Staffordshire fraudster who masterminded £1.5m scam must pay back £700k or face four years behind bars

Michael Bostock drove a fleet of high-performance cars paid for with money made from his fraud.

The 40-year-old's fleet included a £274,000 Mercedes McLaren, a Ferrari Scaglietti worth £185,500 and a £150,000 Lamborghini Gallardo along with a similarly priced Ferrari Spider, Aston Martin and Porsche.

The shameless trickster also conned £100,000 worth of first-class holidays in Indonesia and Dubai out of travel agents after getting the trips on tick and never settling the bill.

Father-of-three Bostock had homes in Penzance Way, Stafford, and a £1.4m cottage in Cheshire but is currently in Lewes prison.

He was jailed for five years at Warwick Crown Court in 2012 after admitting conspiracy to cheat the Customs and Revenue and has now been told to repay £702,128 within six month or be hit by another prison sentence.

Five British businessmen each lost around £200,000 after being tricked into investing in bent firms connected to the scam with the promise of unbelievably high returns on their money.

Bostock was the director of Staffordshire-based International Electrical Distributors Ltd (IED Ltd) which was at the centre of the fraudulent purchase and resale of copper, tin and nickel.

Among those also involved was 47-year-old freelance metal trader Michael Davies of De Havilland Drive, Yarnfield, Stone, who was employed as a 'consultant' by Bostock's company and helped set up the bent deals. He was jailed for three years in 2012.

The racket involved creating false sales and purchase invoices to make it seem that scrap metal had been sold to a business in Cyprus through Ireland and Belgium before being bought back by IED. This let the plotters pocket £1.5m VAT on the deals because the tax is refunded on exported metal.

In fact these shipments never left the UK. They were diverted to another scrapyard in this country and so VAT should have been charged. The ring was smashed in a series of dawn raids in January 2008 after a 14-month investigation.

Judge Ian Tomlinson, said at Warwick Crown Court in 2012 while sentencing Bostock, Davies and four other men – all of whom either admitted or were convicted of the fraud: "This was a professionally planned conspiracy. You were living beyond your means, living the high life at the expense of the taxpayer."

By that time Bostock was already serving an 18-month prison sentence imposed in October 2011 after he tried to hide up to £500,000 plundered from the fraud in cash and assets from Proceeds of Crime investigators. He pleading guilty to 77 Contempt of Court charges.

While still in jail for the fraud he received a further three and a half year sentence in November 2013 for money laundering and was banned from becoming a company director for five years.

About £193,000 in cash has already been seized from the fraudsters and inquiries are continuing to recover more.