Britain's Wolves of Wall Street: How top HBOS banker and cronies plundered £1bn from small firms to fund sex parties with porn stars, superyachts and lavish holidays
Lynden Scourfield forced clients to use the services of his friend David Mills
- In return, he was provided with romps with prostitutes and gave him lavish gifts
- He blew large sums of cash into the failing businesses as Mills and his associates charged exorbitant fees for 'consultancy services' and ran firms into the ground
- HBOS suffered a devastating collapse during the 2008 credit crunch
A corrupt banker and his cronies ‘financially raped’ small businesses to fund lavish holidays and sex parties with escort girls in one of Britain’s biggest ever frauds.
Lynden Scourfield, a senior director of HBOS, forced firms that needed to borrow cash to use a crooked consultancy firm led by David Mills.
Behaving like the ‘Mafia’, they would then use threats and extortion to seize control of the businesses, plundering bank accounts and pocketing massive new loans granted in their name.
Scourfield, who boasted of being the ‘grand wizard’, enjoyed luxury holidays, trips on Mills’ superyacht and sex with porn stars in return for his help. The scam cost scores of hard-working middle-class business owners not only their livelihoods, but also their family homes, pensions, savings and in one case even her marriage.
Jurors were told the fraud was worth £245million, but victims and police sources said the cost to small firms ruined by the scam was up to £1billion.
As the wealthy gang of four men and a woman were convicted at Southwark Crown Court for the five-year fraud yesterday, Thames Valley Police commissioner Anthony Stansfeld described it as a ‘shocking’ and ‘disturbing’ crime. He said: ‘That a fraud of this size could have taken place either displays complicity or incompetence, a lack of corporate governance, complacency, and an absence of proper safeguards.’
The case bears similarities to the 2013 film The Wolf of Wall Street, in which Leonardo DiCaprio plays a crooked broker who made millions as part of a stock market fraud – using his ill-gotten millions on lavish parties, cars, prostitutes and drugs.
HBOS, the holding company behind Halifax and the Bank of Scotland, finally discovered Scourfield’s unsanctioned loans in 2007. Just 18 months later the failing bank had to be taken over by Lloyds and required a £20.5billion taxpayer-funded bailout to cover toxic debts caused by excessive lending.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4172642/Ex-HBOS-boss-orchestrated-245m-loan-scam-faces-jail.html#ixzz4XJsbbYmk
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