Two men in the U.K. were convicted this week of money laundering and fraud in one of the first green collar crime cases, and certainly one of the first cases involving Canada.
The two men, David John Downes and Ian David Macdonald, sold shares in entities which claimed to own carbon credits, raising upwards of $9 million from investors and subsequently transferred the funds to Canadian and US banks. They operated a boiler room, an office in which several hundred persons cold-call prospective investors over a period of several months to raise funds. The investments were made to several unregistered entities including North American Charter Inc., Fidelity Capital Management, North Pacific Charter LLC, Hampton Capital Management Inc., and North Pacific Escrow.
Downes and Macdonald were sentenced to eight years in jail and 4.5 years for money laundering and fraud, respectively.