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Fraudster gets four years’ jail

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A Manchester businessman involved in a huge international “advance fee” fraud has been jailed.

Michael Rashman was sentenced to four years and nine months’ imprisonment by a judge who told him: “You have tarnished the good name of British overseas trading.”

Judge Gerald Clifton told Rashman, 54, that he accepted he had not played the leading role. He put his role “behind that of Carl Montlake but ahead of David Sasson”, the other two Jewish defendants.

He said that it was not pleasant to send a person like him to prison but he had a duty to the public.

Rashman, of Kersal Gardens, Salford, was found guilty last month at Liverpool Crown Court of conspiracy to defraud between January 1, 1998 and April 20, 2004.

His barrister, David Scutt , urged the judge to keep the sentence as short as possible because of his client’s wife’s ill health.

“There have been two trials, whose proceedings have lasted for four-and-a-half years, and that has taken its toll on his wife’s health. The innocents of the case also include Rashman’s children,” said Mr Scutt. “His good name has gone and the confiscation proceedings will devastate him and his family,” he added.

Confiscation proceedings are to begin on December 15. Montlake, 47, of Spring Vale, Prestwich, was convicted at a previous trial and jailed for six years. Sasson, 47, of Childwall, Liverpool, who admitted the fraud plot, was jailed for two years last October.

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