Fraudulent Arson: Operation Nero and Beyond

Abstract

The scries of trials arising out of the Metropolitan Police investigation into arson and other insurance frauds under the name Operation Nero concluded in early 1998. The central figure was loss assessor Peter Scott, who was convicted, along with various associates, at two trials in 1996 and 1997 for a number of offences going back to the early 1990s. He received three years' imprisonment for several offences of conspiring to defraud involving bogus burglaries, and another assessor and a jeweller who provided fake valuations received one year each. He was then sentenced to seven years, to run consecutively with his earlier sentence, for organising the arson of a clothing warehouse in the East End of London, and a further five years on charges of conspiracy to defraud insurers, to run concurrently. The owner of the warehouse also received seven years, and three co‐conspirators who rented space in the warehouse received three‐year sentences. A number of other co‐conspirators gave evidence for the Crown. Scott was acquitted in a further trial where he was accused of a £400,000 mortgage fraud which police described as complex and clever. The value of the fraudulent arson at the warehouse was £5m and the police estimated that Scott was responsible for at least £30m of insurance claims, half of them settled by the time his business was raided and records siezed in 1992.

Citation

Clarke, M. (1998), "Fraudulent Arson: Operation Nero and Beyond", Journal of Financial Crime, Vol. 6 No. 1, pp. 66-68. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb025865