Ex-Shropshire businessmen face fraud charges
Two former Shropshire businessmen are alleged to have made false claims about their backgrounds and their companies' ability to make children's animated TV shows, to dupe people to invest almost £14 million, a court heard.
David Murray Griffiths, 50, and Simon Drew, 49, obtained cash, cheques or guarantees for substantial sums of money over a five-year period through a Bewdley-based company, Inspire GLG Ltd, which is now in administration.
They are alleged to have made false representations to get people to put money into a series of limited companies set up to produce programmes with titles such as Boblins, Odd-Jobbers, Galactic Circus, Ambers' Animals, Inuit Adventures and Monster School.
A jury at Birmingham Crown Court was told today only the animated Boblins programme was aired on TV in 2006 in the UK and later shown in Sweden, Norway, Canada and New Zealand. All the companies failed with little or no return for the investors.
Griffiths, of New Road, Oreton, near Cleobury Mortimer, and Drew, formerly of Larches Lane, Oreton, and now living in Rye, East Sussex, deny 16 charges of fraud by false representation and 18 allegations of deception involving the obtaining of monies, cheques and financial guarantees between 2004 and 2009.
Alleged victims were induced by using figures relating to the success of Disney products or Thomas the Tank Engine, suggesting the Boblins and other programmes had the potential to be successful global merchandise phenomenons, the court heard
Mr Malcolm Morse QC, prosecuting, said the defendants created the impression that Boblins was in the same league to attract investors but it was all "smoke and mirrors".
Mr Morse said the driving force behind the invited investments was Griffiths.
"It is not the prosecution case that the defendants did not want to make further animated TV programmes, but that their descriptions of themselves were misleading to investors," he said. "Griffiths' description of his own history and abilities and his companies' abilities, were so exaggerated and, in some instances, simply false, that the prospectus used to persuade people to invest was dishonestly misleading and, taken over all, was an entire misrepresentation."
Mr Morse said Drew, an independent financial adviser, had been engaged by Griffiths to deal directly with potential investors using "the script". He said: "But by 2008 Drew, realising things were not going to end happily, added to the frauds by concealing the likelihood of failure and selling his own stakes in the productions under an assumed name, so nobody would be alerted, but he would be saved," he said.
The trial continues.
