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The former chief executive officer of London Capital & Finance has been sentenced to six months in prison after breaching a court restraint order for a second time, the first custodial sentence stemming from one of the UK’s worst retail investment scandals.
Michael Thomson, known as Andy, and his wife Debbie Thomson admitted to the breaches of the asset-restraint order, which totalled about £8,000 and included selling a hot tub, horse saddles, and receiving a holiday refund. Debbie Thomson was handed a six-month sentence suspended for two years.
The Thomsons are subject to a restraint order as part of an ongoing investigation by the UK Serious Fraud Office into the collapse of LCF, which saw 11,000 investors lose more than £237mn between 2014 and 2019. LCF pushed so-called minibonds, promising high returns to individual investors — many of them elderly — by providing financing for small and medium-sized companies.
The High Court in 2024 found Michael Thomson and four others liable for damages over what a judge described as a Ponzi scheme.
Thomson’s conviction and prison sentence do not relate to events leading up to LCF’s collapse but rather to his behaviour during the SFO’s subsequent probe. The prosecutor, which opened an investigation into suspected fraud and money laundering at LCF in 2019, has not filed any charges.
The Thomsons were held in contempt of court following an SFO application.
The husband and wife, who the court heard have now separated, looked straight ahead at Southwark Crown Court in London on Thursday as the sentence was read out. Debbie Thomson squeezed her estranged husband’s shoulder as she left the dock.
Michael Thomson was previously handed a 10-month suspended sentence for breaching the order in 2023 by transferring £95,000 to his wife.
Handing down the sentence, Judge Alexander Milne said: “In January of this year you both admitted the breaches, it was accepted by the SFO that these were reckless breaches rather than deliberate, however reckless in itself is serious and what is quite clear is this is another set of breaches.”
He added: “The court must take all contempt seriously . . . as an attack on the administration of justice.”
In mitigation, counsel for Michael Thomson, 53, said that he was struggling with his mental health. The court was also told that he is in the process of legally changing his name to Andrew Bradshaw.
In sentencing, Milne said that while he accepted “there is some mental health deterioration” there was a “limit to how much the court can take into account such circumstances”.
The court heard that Debbie Thomson, 53, had lost her job and the accommodation that came with it as a result of the court proceedings. She is now living with the couple’s daughter and retraining to become a lorry driver, according to her barrister James Hanman.
Barrister Abigail Bache, acting for Michael Thomson, said that the restraint order had now been in place for seven years without any criminal charges, and that Thomson was planning to apply to have the order discharged.
