£100k payback order for Northern Rock fraud couple

£100k payback order for Northern Rock fraud couple




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A married couple have been ordered to pay back £112,321 after they led a luxury lifestyle funded by fraudulent mortgages, re-mortgages and loans.

According to a Metropolitan Police

press release

, Roy Sciberras, aged 52, and his wife Teresa Newman, aged 54, who married in July 2008, have been ordered to pay back the cash following their convictions for fraud.

The extent of their lavish lifestyle, funded by their ill-gotten gains, was only fully uncovered after a search of Newman’s home by detectives from Sutton’s Financial Investigation Payback Team.

Officers found that over the last few years their fraudulent cash had helped to pay for a home in East Grinstead, a new-build holiday property in Turkey at the ‘Turquoise’ resort near Bodrum, extensive foreign travel and a new car.

In December 2009 at Croydon Crown Court, Sciberras, formerly of Woodmansterne Lane, Wallington, pleaded guilty to a number of frauds which involved him stealing a total of £100,000 from Northern Rock Bank. He was sentenced to a total of 18 months in prison.

At the same court in May 2011, Newman, of Knightswick Road, Canvey Island, Essex, was sentenced to nine months in prison suspended for two years and was ordered to complete 180 hours of unpaid community work after pleading guilty to a number of fraud related offences.

At a confiscation hearing at Croydon Crown Court in December 2011, Sciberras was ordered to pay £57,000 from identified assets towards a £100,000 criminal benefit he had obtained from Northern Rock, while at the end of last month, Newman was ordered to pay £55,321. To meet these costs Newman stated she would have to sell her holiday home in Turkey.

For a number of years, Sciberras ran a successful cleaning business called ‘RS Services’, which provided and supported his family with a lifestyle that included private education and medical funding.

With the divorce court aware of all these facts, a generous divorce settlement was issued. However, within weeks of the final divorce settlement, Sciberras declared himself bankrupt and RS Services was dissolved.

During this same period, Newman declared herself as the new proprietor of a cleaning business ‘SOS Cleaning’. Through this business Newman declared false information in order to support high value mortgages, which enabled her to purchase a £500,000 home in East Grinstead. In order to gain further funds through a re-mortgage, she gave false information to Northern Rock which secured the release of a large amount of equity.

During the break-up with his former wife and the start of his relationship with Newman, Sciberras forged his wife’s signature on re-mortgage application forms and used part of the stolen money in a new build property investment, which later led to him cashing a cheque for £100,000 at the Wallington branch of Barclays.

When Sutton police officers visited Newman’s home in Canvey Island in February 2010, a further fraudulent loan was discovered in the name of Teresa Newman which released a further £41,000 and documents revealed the purchase of a new-build property in Turkey.

Further documents found linked Sciberras to property developments in Spain.

Det Sgt Louis Silva, of Sutton Police Station, said: “The high level of dishonesty of Roy Sciberras and Teresa Newman is clearly shown when you compare their declared incomes to their expenditure. Their lifestyles were clearly supported by fraud.

“They have now been ordered by the courts to pay back a large amount of this money. Roy Sciberras and Teresa Newman will still have outstanding debts for the remaining money which can be revisited at any time and they can be brought back before the court.”

The money goes to the Home Office.

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