Eight men were jailed on Wednesday (May 4) for a total of 34 years for defrauding elderly people out of approximately £1 million.

The gang from London and the South East were convicted at the Old Bailey following a Met Police investigation into the ‘Bank of Terror’ conmen responsible for defrauding victims in Devon and Cornwall and across the country.

A number of the organised crime gang’s 140 victims were from Devon and Cornwall and were identified by Operation Fardel, which has been investigating these offences for over 18 months.

The Operation Fardel team were established in Devon and Cornwall when the Force started to receive numerous calls from elderly victims in 2014. These victims have lost thousands of pounds to fraudsters who pretended to be calling from the bank fraud department or police fraud squad in the Metropolitan police.

One elderly woman from Cornwall lost £130,000 of her savings at the hands of these conmen. After being contacted by a man posing as a police officer investigating ‘fraud’ at her bank, she was told to call 999 but it was in fact a gang member who had stayed on the line. He told her to transfer her savings, in separate transactions of between £12,500 and £20,000.

Inspector John Shuttleworth, the lead officer for Operation Fardel, said: ’We are delighted with the outcome of the recent court case.’