{"id":248425,"date":"2026-01-16T20:56:06","date_gmt":"2026-01-16T20:56:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/248425\/"},"modified":"2026-01-16T20:56:06","modified_gmt":"2026-01-16T20:56:06","slug":"three-admit-to-running-70-million-pension-fraud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/248425\/","title":{"rendered":"Three admit to running \u00a370 million pension fraud"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Several hundred employees would contact people from Ethical Forestry&#8217;s call centre in Bournemouth, according to the SFO.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Rather than being offered independent advice, those who agreed to proceed, entered what was described by investigators as &#8220;a closed loop&#8221;. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The firm offering the advice had been hired by Pickard, Greenaway and Laver and was paid commission on everyone they referred back to Ethical Forestry. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;In effect, once the member of the public had been convinced, out of the blue to have a pension review, they were always going to be referred back to Ethical Forestry,&#8221; explained Jason Williams.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Julie Bertelli was one of the more than 3,000 people who fell victim to the scam.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">She did not have a workplace pension, but wanted to invest some money left to her by a relative to help with her retirement. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Investing in Costa Rica, as it became the first tropical country to reverse deforestation, looked like it would not only be good for the planet, but also good for her bank balance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Several hundred employees would contact people from Ethical Forestry&#8217;s call centre in Bournemouth, according to the SFO. Rather&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":248426,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[72,176,61,60,174,175],"class_list":{"0":"post-248425","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-personal-finance","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-finance","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-personal-finance","13":"tag-personalfinance"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=248425"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248425\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/248426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=248425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=248425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=248425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}