By Kirstin Ridley
LONDON, April 19 (Reuters) - Two men who tricked hundreds of British investors into buying inflated or worthless shares in a 70 million pound ($100 million) "boiler-room" scam were ordered to pay just over 11 million pounds by a London court on Tuesday.
Boiler-room cons are often unregulated overseas-based telephone sales operations, run from cramped conditions, that target elderly or vulnerable victims and bully them into buying fake or overvalued stock with high-pressure sales tactics.
The men were convicted in 2014 of conspiracy to defraud in connection with a Madrid-based scam that duped at least 1,000 investors in what has been billed as one of the largest boiler room fraud schemes ever pursued by a UK authority.
Mastermind Jeffrey Revell-Reade, a 51-year-old Australian who was sentenced to more than eight years in jail in 2014, was ordered to pay 10.75 million pounds by Southwark Crown Court. Sixty-year-old Anthony May, who was sentenced to more than seven years alongside Revell-Reade, was billed for 250,000 pounds.
Revell-Reade took a 35 percent cut of profits from the scam, buying property in London, Austria, Spain and Australia, chartering private flights and yachts, and buying fine wines and luxury cars.
Their convictions were linked to seven other individuals, also convicted and sentenced following a seven-year investigation by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) code-named Operation Steamroller. The SFO welcomed the confiscation orders.
"These individuals benefited substantially from their crimes," said Mark Thompson, the head of the SFO's proceeds of crime division.
Both men have been given three months to pay the orders or face an additional prison sentence - 10 years' imprisonment for Revell-Reade and 3 years' imprisonment for May.
The judge ordered that the cash recovered be returned to the victims in the case.
($1 = 0.6945 pounds)