HalifaxOct 9 2018

HBos banker behind £245m fraud must repay £130k

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HBos banker behind £245m fraud must repay £130k

Banker Lynden Scourfield, 56, forced struggling clients to use the services of his friend David Mills, 62.

Mill charged exorbitant 'consultancy' fees and expenses while running companies into the ground.

Scourfield's rewards included lavish gifts, hospitality, and romps with high-class hookers - he even kept a stash of viagra in a rented flat to fuel his orgies frenzies with porn star Suzie Best.

Scourfield, from Reading, admitted conspiracy to corrupt, money laundering and four counts of fraudulent trading last August and was jailed for 11 years in February 2017.

David Mills, 61, his wife Alison Mills, 51, Michael Bancroft, 74 and John Cartwright, 73, were variously convicted of offences including corruption and fraudulent trading last year.

Mills was jailed for 15 years, Bancroft was jailed for 10 years, Cartwright for three-and-a-half years and HBos banker Mark Dobson, 56, received four-and-a-half years.

Alison Mills was sentenced to three-and-a-half years. 

The gang returned to Southwark Crown Court for a hearing under the Proceeds of Crime Act.

Scourfield was said to have personally made £681,494.68 from the scam but he was given three months to pay back just £131,332.92 or face another 18 months behind bars in default.

The figure included £9,637 worth jewellery bought for his wife on the Mills’ Amex card.

Dobson was ordered to pay back £43,043.82 in three months but there was no default because he has the funds available.

Cartwight was said to have taken around £134,000 from the fraud but will repay just £640 because he has no other realisable assets beyond a car number plate.

Bancroft, David Mills and Alison Mills will face a two week confiscation hearing on 29 April 2019 where the prosecution are expected to try and claw back millions of pounds.

Prosecutor Brian O'Neill had earlier told the court the bribes "took the form of money transfers, birthday parties in Barbados and Thailand, expensive gifts, use of an American Express card for personal spending, unauthorised and inappropriately lavish hospitality, luxurious foreign travel and sexual encounters with high class escorts".

He authorised eye-watering loans to high-risk clients from his HBos office in Reading, regardless of their ability to repay, and ordered them to engage with Mills' bogus company Quayside Corporate Services (QCS).

The QCS 'consultants' - Mills, his wife Alison, 53, Michael Bancroft, 75, and John Cartwright, 72 - creamed off millions to fund the purchase of property across Europe, birthday bashes in Thailand and Barbados, trips to Ascot, and a yacht.

When the firms went into administration, Mills seized what assets were left and transferred them to his sham companies The Sandstone Organisation and Knightingale Investments.

HBos had to write off £245m from Scourfield's toxic loan book after the rogue banker's flagrant scam between 2003 to 2007.

The bank, once the UK's biggest mortgage lender, suffered a devastating collapse during the 2008 credit crunch - and taxpayers were left to foot the £20.5bn bill.

Investigators have scoured the globe in an attempt to claw back the cash - but they believe the crooks have salted away fortunes which will be waiting for them in secret investments when they are released. 

The loans scandal came to light after a six-year investigation dubbed Operation Hornet, the biggest in Thames Valley Police's history.

Southwark Crown Court heard the probe uncovered evidence of "huge rewards" provided by Mills to Scourfield to "effect his corruption".

Sentencing the crooks last year Judge Martin Beddoe had said Scourfield "sold his soul" to Mills in exchange for "sex, luxury trips, bling and swag".

He said: "This was not just about a corrupt bank manager lending money to those he shouldn't have.

"It involved a rapacious and utterly corrupt senior bank manager letting vastly greedy people getting here hands on honest people's money and their tentacles in the businesses of ordinary, decent people.

"They ripped apart these businesses without a thought for the lives they were destroying."

He said Scourfield had done it for "money and the trappings and show of wealth" and "caused the destruction along the way of the livelihood of honest, hardworking people".

He said the effect could be equated in cash terms but not in human terms.

"They have not just lost money but their homes, goer families and their friends," he said.

"They are cheated, defeated and penniless."

The judge said Mills had "bled companies dry" using Bancroft and his "lap dog" Cartwright.

He said Mills then "simply and smugly continued to enjoy the fruits of his wrongdoing".

Turning again to Scourfield he said he did not know how Mills got his "claws" into him for the 'monumental' betrayal.

"He was the devil to who you sold your soul for sex and for luxury trips with or without your wife.

"For bling and swag."

Scourfield was directed by greed and "mesmerised by the luxury in which you let Mr Mills wallow".