she's unable to consult Jeremy about it

because of the situation following the stroke.

Without the ability to discuss the offer with Jeremy,

Jenny ponders on whether she can trust David Clark

from Atwood Stanley.

David Clark came across as very professional,

knowledgeable about what he was talking about

from the financial point of view.

David Clark was a very, very well-spoken, educated person.

It sounded feasible.

So I trusted him.

And therefore she duly entered into the agreement with him

and made the transfer of £3,000 to the account

that David Clark had given her.

And so she thinks that, you know, that's it.

She sits back and hopes that in six months' time

that she will see a good return on her money.

Back in Oxfordshire,

Gareth Hamblin's investment of £145,000 in CEX Markets

has been steadily growing for over nine months.

I was confident. We had...

..regular contact with Paul Kingsley.

And I had some more money that had come available to me

from other investments that had matured,

and that money had to do something.

So I felt confident enough to talk to Mr Kingsley

about putting another large sum in.

And we talked about putting in another £160,000.

Before Dad decides to put this final big chunk in,

he obviously decided,

"I want to meet this Paul Kingsley face-to-face."

I felt I was beginning to know Mr Kingsley so well

that I'd almost like to make a friend of him

and go for a drink with him.

He was very happy with that.

So he set up a date and we arranged to go.

Being able to meet somebody in person and not just somebody

on the end of a phone call or a website

makes it seem much more legitimate, much more credible

because you're meeting a human being.

Meeting face-to-face is beneficial for an individual

who feels like that person is real, tangible, trustworthy,

and they'd feel they'd recognise if someone was lying to their face.

Paul Kingsley agrees to meet Gareth at Heron Tower

in the City of London.

The building's a big, glassy, prestigious,

imposing-looking building. Gives you the feeling

that I'm dealing with genuine, big operators here.

There was a buzz, I suppose. I felt sort of, "Yeah, this is good."

I sit in the seat.

About five minutes later, a gentleman approaches me

and says to me his name was Lewis,

and he was a colleague of Mr Kingsley.

Lewis looked very sharp.

I would say he was a young man of about early 30s,

very well-dressed, very well-presented, very polite.

Lewis tells Gareth that Paul Kingsley is unable

to attend the meeting in person.

And then while Dad was talking to him, this Paul Kingsley phones up

and says, "Oh, can I have a chat with Gareth?

"I'm really, really sorry.

"You know, last-minute thing. I had to go to Denmark."

He had told me before that he dealt with banks in Denmark.

And so I was disappointed not to meet him,

but at the same time I felt, "Well, it's better that he's getting on

"with business than spending his time just talking to me."

And so, again, it endorsed my feeling

that he was doing what he said he was doing.

I came back home, talked to Marilyn,

and agreed that we would make the additional investment.

At this stage, once we'd put the 160,000 in,

we now put 305,000 in total,

which was growing, growing steadily. I felt confident.

I thought that the future was secured.

Meanwhile, Jenny continues to speak to Atwood Stanley's representative,

David Clark, after giving them £3,000 to invest on her behalf.

Having David Clark constantly keeping in contact with Mum,

reassuring her and talking to her,

gave her the confidence or the belief that he was there for her.

And it was probably a bit of a relief, you know,

to trust somebody, because you couldn't go to your husband any more

because he's not well enough for you to go to,

that somebody else is providing that that platform

and he would look after the finances.

So he probably was a safety net.

But after several months, Jenny has a change of heart.

When I started to think about it, I did want my money back.

I had no interest,

and I thought I would have had some interest by now.

Mum asked David Clark on numerous occasions

to either sell the shares and have the money back

or to have the investments paid back to her.

But there was always a caveat - you can have it back,

but you need to give us a little bit more money first

because of this financial regulation,

when you hadn't reached the ceiling limit of your investments

to be able to get it back at this stage.

I agreed.

Having already paid the 3,000,

the next figure was for...

Was it 22,000?

After Jenny deposits this huge sum,

David Clark tells her that the £25,000 she has now invested

is still not large enough for her to withdraw her money.

This time, she's told she needs to pay a further £18,000.

So Mum transfers this money.

Mum started to become concerned that the investments were a lot larger

than she was ever anticipating,

bearing in mind this started from a £3,000 sale of shares.

Every time she had the conversation with David Clark

about withdrawing the money,

then she was enticed into making further sums to reach this limit

so that she would then be able to have the money back.

This is a psychological tactic.

It's often termed as a sunk cost fallacy.

You've already put money in, you don't want to lose it,

so you will do whatever you can in order to secure that money

and get it back.

If you're told you need to keep investing money

in order to safeguard your initial investment, you will do.

Feeling hopeful that her latest investment is sufficient

to retrieve back her funds, Jenny contacts David Clark.

She's told that the financial regulations have changed

and he then requests a further £7,000,

which would take her total investment to £50,000.

Following a final payment,

Mum comes to the conclusion that she needs to share it with somebody.

I think she realises deep down that something's not quite right.

She's constantly being asked for more money.

It was then I got hold of Nicola

because I couldn't see where it was all going

and I was frightened.

My mum sounded very distressed,

which is unusual for me to hear Mum like that.

And she explains to me that she's done something,

that she feels ashamed,

that she's extremely worried about it, she can't sleep,

and then explains to me about these investments that she's made.

So Mum said to me, "Let's ring David Clark.

"He's a real person. He's there.

"You'll see, he's very nice."

So we did ring David Clark.

He was charming, he was well-spoken,

you know, he wasn't rude to me.

I was probably rude to him.

I basically said to him, Mum had been requesting her money back

for quite some time.

Therefore, I wanted to see some evidence

of these monies being returned.

David Clark assured us he would be able to get that to us.

And I said to him that I didn't trust him,

and if I find out that this is not legitimate investment,

I am going to go to the police.

And at that point, the conversation ended

with him just reassuring us again that the investments

were being cashed in and that Mum would have her money back

and it would be in her account before Christmas.

Feeling suspicious of David Clark,

Nicola conducts her own research into Atwood Stanley.

I went online and I searched Atwood Stanley.

And at the top of the search pages

was the Financial Conduct Authority's warning

of Atwood Stanley.

They were unregulated,

and there was evidence they'd been providing financial advice

to individuals whilst being unregulated.

When I saw the FCA warning...

..I felt sick.

It's just that realisation

that they were never going to get this money back.

Jenny has invested £50,000 with Atwood Stanley.

But her daughter Nicola has discovered the company

is on the FCA's warning list of unauthorised firms.

The hardest thing for me through all of this

was the going to see my parents,

to tell them that somebody had stolen money off them.

There I had Jeremy, who'd had this stroke.

He was there around the table.

And his reaction, he understood what was going on.

He understood something...

..maybe more than he could actually tell me,

which I think is so, so sad.

Gareth Hamblin's investment of £305,000 into CEX Markets

also takes a turn for the worst.

We'd had the money in there for about 18 months by that stage.

Around about September of 2018, I was on a ship

and I decided I would have a look at how my fund was growing.

But as I looked for CEX Markets, suddenly the site didn't come up.

I couldn't believe it.

First off, I thought there was something wrong with my computer,

there was something not right.

But I couldn't... I couldn't get CEX Markets up.

It was just not available.

After trying the online stuff and nothing opening,

Dad obviously thought, "OK, well, I'll call this Paul Kingsley,"

who's been this reliable contact, you know, always picks up the phone.

And when he tries to phone him, the line is dead.

So, dead line to this guy who's always been contactable -

I think alarm bells started to ring.

I made every effort to try and contact Mr Kingsley via phone,

via email, but he'd just vanished off the face of the earth.

It was a terrible feeling.

I'm on the ship. I'm at work.

I don't have my family around me.

And I've suddenly realised I've lost a lot of money.

Our investment with CEX is gone.

My thoughts were...

..how do I tell people about this?

Who do I let know first?

I need to ring Marilyn.

So after a few minutes, after I'd plucked up courage, I rang Marilyn.

He phones me...

..and I had never heard him so distraught.

He... Well, he couldn't speak.

He just couldn't get the words out.

And then he said, "Something terrible's happened.

"We've lost the money in CEX. It's disappeared."

The worst bit of this story with Mum and Dad

is the fact that Dad was at sea,

and I think he had several weeks yet of his contract

before he was coming home.

And I think it's very hard to fathom

how difficult that would be to live with.

There's no doubt about it -

I did think something drastic might happen.

It could have been a possibility

that he might have tried to end his life.

I don't think he would have done,

but I'm 5,000 miles away, so I don't know that for sure.

It will be another six weeks before Gareth returns home.

While Marilyn waits for him, she takes matters into her own hands.

Mum definitely took over the pragmatic role

of wanting to get to the bottom of who these people were

and how they'd managed to do this.

So she took it to Action Fraud.

Nicola also decides to contact Action Fraud

to tell them she believes her mum has fallen victim to a scam.

I know that I need to report this to Action Fraud.

If there was any hope of getting any money back,

I needed to do it as soon as possible.

Action Fraud also receives calls from other people

reporting similar scams,

all of which are forwarded to the City of London Police.

I was working as a detective constable

on our financial investigation unit.

At that time, we had a number of intelligence reports coming in

that people seemed to be falling prey to investment fraud.

There are similarities between each case.

Everybody had lost a lot of money.

Often the victims were elderly

or people certainly with a disposable income.

They all understood and believed what they were doing was right,

and they were helping themselves and their family going forward.

But the lights had gone out on their investment

and they were left with nothing.

There was around 12 victims. I need to speak to the victims.

I need to understand a bit of the background

into what they believed was happening.

Detective Inspector Nichola Meghji and her team

listen to how the victims were first contacted.

A number of people had received cold calls,

and we believe that they would have been on a list.

Their data is obtained and it's sold usually on the dark web.

Others had gone online and they'd searched "Best investments to make".

And at the top of Google had come a website address

where they completed in their name and phone number

and they call it a warm call - they were called off that list.

Police also look into the companies

in which the victims invested their money.

All of our investors had invested in three companies,

and it becomes apparent to me very quickly

that the companies are totally fraudulent.

They're not at the premises where they were supposed to be,

and there is no legitimacy about them at all.

So at this point, I'm confident there's a fraud,

and I'm confident that we need to launch an investigation into it.

I was angry. Shocked.

Just unbelievable.

Just unbelievable that somebody has no conscience.

I don't have any words to describe it. It was devastating.

How could these people do this?

How could they manage to appear to be so genuine and yet be so false?

It makes me hugely angry.

They have no idea about my parents.

They have no idea about what they've sacrificed -

all the Christmases that my dad's missed,

all the birthdays that he's missed,

all the school performances, holidays, all sorts of things.

Who is it for these people to take their money from them?

It's just extremely upsetting.

It started off as these three companies,

but as the intelligence and investigation evidence developed,

it became very clear that, actually,

we were looking at multiple boiler rooms, as we'd call them.

A boiler room investment fraud

is where a scammer sells worthless shares to its investors.

This is effectively an office with a bank of phones in

where people are cold calling people.

These are people that have looked on the internet to invest their money.

With this type of fraud,

the tactics that these investment fraudsters use

are very sophisticated.

They even have sounds behind them such as phones ringing,

the click-clacking of keyboards,

everything that makes it seem legitimate and credible.

These fraudsters are often very well-spoken, very eloquent,

and they seem very professional,

the kind of person that you wouldn't question their legitimacy

and you would believe them and you'd seek advice from.

Police look at the fake investment companies' bank accounts

to see what happened to the victims' money.

I look at the money coming in from the investor.

I then have to trace where that money's gone.

And from the tracing of that money,

it identifies additional bank accounts that we need to obtain.

So you obtain an initial ten bank accounts,

follow the money, and that might lead to obtaining 50 bank accounts.

And from those bank accounts,

the movement of money became quite large quite quickly.

Police also discover that the funds were transferred

across a web of accounts, including cryptocurrency accounts,

and even foreign accounts

in countries such as the UAE and Lithuania.

It became apparent to me then

that this was a really sophisticated and complex investigation.

When DI Meghji and her team look further into the accounts,

they discover something else.

When I obtain bank accounts,

I look to identify the fraudulent account,

and then I almost reverse it

so that then I can see who's paid into the account,

which is where, very, very quickly, the victim list grew from 12

to, as it stands, over 300.

We didn't realise it was as massive as it was.

I was shocked, absolutely shocked.

KATE: Every one of these families affected has a story.

It's not the same as Mum and Dad's.

But they've screwed all these people's lives up.

Some of the investors would have invested 10,000

and some nearing 500,000.

It's not just elderly, vulnerable people falling victim.

We have in this case victims who are solicitors,

victims who are doctors,

victims who are 30 and victims who are 90,

so this really is affecting anyone in society.

It shows the ability of these fraudsters

to make their frauds relevant and interesting and appealing

to absolutely everybody.

They're a bit like chameleons, really.

They can design the way they talk to make it feel absolutely relevant

to whoever it is they're contacting.

I felt ashamed...

..that that amount of money had gone.

I know she started to feel very ashamed

that she might have done something wrong,

which she didn't need to.

But totally understandable that someone would feel like that.

KATE: Dad was obviously in a really bad place.

Very depressed. He didn't want to eat.

He was very quiet.

I think this really shook him to his core.

I think it makes you feel enormously vulnerable.

It's an enormous knock to confidence.

We have two daughters, now four grandchildren.

You feel you've let everybody down.

What am I going to do? What am I going to do for the future?

How am I ever going to be able to retire?

I've lost everything. I've lost everything.

Meanwhile, the police continue with their investigation.

With almost all cases of investment frauds,

what we find is that the victims have formed a relationship

with the person at the end of the phone.

People would be hoping that we'd find a Dave Clark

and find a Paul Kingsley.

But actually, they're alias names,

and therefore we can never find them.

But also the people working in the boiler room,

some of them might not even realise they're involved in fraud.

They might think they're in a call centre developing sales leads

for genuine investments.

So we have to work hard to explain to victims

that we have a limit as to who we can target.

JENNY: I thought it was David Clark.

You won't know who they are or where they are

because they probably have gone.

They could have been innocent people. We don't know.

The police believe the different boiler rooms

were run by the same people and direct their focus

to identifying those in charge of the operations.

We were always after where the money went to.

And that's the person I go after.

That's done by analysing the bank statements.

Police discover that over £1 million of the scammed money

was transferred by a man named John Mayer

to a legitimate Bitcoin converting company.

I made a lot of enquiries to work out if the name John Mayer

was legitimate, but it wasn't - it was actually an alias name.

The only clue to John Mayer's true identity

is the telephone number they used to conduct business

with the Bitcoin converting company.

I could not attribute this phone to a person.

I found out it was a pay-as-you-go phone with no details.

Having had no luck with looking at the calls

and the texts to the phone,

the next step will be to look at plotting where the phone has been

using GPS data.

With this phone, we have to put that phone in someone's hand.

We have to find out the locations

of where that person holding the phone is.

What we saw was that the phone had travelled

to a number of UK airports.

The idea is then to try and find who was on those flights

and where they were heading to.

Using an analyst's skills, we were able to overlay flight data

with this phone number to work out what our commonality was.

We looked at the manifests of flights within the time span

of where the phone was pinged and where it was live.

What I need to do now is to work out whether we have one person

that has boarded all of these flights

and taken that phone with them to work out who my suspect is.

Police are using flight and phone data

to track down a suspect who they believe received over £1 million

that was conned out of hundreds of victims

in a sophisticated boiler room scam.

Having undertaken this process of matching up flight manifests

with the GPS data,

we were able to come up with one person

that had travelled across all of the six flights -

and that person was Jonathan Arafiena.

Now we've got a name, we must quickly act on it

and look to make an arrest. So it's really important then to work out

where Jonathan Arafiena lives.

Police are able to link Arafiena to two London properties -

one in Vauxhall, and one in Soho.

I went to the address in Vauxhall.

The apartment was empty, but it was furnished very expensively.

Inside the property were a number of very high-value watches.

There were expensive clothes, expensive shoes,

lots of jewellery. So it really did appear that someone living

a very nice lifestyle had been staying at the address.

As police search the property, they make an important discovery.

We recovered the SIM card used to contact the Bitcoin company.

So, a fantastic find,

which really proved to me that we had got the right person.

Meanwhile, DI Meghji's other team head towards the Soho property

with a search warrant.

They have been able to knock on the door,

and Jonathan Arafiena has answered.

Let me see your hands.

All right, right, sit up.

He'd just got out of bed. I think we woke him up.

People like Jonathan Arafiena and other sophisticated criminals

don't ever expect to be caught.

He'd gone to great lengths to conceal who he was.

And I would say it was a real shock to him

that the police were at his door that morning.

Arafiena is arrested and his Soho property is searched.

Rather similar to the other property,

he had watches and jewellery

and extremely expensive shoes and clothes,

which we looked to then seize

so that we can try and recoup some of that money.

Arafiena also had a Rolls-Royce Wraith.

It was parked outside the address, and that was seized as well.

But it's Arafiena's phone that is a key piece of evidence against him.

Nothing had been deleted.

There was full evidence of all that he was involved with on there.

On his phone was a number of victims' details.

Within the contact details wasn't just phone numbers,

there was PIN numbers, account numbers.

And ultimately, that's what's proved the case

and allowed the police to get the prosecution.

Arafiena is not charged in connection with the fraud itself.

The police find evidence that he received money conned out

of the victims and he is charged with money laundering.

We were very happy

to be able to feel that somebody was being held accountable.

Police also charge two other people.

One of them was his right-hand man

who was assisting him with cashing out on money.

And the other person was the person setting up the websites,

the landing pages and dealing with the Google ads in this case.

While police gather their evidence for a court case,

Jenny and Nicola receive devastating news.

I...

..had a phone call from my mum.

They'd had an appointment at hospital.

She was very, very, very upset.

She said he's diagnosed with leukaemia.

That was hard.

And he never did anything, really, much after that again.

He just sort of...gradually went down.

And he died the following January.

It was...devastating.

Just like nothing's the same again, is it?

With the fraud, he never saw the finish of it, sadly.

Realising he wouldn't get away with his crimes,

Arafiena pleads guilty to money laundering.

The police were able to, through very, very diligent work

and putting a lot of people on this for a long time,

were able to build a case against Arafiena

that was so watertight, he had no opportunity but to plead guilty

because of the substantial amount of evidence against him.

In February 2024,

Jonathan Arafiena's hearing takes place at Southwark Crown Court.

I said to Gareth, "I am going to that.

"Come hell or high water, I'm going to that."

I just need to see who was capable of doing these things.

My mum wanted to go, she wanted to see what the defendants looked like.

And I think she just felt she needed it for closure.

A number of the victims were asked to make victim statements

and were read out in the court,

and you realise how many lives this man, Jonathan Arafiena,

has impacted - thousands of people's lives,

not just the 350 people who are directly involved,

but all the people associated with them.

So the impact of what he's done is absolutely huge.

The courtroom is informed

of how Arafiena had spent his victims' money.

There was around £12 million of sums invested and lost,

and we were able to directly link 3.5 million to Jonathan Arafiena.

The majority of it has just been spent on him having a lovely life.

GARETH: He's living in big apartments in London

and living a lifestyle which far exceeds anything

that any of us could ever envisage.

He spent £14,000 on concierge services.

He had the Rolls-Royce car worth in excess of £200,000.

The money was spent on lavish holidays,

high-end jewellery, designer clothes.

He's paid off his parents' mortgage with my money.

It's infuriating.

It's not like this man did anything good with this money.

He just spent it on completely frivolous things

that my parents would never have spent their money on.

I mean, if that does not make you angry, nothing will.

I mean, you know, these are good people who had money set aside

for good purposes, and this person just took it

and just blew it, completely.

As the court hearing comes to a close,

Jonathan Arafiena is sentenced to five years and nine months

in prison.

The other two men receive suspended sentences.

We had worked on this investigation for five years,

so to see that end result was really rewarding.

But we still saw no remorse.

GARETH: It's hard to express my feelings

as far as Jonathan Arafiena is concerned.

I feel that the sentence he's been given,

in all honesty, is wholly inadequate.

I think he should have been locked up for at least ten years.

Following Arafiena's sentencing,

Jenny has received back almost half of her £50,000 loss.

Unfortunately, Jeremy never saw the conclusion,

but the police were able to successfully get £22,000 back.

I was very fortunate.

I just feel so sad

that, obviously, nobody else said they'd had any money back.

So I feel, really, for them.

Gareth Hamblin is waiting to find out

if he will get back any of his missing £305,000.

It is very galling to think he took that money

and put it somewhere that he thought it was going to be safe,

to grow it, ready to come home, ready to retire with.

To know that that has not been what's happened to that money

is extremely upsetting.

Rather than Dad retiring, he'll still be working

trying to recover money that he should never have had

to try to recover, because he'd already earned it.

It's not just the money that's been taken from me,

but it's the time. It's the time I've lost -

the time with the grandchildren, the time with my wife.

We're both getting older.

And that's what these criminals have done to me.

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