Man who stole £9,800,000 used it to fund lavish life of 96 houses and fleet of cars

A businessman who stole £9,800,000 used his ill-gotten gains to fund a lavish lifestyle of 96 houses and a fleet of luxury cars. Jason Butler, 46, masterminded an international VAT scam to steal ‘enough money to pay for more than 500 new NHS nurses’, HMRC said.

Butler owned Ferraris, a Lamborghini, a Rolls Royce, a Mercedes and a speedboat while his property portfolio included a luxurious home in Marbella and 96 houses in Leeds. Formerly of Leeds, Butler created hundreds of false invoices to steal millions of pounds in VAT and tried to hide the scam in a complex trading chain involving companies in the UK, Gibraltar, Spain and the US. He told investigators he bought almost £60 million worth of personal data, relating to Payment Protection Insurance (PPI), but was really trading cheap raw data and forging purchase invoices to falsely reclaim VAT.

Eden Noblett, Assistant Director, Fraud Investigation Service, HMRC said: ‘Butler thought he was clever and his scam too sophisticated to be uncovered. But, he was not as clever as he believed. ‘This was a complex fraud involving offshore companies and moving money internationally. This case should serve as a warning to anyone considering stealing taxpayer’s money.

‘No matter how clever and sophisticated you think your fraud is, we will catch you.’ He was jailed for nine years yesterday at Leeds Crown Court after admitting fraud at a previous hearing. Mr Noblett said: ‘Butler stole enough money to pay for more than 500 new NHS nurses. We will not allow anyone to steal funding from our schools and hospitals.’

Butler ran a number of companies in Yorkshire, which were part of Jump Group Ltd, before he moved to Spain. He bought and sold valuable PPI customer data from nine UK companies via an international agency which he also controlled, between November 2011 and January 2015.

Metro.co.uk