Court of appeal to decide if seven-year term handed to serial confidence trickster Achilleas Kallakis was not long enough

The attorney general is appeal against the seven-year jail sentence handed down to Achilleas Kallakis, 44, a serial confidence trickster, claiming it was unduly lenient.

The court of appeal will hear the matter next month alongside a plea from jailed City trader Nick “Beano” Levene, 48, who will argue that the 13-year sentence he received last November was too severe. The two sentences were handed down in the space of two months at Southwark crown court, where judges are used to dealing with complex fraud prosecutions.

Offences committed by Levene and Kallakis were different, but the two appeals raise questions about consistency of sentencing by judges in Serious Fraud Office cases.

Kallakis, a former Croydon travel agent, duped banks out of more than £750m, posing as a Mayfair property tycoon.

Together with an old university friend, Alex Williams, Kallakis was found guilty in January of two counts of conspiracy to defraud. Williams, an expert forger, was given a five-year jail term.

The verdict came at the end of a second four-month trial brought by the Serious Fraud Office.

An earlier trial had been marred by a suspected attempt to nobble the jury and was eventually abandoned when Williams attempted to commit suicide. The attorney general is seeking a longer sentence in relation to Williams also.

In his sentencing remarks in January, Judge Andrew Goymer suggested that lenders defrauded by Kallakis – Allied Irish Bank and Bank of Scotland – “do bear some degree of responsibility” for Britain’s largest mortgage fraud. He described them as having “undoubtedly acted carelessly and imprudently”.

Among the many warning signs the banks failed to spot was that, under previous names, Kallakis and Williams had past convictions for a forgery scam involving the sale of bogus manorial titles to Americans.

The appeal is set for 12 April.

Victims of Levene’s £32m Ponzi fraud included Richard Caring, owner of upmarket restaurants The Ivy and Le Caprice and Sir Brian Souter and his sister Ann Gloag, founders of Stagecoach.

Levene had pleaded guilty to 12 counts of fraud, one count of false accounting and one count of obtaining a money transfer by deception.