A London court on Wednesday found a British businessman guilty of defrauding investors in a never-completed luxury Caribbean resort project of at least £226 million (R4.6 billion).
The Serious Fraud Office said in a statement that David Ames, 70, "was today found guilty by a jury at Southwark Crown Court on two counts of fraud by abuse of position".
The SFO said it found that Ames "deceived over 8 0000 investors in the Harlequin Group, a hotel and resorts development venture, making them feel this was a secure investment while in reality the group "was never operating as promised".
The scheme saw investors pay a 30 percent deposit to buy an unbuilt villa or hotel room in the purported resorts located in holiday spots such as Barbados and the Dominican Republic.
Around 9 000 such units were sold, but less than 200 units were ever completed and 99 percent of investors received no return, while Ames and his family enriched themselves.
"David Ames committed fraud on a huge scale, knowingly exposing thousands of UK investors to losses totalling hundreds of millions of pounds," the director of the Serious Fraud Office, Lisa Osofsky, was quoted as saying.
The indictment only considered the period 2010 to 2013, when the group went into administration. The SFO estimated total losses of £398 million over the entire eight years when the project was operating.
Ames was charged by the Serious Fraud Office in 2017. He is to be sentenced in September.