The High Court has ordered a network of 'phantom companies' into liquidation after they successfully conned a number of building material suppliers.

With reported combined assets of £13 million including over £1.6 million in cash, the six companies were ran solely as instruments for fraud to obtain credit by filing false accounts and other false information.

The Court heard that all bar one of the companies were incorporated by the same formation agent, a Jade Evans (who has not been located), and her company, ABN Company Formations Ltd (now dissolved).

50 other companies have been formed by Jade Evans and used as part of a company network engaged in fraud.

The investigation discovered how the six companies each had various common features such as inexplicable and dramatic increases in their share capital, the appointment of fictitious officers, identity theft, the filing of false accounts reporting significant assets and trading, all to give the impression of a legitimate business.

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Each firm targeted building trade suppliers, depriving them of more than £300,000 of goods comprising cable and other electrical goods, steel and reinforcing rods, ceramic tiles, paint, flooring, artificial grass and computer and office supplies.

Chris Mayhew, Company Investigations Supervisor at the Insolvency Service, welcomed the courts winding up decisions.

"The accounts and information presented by these companies reporting them as substantial and credit-worthy businesses trading profitably for a number of years was as false as the artificial grass supplied to one of them," he said.

"Each company was part of an organised operation and the goods delivered to them without payment were swiftly collected and put beyond reach for the benefit of those behind the companies and those who ultimately utilised the goods stolen.

"Typically this type of fraud can inflict losses on legitimate business of hundreds of thousands of pounds and in this instance nearly caused a small supplier to go out of business himself because of the loss inflicted."

(LM)