A company boss and three others are on trial, facing charges of conspiracy to defraud and conspiracy to commit false accounting after allegedly scamming more than 20 financial institutions, a jury was told.

The accused reportedly used proceeds from the £110 million scam to fund lavish lifestyles, including two of the conspirators buying a “£1.25 million house outright, without a mortgage.”

Max Fraser, 44, pleaded guilty at Leicester Crown Court to masterminding the intricate fraud between March 2001 and December 2007. Nylacast Limited, a Leicester plastics firm, was where Fraser, the former MD and boss, carried out the alleged scam – creating hundreds of bogus invoices for machinery and pieces of equipment that either did not exist or had multiple hire-purchase agreements on them.

Prosecutor Miranda Moore stated: "Mr Fraser lived a very comfortable, if not lavish, lifestyle. He managed to buy a yacht with the deposit coming out of the Nylacast accounts," reports the Leicester Mercury.

In reference to the fraud, Moore continued: "The success of it and why it went on for so long was because Max (Fraser) is a very charismatic man. He talked a good talk and produced excellent-looking documents.”

Fraser’s fellow accomplices so far deny conspiracy to defraud financial institutions and conspiracy to commit false accounting.

James Randall, 60, the former finance director at Nylacast Ltd, further denies fraudulent trading with Fraser by knowingly carrying on allowing Nylacast to defraud the firm’s creditors up until the company went into administration in 2007.

David and Elizabeth Liversidge, who ran HTL Ltd, an industrial oven business based in Stoke-on-Trent, allegedly received around £5 million by taking a 5 per cent payment for all the “dodgy deals”. They reportedly used this money to buy a £1.25 million house.

The trial continues.