On-the-run fraudster Anthony Constantinou, 42, who has been dubbed the ‘real-life Wolf of Wall Street’ has been ordered to pay back £64million or spend over 14 years behind bars
An on-the-run fraudster known as the “real-life Wolf of Wall Street” has been slapped with what is believed to be the biggest proceeds of crime order ever made.
Anthony Constantinou, 42, has been ordered to pay back £64 million or spend 14 more years in prison for a huge fraud. Constantinou fled Britain during his £70million investment scam trial at Southwark Crown Court in 2023. He was jailed in his absence for 14 years for fraud and money laundering, duping 312 investors from 2013 to 2015. It was reported last year that a death certificate has emerged appearing to show he died of a heart attack in Guadalajara, Mexico, and was cremated the next day.
But David Marchant, of investigative bureau Offshore Alert, said: “It’s possible he faked his own death. I think he’s probably still alive.”
The confiscation order was made by a judge at Southwark Crown Court on Thursday. Constantinou was jailed for 12 months in 2016 for molesting two women in an atmosphere of “sexual bullying” likened at the Old Bailey to the Hollywood film The Wolf Of Wall Street.
He was three years old when his father, the millionaire clothes designer Aristos Constantinou, was shot dead in his London mansion in 1985 as he returned from a New Year’s Eve party with his wife. The unsolved case became known as the silver bullet murder because he had been killed with six bullets in polished nickel jackets.
Adrian Foster of the Crown Prosecution Service said of the confiscation order: “This was a callous scam targeting members of the public. Many people lost their hard-earned money because of Constantinou’s greed and false promises in this fake investment scheme.
“We continue to pursue the proceeds of crime robustly with the City of London Police, where we identify available assets, to disrupt and deter large scale frauds like this case.
“In the last five years, over £478 million has been recovered from CPS obtained Confiscation Orders, ensuring that thousands of convicted criminals cannot profit from their offending.
“£95 million of that amount has been returned to victims of crime, by way of compensation.”