Multi-million pound Rotherham fraudsters jailed

TWO FRAUDSTERS who ripped off people’s savings using a have failed to persuade top judges to overturn their convictions on appeal.

Charles William Eric Frisby (66), of Haugh Road, Rotherham, and co-defendant Douglas Miller (51), from Worksop, launched the £2 million bogus investment scam in 2003.

After incorporating a company in the Seychelles, they aimed their fraud at ex-pat investors.

Of the £2 million they received from clients, none was invested, and instead large sums were transferred to bank accounts in other countries.

On December 21 last year at Worcester Crown Court, the pair were convicted of conspiracy to defraud. Miller was sentenced to three-and-a-half years and Frisby to four and a half.

Both asked Lord Justice Toulson, Mrs Justice Dobbs and Judge Martin Stephens QC, sitting at London's Criminal Appeal Court, to overturn their convictions, arguing that they had not received a fair trial.

Their lawyers told the court that remarks the trial judge made in his summing up of the case to the jury were too “unfavourable” to Miller and Frisby’s defence.

But, dismissing the pair’s challenge, Lord Justice Toulson said the judge had been “entitled” to say what he did. 

The appeal judge told the court: “If he was entitled to make that suggestion, it is difficult to make out a case that the fairness of the trial became distorted by the manner of the language in which he conveyed it.

“In short, we are not persuaded either that the direction given was unfair or had the noxious effects which have been submitted that it did. Miller’s appeal is therefore dismissed and Frisby’s application is refused.”