Don’t swim with the sharks

In England today, the Centre fior Social Justice estimates that as many as 1.08 million people could be borrowing from an illegal money lender, very often violent predators or criminal groups

MANY people will be waking up to 2023 wondering how they are going to pay for Christmas borrowing.

Thousands will have borrowed on credit cards or taken out loans to pay for the festive season.

But a shock report by the Centre for Social Justice - SwimmingWith Sharks has revealed that as many as 1.08 million families may have borroswed oney from an illegal money lender.

Two in five of us confessed in a recent survey to concealing a financial product from a loved one, such as a credit card or loan.

But despite how common it is to disguise our financial situation, some hidden debts are worse than others.

Money borrowed from an illegal lender is arguably the most dangerous category of hidden debt.

And yet there remain large gaps in our collective understanding of this notoriously elusive crime.

The CSJ report attempts to put this right – and is the culmination of the first major study of illegal money lending in a decade.

CSJ teams travelled the breadth of the country to understand where and how illegal lending takes place; commissioned polling of over 8,000 UK adults; compiled and analysed the largest sample of known victims to date,

They heard first-hand the powerful stories of those exploited, often by ‘friends ’ who turn out to not be friends at all. In England today, we estimate that as many as 1.08 million people could be borrowing from an illegal money lender.

Illegal lending exists in many forms, from small-scale lenders who pester their victims into repayment to violent predators and organised crime groups.

Some lenders even attempt to add a thin veil of legitimacy to their illegal lending by advertising themselves as a company, drawing up fake contracts, and independently lending to vulnerable clients while working for a separate, legitimate company.

Yet the practices used by illegal lenders are changing. New evidence presented in this report shows illegal lenders to be increasingly operating online, using the rapidly evolving social media landscape to entice and exploit new victims.

Using an unpublished dataset of over 1,200 victims, we have carried out the first analysis of its kind to understand the picture of loan shark victims today.

What emerges in the data of known victims is that anyone can be exploited by an illegal money lender, but most victims face a range of interwoven disadvantages – low incomes, long-term health problems and pre-existing indebtedness.

These are the people at the sharpest edge of today ’ s cost-of-living crisis.And the combination of pressures on household budgets, low financial resilience and increasingly limited credit options is liable to create a perfect storm in which people are driven towards exploitation.

Given this context, the continued scale of the problem and its ruinous impact on the lives of the most disadvantaged people in society, the CSJ believes that we must urgently renew the fight against illegal money lending.

In Swimming with Sharks, the CSJ advance 24 recommendations to tackle illegal lending in England today and put people on a path to financial resilience.

Read the full report on YouTube by clicking on the link below https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=1R4wOcEW5uc&feature=yout u.be

CRIME A AND COMMUNITY NEWS

Forger ishit with £290,000 order

A MAN jailed for making and supplying false identity documents has been ordered to pay back more than a quarter of a million pounds in criminal profit.

Ukrainian Oleksandr Sukhoviy,43,was given a confiscation order totalling £289,992 at Kingston Crown Court following a National CrimeAgency investigation.

Sukhoviy (pictured above) has three months to pay the amount,or will be given an additional three-year jail term and still owe the money.

Sukhoviy was jailed for six years at the same court in March 2019,after pleading guilty to conspiring to supplying false documents to commit fraud.He initially denied the charges but changed his plea just before his trial was due to start.

Sukhoviy was arrested by National CrimeAgency officers at his home address in Slough in October 2018.

The arrest followed an investigation into an industrial-scale forgery factory operating in Stratford,East London.

The factory was run by fellow Ukrainian Sergiy Mykhaylov and was set up with computers and printers capable of producing tens of thousands of documents.

Mykhaylov ran an online business through which he received orders and would distribute documents to customers all over the UK. ”

In total,officers recovered over 3,000 completed identity documents,3,500 passport style photos and 300 Construction Skills Certificate Scheme (CSCS) cards,as well as 40,000 blank cards and £15,000 in cash.

Romance fraudster

A MAN who scammed four women he met on an online dating website out of more than £320,000 has been jailed for 12 years.

Emmanuel Scotts, 55, previously of Fulham, London, was found guilty of four counts of fraud by false representation following an eight-week-long trial, having previously pleaded guilty to one count of possessing articles for use in fraud.

He was sentenced to 12 years imprisonment at Kingston Crown Court.

He was brought to justice following an investigation by the Dedicated Card and Payment Crime Unit (DCPCU), a specialist police unit made up of officers from the City of London Police and Metropolitan Police Service.

Scotts befriended several women on an internet dating site and, after gaining their trust, he persuaded them to “invest” savings and returning small sums of “interest” to extract more money.

The reality was that Scotts was manipulating the victims to fund his own lifestyle. In total, the four victims lost a total of £324,083, with one victim losing £232,969.

During sentencing, Scotts was described as “ a career fraudster ” . Confiscation proceedings are ongoing.

Romance fraudster

A SICK South London paedophile who groomed a 9-year-old girl with treats and money before sexually assaulting her, has been jailed for over a decade.

AnthonyWinter, 64, was temporarily living at an address in South London where young children played.

Over a matter of weeks he groomed the girl then on September 23, 2019, he sent another child on an errand and told her to count to 100 before coming back. During that time he digitally penetrated the victim in a shed.

The brave victim immediately told her friends and the following dayWinter was arrested.

He denied the assault which meant the victim and five other children who witnessedWinter ' s grooming behaviour then faced the terrifying experience of being cross-examined in court.

Her and her fellow child witnesses ’ strength and commitment, was a source of inspiration for Detective Sergeant LauraThomas who investigated the horrific crime. She said: "It was terrifying for them but they were brilliant. "

Winter was found guilty of assaulting a girl under 13 by touching and assaulting a girl under 13 by penetration after a six-day trial.

Last monthWinter appeared at Croydon Crown Court where Judge Smaller sentenced him to 11 years in prison with an addition one year extended licence period. He will serve two-thirds of that sentence before he is referred to the parole board.

GPwassex pest

A FORMER GP in Romford has been found guilty of sexually assaulting four women over a four year period.

Manish Shah, 53, was convicted of 25 counts of sexual assault when he appeared at the Old Bailey last month.

The court heard that over a four year period from 2009 to July 2013, Shah took advantage of his position of trust as a Medical General Practitioner in Romford, to persuade women to have invasive examinations when there was no medical need for them, doing this for his own sexual gratification.

Assaulted in bed

A MAN who entered his neighbour ’ s south London home and sexually assaulted her as she lay sleeping has been jailed.

Abel Mahari, 35, of no fixed abode was sentenced at Inner London Crown Court, to four years and three months for sexual assault by touching.

The court heard how on 5 September 2021, the victim, aged in her 20s, was asleep at home when she woke to discover a man sexually assaulting her.

Having entered the address in Lambeth, Mahari and made his way to the victim ’ s bedroom.The assault woke the victim and she screamed for help, shouting at Mahari who ran from the property.

CRIME AND COMMUNITY NEWS

Ex-con blew his £86,000 job

MARTIN Sargeant was one of the lucky one ’ s when he came out of prison after being jailed for stealing from his employers.

Because while many ex-prisoners struggle to find a job and the trust of a new boss, 53 year old Sargeant was given a second chance and the former church official was given a whopping £86,000 salary by the Archdeaconry of London.

But Sargeant couldn ’t stop dipping his hands in the till and managed to steal a staggering £5.2 million from the Church of England which he spent on his lavish lifestyle travelling the world.

Now Sergeant is back behind bars serving five years for fraud handed out at Southwark Crown Court.

Prosecutor Joey Kwong said as head of operations Sargeant was “handsomely remunerated” for his work but “defrauded the church in a persistent, sophisticated and frankly brazen manner ” over 11 years between 2009 and 2019.

Sargeant, who was clerk of the City Church grants committee charitable trust, was responsible for 33 city churches, some which were “dysfunctional” and had no vicar.

He made false applications for grants for maintenance or improvements and used funds received from large City developments near to churches to defraud a total of more than £5.2 million.

The court heard that as a result of the fraud, many of the City churches have not been able to maintain their buildings and some have closed their doors to the public.

“It is clear that the funds were lavished on his lifestyle, ” said Mr Kwong. “By the end of the fraud he had assets of more than £450,000 across personal bank accounts as well as having three properties in Scotland worth approximately £1 million.

“He lavished money on multiple trips abroad and there was lavish spending in terms of his lifestyle. ”

The court heard Sargeant, who previously gave his address in court as Maughan Street, Dudley, booked a total of 158 flights with British Airways over the period of the fraud, visiting destinations including New York, Miami, the Maldives,Venice, Barcelona and Rome. His love of foreign travel prompted a previous comparison in court to the late globetrotting broadcaster Alan Whicker.

Sargeant’ s properties included six riverside log cabins, which he rented out as a business, while he made more than £600,000 of investments and spent over £1 million on credit cards.

He blew thousands of pounds at clothes from fashion brands Ted Baker and Burberry and over three months in 2013 spent more than £30,000 at five-star Soho Hotel.

Mr Kwong said that “ of note ” was that over the 11 years he spent just £1,500 on the church and that although prosecutors accepted Sargeant had a gambling problem it was “ not the main driver in the offending – it’ s greed. ”

Sargeant, who grew up in Bournemouth, was handed a community order in 1992 for theft by employee and was jailed for 21 months in 1995 for offences including 19 counts of theft.

The court heard the convictions related to his previous employers, including a shoe shop and a bar, which he claimed to have disclosed to the CoE before he was employed – an assertion the church has neither confirmed nor denied.

He became head of operations in 2007 as a contractor with the Archdeaconry of London, initially earning £56,000 and rising to around £86,000 before his retirement in 2019 – a total salary of £750,000 over the period of the fraud.

Sargeant’ s barrister Mark Ruffell said his client wanted “those who have suffered because of him to know he is genuinely sorry and he accepts 100 per cent what he has done. Underlying all that has gone on is his gambling addiction. ”

CRIME AND COMMUNITY NEWS

25years sfordouble jeopard dykiller

FOR almost 50 years 75 year old Dennis McGrory believed he had got away with the murder of his 15 year old niece Jacqui Montgomery at her home in Islington.

But McGrory, cleared of the murder in 1976, is now likely to die behind bars after being been found guilty of the vicious rape and murder of his teenage niece in the oldest double jeopardy case in England andWales.

After the jury found him guilty the judge ordered that he serve a minimum of 25 years in prison.

Justice finally caught up with him after swabs from Ms Montgomery’s body produced a one-in-a-billion DNA match decades later.

After a 2003 change in the law on double jeopardy, McGrory’s case was referred to the Court of Appeal and sent for a fresh trial at the Old Bailey.

That trial, in March, was halted when McGrory, of Milton Keynes in Buckinghamshire, fell ill.

The pensioner appeared for his retrial Huntingdon Crown Court by video link and the jury deliberated for just over an hour before finding him guilty on both charges.

Jurors were told McGrory, 28 at the time, had been “wild with rage” when he killed Jacqui as he tried to track down his ex-partner Josie who was the victim’s aunt.

Jacqui’s body was found by her father, Robert, lying on the floor of their living room in Offord Road on June 2 1975.

She had suffered fatal stab wounds as well as blunt force trauma to the face and been strangled with the flex of an iron.

Director of Public Prosecutions, Max Hill KC, hailed the guilty verdict, saying: “We are very close now to the 50th anniversary of this crime so I’m particularly pleased that we’ve been able to bring this matter through to conviction after all these years.

Barber is jailed for financing terrorism

Tarek Namouz

A BARBER shop owner who sent thousands of pounds to Islamic State (IS) fighters in Syria after claiming COVID grant payments has been jailed for 12 years.

Tarek Namouz, 43, from Hammersmith, west London, had received the bounce back loans to help his business, Boss Crew Barbers, during the pandemic.

He had been earlier found guilty at Kingston Crown Court of eight counts of funding terrorism and two counts of possessing information likely to be useful for terrorism.

After Judge Peter Lodder KC handed down the sentence, also at Kingston Crown Court, which included a further year on extended licence, Namouz expressed his thanks to the judge but shouted "May Allah destroy you " at officers.

He had been accused of sending money - intended to fund a militia in Syria - on dates between November 2020 and April 2021, the court heard. Officers identified seven transfers with a total of about £11,280.

While on remand, he was recorded telling someone visiting him in prison he had sent around £25,000, the court was told.

He had previously been released from prison early after serving half of a 10-year prison sentence for rape for attacking a woman half his age in north London pub, The Prince, where he was the landlord.

When police raided the barber ' s shop in Blythe Road, Olympia, on 25 May 2021, prosecutors say they found cash and a hidden mobile phone containing messages to a man namedYahya Ahmed Alia in Syria, an IS bomb-making video and a video showing how to kill with a knife. Namouz lived in a third-floor flat above the shop.

Commander Richard Smith, who leads the Met' s counter terrorism command, said: “Terrorist groups rely on funding to carry out their activities and to continue to operate. "People like Namouz who provide money to terrorist groups - both in the UK and overseas - are enabling others to go and commit serious and deadly attacks, and we will always pursue and investigate those people and seek to bring them to justice. ”