Stephen Rae, a financial advisor from Northumbria, pleads guilty to pocketing roughly £2 million from 16 separate victims. Having his fraud first come to light in 2015, Rae had continued to deny everything, until last week on June 20th, where he pleaded guilty to committing all the fraud at the Newcastle Crown Court.
His offense first came to light in 2015 when he was reported by two victims for committing a six-figure fraud. At the time he had informed the two to invest their money in various schemes and had promised them significant returns but made no contacts whatsoever after accepting the money.
A warrant was later issued against Rae, and during the search the Northumbria Police officers noted several suspicious items, including a luxury car and found records of approximately £2.8 million being invested into him through his banking records.
His laptop, which was among the devices that was seized by the officers, contained financial records of 113 clients, and after contacting each of them, found 14 other individuals who suffered significant losses at the hands of Stephen Rae.
Why did it take so long?
Rae has been brought in for questioning numerous times prior to this. When he was brought in in January of 2018, he refused to cooperate with the enquiries and had refused to make any comments in the interviews.
However, thanks to the hard work of the officers and enough evidence, Stephen Rae was charged with a total of 16 offenses to which he pleaded guilty. As of now, Rae has been released on bail but is dated to be sentenced on the 8th of September.
Words from the Officers
In the interview conducted later, the officer in charge of the case, Detective Constable Craig Tomlinson made a few comments. He hopes that this sets an example of how greed has an impact on the victims, and how it ruins many hopes and dreams while also removing trust from genuine advisors.
He also hopes for anyone who gets caught in these scams to report to the authorities in order to be able to take immediate action and bring the offenders to the court.
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