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THE Financial Conduct Authority has recovered £27,000 from convicted conman Samuel Exall, who ran an illegal land investment scheme which The Mail on Sunday warned against over a decade ago. The cash will now be shared between his victims, who lost £2.8million.

Exall led Synergy Land Group Ltd, which said it had bought land from developers including Taylor Wimpey and Barratt Homes. It offered plots to investors for about £7,000, with the tale that values would rocket to £40,000 within months. The developers had been hit by a fall in house prices and needed the cash, Exall claimed.

I investigated and found that Exall’s sales pitch was all lies. When I questioned him, he told me: ‘Your interest is in writing a story, mine is to continue to run a legitimate commercial enterprise. I do not feel obliged to defend myself before the Court of The Mail on Sunday, as tempting as this might be.’

To which I replied in print that Exall might well find himself as the defendant in a real court.

That was in 2010. A year later, the FCA ordered a halt to

Exall’s scheme. And in 2016, Exall appeared at Southwark Crown Court and admitted that the land he was selling was vastly overpriced farmland with no planning permission for building. He was jailed for four years for fraud and banned from acting as a company director for seven years.

Synergy’s land was auctioned in 2019, raising the £27,000 which the FCA will now hand to Exall’s victims. The total number of Synergy investors is unknown. Only 33 victims lodged claims, four of whom have since died.

Therese Chambers, a director at the FCA, said: ‘Tackling financial crime and securing redress for victims is a priority for us.’