- Published

Three men have been jailed over a multi-million pound tree-planting scam that cost 3,000 investors their workplace pensions.

Matthew Pickard, 55, Stephen Greenaway, 46, and Paul Laver, 47, bought luxury cars and holidays from the profits of Bournemouth-based Ethical Forestry Ltd, which promised forestry investments in Costa Rica.

The firm took £70m from small investors before it collapsed in 2015, Southwark Crown Court heard.

Pickard, who pleaded guilty to fraudulent trading, was jailed for six years. Greenaway and Laver, who also admitted the charge, received sentences of five years and three months and four and a half years respectively.

Judge Alexander Milne KC said it was "hard to overstate the impact of the company's collapse".

He added: "Directors of companies are entitled to receive remuneration, shareholders' dividends.

"This was neither. This was plunder."

The directors took £14m from the firm, which employed hundreds of sales staff at a Bournemouth call centre.

Former employee Susan Cox told the BBC that staff became used to the sound of the directors' "top-of-the-range, flash cars roaring into the parking area".

Between them, the men bought 45 Ferraris, Porsches and other cars, hiding them when clients came to visit, the court was told.

Investors were offered a "free pension review" by staff, prosecutors said.

They were then recommended to move their funds to Ethical Forestry by another employee, sitting in the same building.

Within hours, papers would be biked around to investors' homes for signing, which allowed the business to drain their funds.

Some trees were planted in Costa Rica, but the defendants did not maintain the plantation or fund infrastructure to help with harvesting, prosecutors said.

Andrea Panayi, from Middlewich in Cheshire, lost £125,000 from the pension pot that she built up over 20 years as a bank worker.

She said: "How can you treat human beings like that? How can you do it, living off other people like that?

"You look at them and they're quite pathetic.

"They don't have things written on their foreheads to tell you that they're pure evil, but then they really are. All of them."

Greenaway, a former martial arts teacher, and Laver, his one-time flatmate, were both painted by their defence teams as playing a supporting role to Pickard.

The men will serve a third of their sentences before being eligible for release, the judge said.