A former estate agent who planned to have a national network of branches has been jailed for nine years after committing fraud worth almost £10m.
Jason Butler, who ran first Homestarter and then Jump Group, used the money to fund a lavish lifestyle which included a collection of supercars, a luxury home in Spain, a speedboat and a portfolio of 96 properties in Leeds.
Butler, 46, masterminded the £9.8m fraud by creating hundreds of false invoices to steal millions of pounds in VAT.
He then tried to hide the scam in a complex trading chain involving companies in the UK, Gibraltar, Spain and the US, an investigation by HMRC revealed.
Butler, who lived in Spain, told HMRC he bought almost £60m worth of personal data, but this was a lie.
In reality he was forging purchase invoices to falsely reclaim VAT and trading very cheap raw data through a complex international supply chain in a bid to hide his crimes.
Eden Noblett, assistant director of Fraud Investigation Service at 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 taxpayers’ money.
“No matter how clever and sophisticated you think your fraud is, we will catch you.
“Tax fraud takes money away from the vital public services we all use. Butler stole enough money to pay for more than 500 new NHS nurses.”
Butler controlled a company called Multi Level Media, based in Leeds. He said he bought and sold Payment Protection Insurance customer data from nine UK companies via an international agency which he also controlled, between November 2011 and January 2015.
However, no trade ever took place and Butler had created hundreds of phoney invoices.
Instead he was buying and selling cheap raw data to a series of firms in the UK, who then sold it to a respectable data company in Gibraltar. The data was sold by it to a company in the US, which was also controlled by Butler.
Each step of the transaction chain was arranged and controlled by Butler.
He created this series of transactions to try and hide his fraud by involving several companies, some of which had an established tax history with HMRC.
On paper it appeared the fraudster had paid substantial amounts of VAT. But the purchases were fake and backed up by forged invoices, which he used to falsely reclaim £9,875,806 in VAT.
Butler was arrested by police at Manchester International Airport when he arrived into the UK from Malaga in January 2015.
Last week, Butler was found guilty at Leeds Crown Court of VAT fraud. He has now been sentenced to nine years in prison at the same court by His Honour Judge Jameson QC.
Proceedings are now under way to recover the stolen money.
The estate agency empire that crashed
If Butler were starting out in estate agent today, he would doubtless describe himself as a disruptor.
He launched Homestarter at the age of 22, with the business then taken over by Jump – which Butler also headed.
The business grew to around 30 franchises in Yorkshire, Derbyshire and Lincolnshire, and made much of the fact that it presented a challenge to traditional estate agents, who were said to loathe the business.
It offered vendors a fixed price sale inclusive of financial and legal services. First-time buyers could get on the property ladder with 95% mortgages and with loans for deposits, all arranged by Jump.
Butler, who employed both his parents in the business, was awarded Yorkshire Young Director of the Year by the Institute of Directors.
He had huge ambitions for Jump, planning a network of 80 branches across the UK.
However, in 2004 Jump had to give a series of undertakings to the OFT that it would comply with the Estate Agents Act, and a year later went into administration leaving creditors thousands of pounds out of pocket.
A deal saw Butler buy the assets and form a new company, Jazbut, which has since been dissolved.
“If Butler were starting out in estate agent today, he would doubtless describe himself as a disruptor”
A quick and painful jab to the kidneys!!!!
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Long overdue comeuppance
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One of his Constant dealings with the ASA was his contract in which he said that you sign for how much your house will sell. So Great auntie Vera would be told that she would get the £80,000 (it was the 90’s) she needed to move to the nursing home . Then the house would sell at £120,000 . Vera would get …..£80,000 because that’s what she signed for , then jump would keep the rest . I recall him being truly a horrific man
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WOW!
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Let me guess…did asa settle the matter informally?
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The penny should have dropped when he called a company jazzbutt….. What the…
Type in jump estate agents into Google and see who is top of the page……… the Lord speaks in mysterious ways. Bless you all honest estate agents.
It’s purplebricks if u can’t be bothered to look.
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Jazzbutt?
Must have known he would end up in prison.
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lol
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Brilliant!
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Jason Butler has always been looking for the ‘get rich quick’ option. Jump were a disgrace back in the day, scamming customers on a daily basis. Sounds like he’s got his comeuppance!
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iam sure i remember reading about jump in the Times years ago … just shows media report on businesses, calling them disruptors , when really the only thing they are disrupting is ethics.
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I’ll get in before the dismal duo come on chucking their damp squibs into the room, banging on about how articles relating to Agents who disregard the Law never get the degree of interest or response that others do.
This is a prosecution. A guilty party sent down for committing criminal offences. Sadly, one of ours – which no doubt will be seen by some of the population as further proof to them that we all, without exception, have fins on our backs and voids where our consciences should reside.
In this case the legal system has seemingly worked. Unless there is some monumental miscarriage of justice, the only relevant thread of comment here is surely whether the system is too lenient and that the punishment doesn’t befit the crime. No doubt there are views either way on that point.
In respect of the subject of the article, obviously a devious mind was at work here. As the son of a copper and (pretty much as a direct result of that fact) as someone having more than a passing interest in the legal system and those who fail to abide by the laws of our land – particularly those that affect my ‘world’ – I always wonder at what point someone ‘turns’; and for what reasons. Not that it matters – a law-breaker is a law-breaker, simple as – and it is apparently impossible to see the moment that the switch flicks that causes the change.
I’d challenge ducky, dom-boy or any other to put forward an argument that this was preventable, or that any form of regulation of our industry would have made it impossible to commit the act. ANY business owner, in any line of business, could find a way to carry out such a ‘sting’. Maybe not to that extent…
…but is stealing ten pounds any less of a crime than stealing ten million?
I would suggest not.
Over to the d’n’d duo…
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Seeing as this bl00dy site STILL keeps kicking me out and then won’t let me amend any posts, I would just point out that I started to post the above just after 8 this morning, and then got waylaid.
I’m frankly amazed that the first paragraph was still relevant.
Wonder if they’re on a 10-day training exercise? Seems like the excuse of the moment…
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As another Dom (not THE Dom obviously, although to me I am THE Dom and he is the other one), I wholeheartedly agree.
I also have a very close relationship with law enforcement (for all the right reasons), and as you quite rightly say, there will always be those that find a way to break the law. Some will succeed, some will get caught, and sometimes the CPS will support the charge with a decent prosecution which the courts will uphold.
In any eventuality, this was a complex and well considered crime and it appears justice was, to a lesser or greater extent, served.
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Says it all really.
15 comments.
Yet here http://www.propertyindustryeye.com/purplebricks-shares-fall-below-the-3-mark-on-the-stock-exchange-but-why/ there are 38 comments for an article about PurpleBricks’ share price movements which asks the question “why?” but doesn’t offer an answer apart from some alleged Analyst theory (or was it somebody who isn’t an analyst – no name was mentioned and no analyst comment can be found to support the allegation).
I’ve noticed PeeBee commenting more frequently on reports of illegal activity by traditional Agents in recent days. Let’s see how long that lasts and in a while let’s see if we can find anything that might have caused this change in frequency and compare before and after.
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“I’ve noticed PeeBee commenting more frequently on reports of illegal activity by traditional Agents in recent days.”
Funny how you can “notice” things considering how far up your @r$e you have stuffed your bill…
“Let’s see how long that lasts”
About nine years so far, and counting.
“let’s see if we can find anything that might have caused this change in frequency and compare before and after.”
You wanna compare? You’ve got an awful lot of articles in the archive of EYE – and EAT pre-2014 – to go through, pal.
Knock. Yourself. Out.
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