Conman stripped of £53k in assets

A businessman involved in a £25 million fraud has had assets worth a total of just under £54,000 confiscated by a judge.

Company boss Andrew Oxlade conspired with financier Paul Cope to dupe banks and finance houses into paying for non-existent hospital equipment through bogus lease agreements.

Also involved in the scam was another businessman, Brian Challiner, who last week had £243,000 worth of assets confiscated.

Cope, aged 45, of Barn Bank Lane, Hyde Lea, Stafford and Oxlade, aged 54, of Beverley Drive, Stafford, were each jailed for a total of 64 months in September. Challiner, aged 61, of Manor Road, Gnosall, was sentenced to 44 months. All three admitted conspiracy to defraud.

In a hearing under the Proceeds of Crime Act, Oxlade was ruled to have profited to the tune of £20,267,000.

Mr James Fletcher, prosecuting, told Judge John Maxwell that Oxlade's total realiseable assets were just £53,643.

They included three cars, a Mercedes and two Lexus together worth £33,600, two plots of land worth £10,000 and a pension of £6,742.

But the matrimonial home in Beverley Drive was in negative equity and the couple's joint Nationwide Building Society account had just £46 in it. Judge Maxwell ordered all of it to be confiscated and gave Oxlade six months to pay up or face a further 20 months in jail.

The POCA hearing for Cope has been adjourned until the new year.

Stafford crown court heard previously that Cope, a former shirt sponsor of Stafford Rangers, had used the leasing scam to buy a seven-bedroom mansion and running luxury cars including a Rolls-Royce, a Lamborghini and a Ferrari. His two co-accused, Oxlade and Challiner provided false invoices and after taking a 'cut', the banks' money was sent back to Cope, who used it to provide personal loans to clients at rates of interest of up to 25 per cent.