News

Llangwm: Solicitor jailed for six years for £1m fraud

Published

6 years ago

January 21, 2019

Tom Sinclair

A PEMBROKESHIRE solicitor who overcharged clients by almost £1m has been jailed this week for six years.

Edgar Stephen Thomas, aged 58, charged one client at the rate of £20,000 a week without doing any work at all.

Another was charged at £12,000 a week and went on to lose a total of £100,000.

Thomas, of Stephen’s Green, Deerland Road, Llangwm, admitted 23 offences of fraud and theft, which stopped only when his firm of Steve Thomas and Co was closed down by the Solicitors Regulatory Authority.

Jim Davis, prosecuting, told Swansea Crown Court that Thomas got away with the frauds by deducting monies from the estates of deceased people without telling the beneficiaries.

“He grossly overcharged and then deducted the payments directly from the estates of deceased people,” he said.

“He helped himself without telling them what he was doing.”

The overcharging began in 2005 when he was asked to handle the estate of Richard James Rogers. He charged the estate £41,800 plus VAT but internal documents showed that as the work decreased his bills increased.

Thomas agreed overcharging that estate by £12,000.

Thomas went on to plunder many more accounts.

The most outrageous example, said Mr Davies, related to the estate of Audrey Williams, who died in 2013.

Thomas charged £127,250 plus VAT, sometimes raising–but not posting–two invoices a day. He agreed he had overcharged by £100,000.

Mr Davis said Thomas’ offending did not stop there. His firm was hired by Vaughan’s Radio, an electrical store in Haverfordwest, to handle the purchase of a business in Aberystwyth.

Thomas simply kept for himself £50,000 of the purchase price.

Mr Davis said Thomas had worked for Eaton Evans in Haverfordwest, rising to becoming a partner, before leaving to form his own firm in 2005.

His accounts had to be audited and as a result the SRA were alerted to fears that he was overcharging.

A detailed forensic examination of his accounts was carried out and the fears were confirmed, along with the discovery of a shortfall in his client’s accounts of £144,326.

There was then an administrative error at the SRA and the initial report was not acted upon until June 2014, when a second financial investigation revealed more fraud and he was later struck off.

In February 2015 Thomas was declared bankrupt.

Mr Davis said the SRA had reimbursed those who had lost because of Thomas’ fraudulent behaviour, but there remained the question of costs and whether he could be made to repay any of the money. An investigation under the Proceeds of Crime Act is underway.

Thomas’ barrister, Ian Ibrahim, said his client was now broke and all the money had gone on keeping his business afloat.

“His fall from a high place has been dramatic. His remorse is complete and utterly without qualification.

“He has lost everything and knows that he will go to jail today.”

Judge Keith Thomas said those who worked in the legal profession had to demonstrate the highest level of integrity because the public put trust in them, sometimes at the most stressful times of their life.

“Your victims have described your behaviour as disgusting and despicable.

“You were struck off in 2016 and have had to wait a long time for the process to be complete, but that is partly because you were not willing to admit the extent of your offending,” he added.

News

Pembrokeshire town set to be rejuvenated as £12m investment approved

Published

48 mins ago

January 14, 2025

Bruce Sinclair - Local Democracy Reporter

SENIOR Pembrokeshire councillors have backed a near-£12m ‘levelling up’ project to rejuvenate parts of Pembroke, with £1.2m of council funds.

At the January 13 meeting of Pembrokeshire County Council’s Cabinet members backed the signing of a memorandum of understanding for a UK Government Levelling Up Fund 3 award for the £11,715,141 Pembroke town Westgate to Eastgate project.

The project attracted a grant award of £10,543,627, with a commitment of £1,171,514 match-funding from the council to comply with the grant offer requirements, some 10 per cent.

Applications for ‘levelling-up’ funding for this part of Pembroke have a history going back several years, with a June 2022 bid for the second round of levelling up funding unsuccessful; a third-round bid based on an amended version of that scheme getting the thumbs-up last year.

The project delivery period is planned to run from April 2025 until March 2028, consisting of three works packages, Cabinet members heard in a presentation by Deputy Leader Cllr Paul Miller.

The three planned works packages consist of, firstly, connecting The Commons to Westgate and Main Street, including an improved pedestrian connection into the town centre running from Common Road, via the Parade to Long Entry and exiting onto Westgate Hill and public realm improvements, improved lighting and public art.

The second package, Eastgate, is described as “both the principal investment and the critical path to the overall programme,” with the works seeing “selective demolition and making good to the elements of the school building, which encroach, onto [a] projected highway corridor, and for construction new retaining walls as necessary,” along with “An enabling contract to ready East End School for development to shell and core, readied for development for currently undetermined use”.

The third work package, ‘Connecting Townscape, Landscape and Soundscape’ includes: “Pembroke’s network of public realm and green infrastructure will be enhanced along Main Street and connect through underused route ways to its flanking green space of The Commons and the Upper and Lower Mill Pond”.

Cllr Miller warned that inflationary pressures since the original proposal would lead to some adaptions to the scheme, the value of the funding being less than it was in 2022.

Seconding Cllr Miller’s proposal the scheme be backed, Leader Cllr Jon Harvey, county councillor for the Pembroke St Mary North ward, said: “I’m extremely pleased about the levelling-up money coming into this town; Pembroke is a wonderful town, but it is underperforming, with businesses struggling.”

He stressed a need for collaborative work on the project: “Community ‘buy-in’ is very important, we need to work closely with the community and the town.”

Members backed a recommendation to approve the scheme and the match-funding element, along with the signing of the memorandum.

Crime

Haverfordwest shoplifter admits theft and criminal damage

Published

1 hour ago

January 14, 2025

Sarah Jane Absalom

A 23-YEAR-OLD Pembrokeshire man has been sentenced by magistrates after admitting stealing cans of Hooch and a bottle of wine from the B&M store, Haverfordwest.

Rhys Wheeler was seen stealing three cans of Hooch and a bottle of wine from the store on December 4. As a result, he was arrested by police officers and placed inside a police van.

“He started shouting and swearing and was put in the back of the van, in a cage,” Crown Prosecutor Nia James told Haverfordwest magistrates this week.

“En-route, officers stopped to make a phone call to the defendant’s mother and this was when he kicked out and spat towards one of the officers, causing saliva to land on the perspex of the cage. He later said he had HIV.”

Wheeler, who is currently on no fixed abode, pleaded guilty to the theft of the drinks, valued at £8.70, and of causing criminal damage to the police cage.

He was represented in court by solicitor, Tom Lloyd.

“He’d lost his job at a sushi bar and things have been difficult for him since then,” he said.

“He wasn’t in quite the right frame of mind and didn’t know what he was doing.

“There are no excuses for what he’s done and if you sit down with him today, he would tell you how genuinely sorry he is for what he’s done.”

Wheeler was ordered to pay £100 compensation to Dyfed-Powys Police for the damage caused to the police van and £8.70 compensation to B&M, Haverfordwest. He was fined £80 and ordered to pay £85 court costs and a £32 surcharge. “

Crime

Father-of-two sentenced for destroying car

Published

1 hour ago

January 14, 2025

Sarah Jane Absalom

A MAN has been sentenced for trashing a car that had been left in a car park in Fishguard town centre.

Father-of-two Daniel Mitchell walked up to the car, which was owned by Mr Lloyd Bowen, during the night of September 13, 2024 and:-

SMASHED each of the passenger side windows;

SMASHED the boot window;

SMASHED each of the rear lights and

SCRATCHED the paintwork on the car bonnet and the driver’s door.

“The car was completely destroyed,” Crown Prosecutor Nia James told Haverfordwest magistrates this week.

“It was surrounded by broken glass and it looked as if the damage had been caused by a weapon.”

The court was told that Mr Bowen had parked the car close to his father’s property in Harbour Village, Fishguard, at around 9.30pm, but when he returned to it just before 7.30am the following morning, he discovered it had been extensively damaged.

Mitchell, 29, of Dunster Close, Rugby, pleaded guilty to causing criminal damage to the vehicle.

He was fined £600 and was ordered to pay £500 compensation to Mr Lloyd Bowen, a £240 court surcharge and £85 costs.