Three company directors behind a £70million eco-Ponzi scheme are facing years in jail after admitting fraud, having spent investors' money on supercars, mansions and luxury holidays. Stephen Greenaway, Paul Laver and Matthew Pickard ran Bournemouth-based Ethical Forestry Limited, which persuaded more than 3,000 people to invest their savings and pensions in tree-planting schemes in Costa Rica, promising both ecological benefit and "massive returns". The case highlights how the trio exploited investors' ethical motivations while secretly funding their own lavish lifestyles and using new investors' money to pay fake returns to earlier ones.

Between 2008 and 2015, EFL bought 48 plots of land for £10million and sold two million trees, with investments ranging from £10,000 to £200,000. Prosecutors told Southwark Crown Court that "thinning harvest" payments, supposedly funded by early tree sales, were in fact a Ponzi-style device used to lure further investment while masking the company's true financial state. The defendants also funnelled money into a tax avoidance scheme that left a £40million liability, worsening the firm's position by £28million, while Greenaway alone spent £1.3million on 26 cars including three Ferraris and five Porsches before the company collapsed.