A conman and his estranged wife have been ordered to repay more than £700,000 after they raked in cash from a banking scam to fund a lavish lifestyle.

Timothy and Rachael Baker, of Walsall, enjoyed a luxurious lifestyle of expensive sports cars, hand-made designer suits and renting a manor house on the proceeds of fraud, Southwark Crown Court heard.

Timothy Baker, aged 37, of Wolverhampton Road, was jailed for six years in May 2009 after he admitted two charges of conspiracy to defraud banks.

His 38-year-old wife, of Sunflower Mill, avoided an immediate jail term and was instead handed a 12-month prison sentence, which was suspended for two years, for money laundering.

The pair, who fleeced the Royal Bank of Scotland and HSBC, have now been ordered to repay £726,184 within the next six months or face the consequences.

The conman will have to serve an extra three years behind bars if he fails to return £686,008, while his wife will have her suspended sentence activated if she does not repay £40,176.

Timothy Baker, who trained as an accountant, used bogus invoices to abuse a cash-flow arrangement with the Royal Bank of Scotland to pocket more than £600,000.

He went on to hatch an identical con against HSBC using the alias name of Tim Hench, this time getting away with more than £176,000.

As Hench he was photographed playing the part of a slick and tanned high-flier with his Pamela Anderson lookalike wife at an industry awards ceremony hosted by Irish comedian Dara O’Briain.

Passing sentence at the time, Judge Peter Testar said: “Tim Baker is a very accomplished and ruthless conman. He is obviously attached, very inclined, to the trappings of wealth, living in a rented manor house and at the same time buying a substantial property while he was bankrupt.”
He called him a professional fraudster.