After all of the recent fraud revelations, this one might seem like small fry until you see the sentence. British man Robert Tringham, 64, from Knebworth, Herts, has been charged in the United States over a $7 million (£4.39 million) investment fraud. He is accused of running a Ponzi scheme – think Bernie Madoff but rather smaller obviously. Now £4m is not to be sniffed at but compared to the $50b+ Madoff gambled with there’s no comparison. In sentencing terms however you might be a little surprised to know that Tringham faces 170 years in jail. Whatever the merits of the sentence, in isolation it seems odd when you consider that some estimates for Madoff’s possible sentence have come in at more like 150 years. Now whilst either sentence is academic in terms of life expectancy you can definitely see who got the most bang for their buck! Bet he wished he stayed in Blighty.

In a separate bit of financial fiddling a third Morgan Stanley trader in as many weeks has been banned for front-running in the firm’s London office. Nilesh Shroff used knowledge of seven institutional clients’ planned buy and sell orders to trade in advance for the benefit of the bank. He has been banned from working in the City for an unspecified period and fined £140,000.