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Pair wanted here may have committed fraud in U.K.
More articles on this topic: FraudHoward Welsh and Lee Hope Thrasher, charged in a $31 million investment fraud, may have committed a similar offense in Britain, where they were caught this week, authorities said during a bond hearing Tuesday.
A judge in London ordered the pair jailed without bond for two weeks pending extradition proceedings. They told the judge they would fight being returned to the United States, where they face a 63-count indictment in federal court in Norfolk.
Welsh, 60 , a British native, and Thrasher, 50 , of Virginia Beach, are accused of swindling the money from 1,100 investors in Hampton Roads and across the country.
They disappeared last year after learning about an FBI investigation into their investment plan. They were arrested Monday in the small English town of Whitchurch, where authorities said Welsh’s mother, Doris, lives.
The FBI said Tuesday they had suspected that Welsh and Thrasher had been in Whitchurch, near the Wales border. The area had been under surveillance by British authorities for the past six months. Welsh and Thrasher were captured by a dozen police officers as they stepped off a train there.
Welsh was listed in the telephone directory as a “minister overseer” of the Mother Earth Bank, but the address was actually a retirement home where Welsh’s mother lives, according to British news reports.
The Daily Telegraph reported that Welsh and Thrasher sometimes stayed in a guest room on the premises, but the FBI said Tuesday they had no evidence the couple had been living there.
Although Welsh and his bank were listed in the Whitchurch phone book at that address, the FBI and Scotland Yard said he and Thrasher had actually been living in Birmingham, about 100 miles away. Welsh was using the alias “Hol Holmes Golden” and apparently conducted business over pay phones.
Tina Whybow, a prosecutor at Tuesday’s court hearing, said a search of the couple’s Birmingham address uncovered a large number of documents indicating a continuing fraud.
“It gives rise to a further investigation by the U.K. authorities, by the fraud squad,” she told a judge. “They are looking into a similar scam to that that has been run in America.”
Welsh and Thrasher said little during the court appearance. They declined to provide a home address or telephone number.
According to the FBI and the IRS, the pair had offered bogus investment plans at seminars held at hotels in Hampton Roads and elsewhere since 1999. Family and friends are among the victims.
Investors were promised compounded, tax-free profits and were told they did not have to report the income. Based on investment plans used by churches, the principles used by Thrasher and Welsh are illegal under IRS guidelines.
The couple took tens of thousands of dollars from most of the investors, according to court records. One investor lost $8 million, the records say.
The victims have been eager for the capture of the couple and the return of their money, according to the FBI.
FBI agent Jack Moughan said that $2.5 million to $3 million has been recovered from U.S. banks. The rest had been wired overseas more than three years ago and is difficult to trace, he said.
Moughan said that the couple did not appear to be living lavishly, but that an investigation into their lifestyle and movements over the past year is under way.
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