Controversial activist guilty of call centre scam
- Published
Morgan was convicted of conspiracy to commit fraud and given a six-month prison sentence, suspended for 12 months
A controversial activist has admitted his role in a call centre scam.
Daniel Raymond Morgan, 38, was one of 16 people who sent millions of texts aimed at swindling people's money.
He was found guilty of conspiracy to commit fraud and given a six-month prison sentence suspended for 12 months.
Morgan is joint founder of Voice of Wales, a group prominent in Llanelli during protests opposing housing asylum seekers in a hotel.
The group's YouTube channel has been labelled "racist" and accused of expressing "foul" and "unacceptable" language and ideas.
He also stood for the Senedd as a UK Independence Party (UKIP) candidate back in 2021.
Morgan has appeared in a video on Voice of Wales' Facebook page saying he had worked for the scam call centre in 2015 for 40 working days, or fewer, and that he was paid less than the minimum wage.
He also said he didn't get paid a bonus and that he was owed money when the company shut down.
Jurors at Swansea Crown Court were told that the father of four was part of the "Noddle team" fraudulently accessing people's credit reports, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.
The call centre was set up to trick people out of their money on the back of the UK's long-running payment protection insurance (PPI) scandal.
Members of the public were promised big pay-outs, but the real aim of the company - which operated from Swansea Enterprise Park and went by various names, including HES Synergy Limited and HES Savings Audit Ltd - was to get victims' credit card details and steal their money.
Voice of Wales has been a prominent presence at the protests outside Llanelli's Stradey Park Hotel over now defunct plans to house asylum seekers there
The court heard that the call centre was responsible for more than 53 million scam phone messages, and that many of the hundreds who paid up to £550 in the belief that they were due substantial PPI refunds were elderly and vulnerable.
The prosecution said while the fraud was orchestrated from those at the top of the business, anyone involved in the PPI calls for any length of time would have realised that lying was "rampant, essential and the norm".
Investigators said the approximate loss to individual victims was in the region of £200,000, and that the offending had taken place in the last three months of 2015.
The court also heard that some people had in fact been passed on to legitimate PPI reclaim businesses.
A total of four people had received a PPI refund, although the amounts received had been far less than promised by HES Synergy Ltd.
Judge Huw Rees said the call centre operation had been a "deliberate, planned fraud carefully structured and fraudulent from its inception" and at the heart of the conspiracy lay the defendants' greed which "overrode any compassion or concern" for the victims.
As part of his sentence Morgan was also ordered to undertake a rehabilitation course and mental health treatment.
Voice of Wales has been a prominent presence in Llanelli during protests since the early summer about the UK Home Office's now defunct plan to house asylum seekers in the Stradey Park Hotel.
One politician in Llanelli claimed Voice of Wales, which describes itself as the only Welsh media alternative to the "corrupt establishment", appeared at his house three times in one day with a video camera running.
Mr Morgan came fifth in the 2021 Swansea East Senedd election, polling 567 votes.
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