SFO secures combined 15-year-nine-month sentence against three directors of Ethical Forestry Limited for a £70 million pension investment fraud targeting more than 3,000 victims

On 3 September 2026, Southwark Crown Court sentenced three former directors of Ethical Forestry Limited to a combined 15 years and nine months in prison for orchestrating a seven-year, £70 million investment fraud. Matthew Pickard, 56, received six years; Stephen Greenaway, 47, five years and three months; and Paul Laver, 47, four years and six months. All three were also disqualified from acting as company directors for ten years. The Serious Fraud Office (SFO) told the court that the three men ran a Bournemouth-based call centre that cold-called members of the public, many of them pensioners, and persuaded them to withdraw funds from their pension schemes and invest in a tree-planting operation in Costa Rica. Employees used false company names, concealing their true employer, to build victim trust before encouraging transfers. While trees were planted, nothing was set aside for maintenance or harvesting, making the promised returns impossible to achieve. Investigators found that the defendants spent millions of stolen money on luxury goods: Greenaway purchased a £1.9 million home; Pickard bought a £4.3 million property in Sandbanks, Poole. A further £2.77 million of investor money was diverted to fund a tax avoidance scheme for the directors' own benefit. The strength of the SFO's evidence prompted all three defendants to plead guilty to fraudulent trading in January 2026, ahead of a scheduled trial.