Controversial activist who campaigned against migrants was convicted of call centre fraud

A controversial activist from Swansea who campaigned against migrants has admitted he was one of a group sentenced for a wide-ranging call centre fraud. Daniel Raymond Morgan, who tried to get elected to the Senedd as a UK Independence Party (Ukip) candidate in 2021, was one of 16 people sentenced in Swansea Crown Court last week for their role in a call centre in which millions of text messages were sent out to con people into thinking they would receive refunds.

Morgan, the joint founder of a group called Voice of Wales, was found guilty of conspiracy to commit fraud and given a six-month prison sentence suspended for 12 months with a rehabilitation course and a mental health treatment requirement. A news article on October 26 made the link that it was the same Daniel Morgan who had been selected to contest the Swansea East Senedd seat in 2021 and the one who fronts Voice of Wales with a colleague.

Shortly after the story was published Morgan, 38, 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. He said he pleaded not guilty and maintains his innocence.

Jurors at Swansea Crown Court were told that the father of four was part of the "Noddle team" fraudulently accessing people's credit reports. The call centre was set up to con people out of money on the back of the UK's long-running payment protection insurance (PPI) scandal.

Members of the public were promised big payouts, but the real aim of the company, which went by various names including HES Synergy Limited and HES Savings Audit Ltd and operated from Swansea Enterprise Park, was to get victims' credit card details and steal money from them. The court heard that the call centre was responsible for more than 53m scam phone messages and that many of the hundreds of people 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 expected" and in the call centre "lying to customers was 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.

Voice of Wales, meanwhile, 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 alternative media in Wales that presents an opposition to the "corrupt establishment", appeared at his house three times on one day with a video camera running. He said he was only there on the third occasion but that his wife had answered the door on the second occasion and was asked where her husband was. The politician said his wife had been unnerved and didn't want to be alone in the house afterwards. He added: "They (Voice of Wales) don't operate like any journalists I have spoken to."

Morgan came fifth in the 2021 Swansea East Senedd election, polling 567 votes. The Local Democracy Reporting Service has approached Ukip for comment.