Court News re Past Attempted QPR "Investor" - Paul Garland

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From Last week and ...re Trial at the beginning of this year: Reports re Paul Garland who was involved 2-3 years ago, in one of the past efforts to buy QPR:

Yorkshire Post - August 26, 2006
£1 for couple fleeced by conman
Fraudster blew friends' £164,000 life savings

A COUPLE conned out of their £164,000 life savings by their next-door neighbour have been awarded just £1 compensation.

Paul Garland stole the cash from Brian and Philippa Manley by claiming to run a company financing transfer deals for top Premiership football teams.
He boasted that his company Finance for Sport Worldwide was working with Liverpool, Dundee United, Sunderland, Manchester City and QPR.

But Garland, who once worked for Leeds United as an investment broker, was actually bankrupt. The 39-year-old was jailed for two-and-a-half years in January for fleecing his neighbours after promising them a non-existent investment opportunity. Instead, he used their cash to buy himself a soft-top Porsche 911, a Range Rover, lavish holidays to Florida and Mauritius and a villa in Monaco.
At a confiscation hearing at York Crown Court yesterday his disgusted victims heard there was nothing left.

John Edwards, prosecuting, said £129,000 of their stolen cash was still outstanding. The court heard father-of-three Garland profited by more than £210,000 from the fraud but had blown everything.
"All the investigations have led to the conclusion that this defendant has left behind nothing but debts," Mr Edwards said.
The conman was ordered to pay back a nominal sum of £1, which will go straight to his victims.
After the hearing outraged Mr Manley said: "This is an insult, it seems that everywhere he goes he has caused misery and he's made people's lives awful just for his own benefit.
"He has ruined our lives and we have lost everything. We have tried to keep hold of our house but maybe now we need to sell it and move on."
During the scam Garland boasted of how he spent £2,000 a week on his girlfriend. He was associated with Leeds United for a number of years, although he no longer works with the club.
He helped refinance the team following relegation from the Premiership in May 2004. He was also a leading figure in an unsuccessful American-backed takeover deal by Nova Financial Partners in November.
Sentencing Garland in January, Judge Paul Hoffman told him: "What you did was quite despicable.
"You systematically used friendship to fleece your victims to which I regard as a serious and quite outrageous deception."
Garland, who is currently in jail, had earlier pleaded guilty to 11 charges of obtaining money and property by deception. The court heard he left his neighbours in financial ruin after promising a brilliant investment opportunity.
Mr Manley, 51, and his wife Philippa, 46, of York, were lured into a bogus investment scheme soon after Garland moved next door. He befriended the family, who have a son Matthew, 23, and daughter Melanie, 22.
In January 2001 they invested money in Garland's scheme and over the following year the conman swindled a massive £164,00 out of them.
"It has just been hell, the worst years of our lives," printer Mr Manley said. "He was just so callous. He planned it and orchestrated it.
"He was very charming. We socialised and used to go to the pub with him. We used to treat his children.
"He came here for meals and we went to his house for a drink. We thought he was genuine."
Garland conned the couple by claiming London-based brokers Houlders Insurance – a real firm with no connection to him – had offered him a high interest investment opportunity that would give them a 30 per cent return on their cash.
"We believed him because we thought he was a genuine guy," Brian said. "Chairmen of football clubs believe him. When it comes to conmen he is pretty much up there, he is an artist.
"The alarm bells started ringing because he had just gone out of the country and was really messing us about."
The couple say they have lost their retirement savings and cannot afford to support their children through university. They have also been left with £42,000 legal costs and have already been forced to remortgage their home.
"He is just the lowest of the low," Mr Manley said.
Yorkshire Post


Also from January:

Football conman led life of luxury
Saturday 28th Jan 2006.

PAUL GARLAND lived the high life of a football wheeler dealer while using his York neighbours' life savings as his personal money box.

York Crown Court heard that he got himself a £100,000-a-year job plus London accommodation paid for by his employers while his victims, Brian and Philippa Manley, struggled to keep the roof over their heads in Balfour Way, Strensall.

But the conman's life of Riley came to an abrupt end when he was jailed for two-and-a-half years for systematically cheating the Manleys out of £164,000 - stripping them of their life savings.He claimed he was financing transfer deals with top-flight football clubs including Liverpool, Dundee United, Sunderland, Manchester City and QPR.

"You have been greedy - now you must pay," the Recorder of York, Judge Paul Hoffman told him.

"I regard what you did as quite despicable. You regarded the Manleys as your own private money box and you were quite ruthless in taking them to the cleaners."

In addition to having to repay every last penny to the Manleys, Garland now also faces confiscation of his assets by the state. He was part of an attempt to refinance Leeds United last year.

The Strensall couple believe they will never see their money again and wish Garland had got a longer sentence.

"We have got a life sentence," said Mrs Manley. "We were investing at the time and we would have made it by now, the way property was going up."

They saw a Porsche and a top-of-the-range Land Rover at Garland's house when he was their next-door neighbour

Garland, 39, formerly of Park Road, Hale, Cheshire, pleaded guilty to 11 charges of deception.

He appeared in court with crutches, but the court heard no mention of why he needed them, and the Manleys said they saw him walking without them shortly before the hearing.

John Edwards, prosecuting, said Garland befriended the Manleys in 2000 and duped them into handing over money through lies that it would be invested in Lloyds underwriters Houlder Insurance Services Ltd and another company. At one stage, he claimed they would get a 30 per cent return in 12 months.

Mr Edwards said that unbeknown to the Manleys, he was a bankrupt at the time. He had repaid £35,000, but still owes the Manleys £129,000.

Mr Manley said the £35,000 had gone straight to his solicitors, to whom the couple owed £42,000.

The conman's barrister, Jerome Lynch QC, said Garland had told the Manleys about his bankruptcy and had always honestly believed he could repay the money through his interests in Finance For Sport Worldwide Ltd and the consortium that took over Leeds United.

Mr Lynch said Garland spent the Manleys' money on entertaining clients for his firm at business lunches, in London clubs and on trips abroad.

But the judge said: "That stretches my credulity to the limit".

He believed a probation officer who said Garland had spent the money on "exceptional spending on luxurious goods and services".

Mr Manley said: "It has just been hell, the worst years of our lives. He was just so callous. He planned it and orchestrated it.

"We believed him because we thought he was a genuine guy," Mr Manley said. "Chairmen of football clubs believed him. When it comes to conmen, he is pretty much up there. He is an artist."

:: `I have got a £100,000 job'

WHAT Garland told the judge through his barrister:

"I have a £100,000 job including London accommodation all paid-for with Associated Global Interests, an offshore commodities broker based in the West Indies.

"My new employers are buying a home for me, my wife and my children.

"They have also given me shares worth tens of thousands of pounds in an American company which I want to sell to repay the Manleys.

"I spent the Manleys' money on business expenses, including entertaining clients in London clubs and abroad.

"I told the Manleys I was a bankrupt and that is why I was not a director of Finance for Sport Worldwide Ltd.

"Their problems have caused me great pain and I honestly want to repay all the money I took from them."

His friend, Jim Connor, claimed under oath:

"I was a director of Dundee Football Club from 1998 to 2003. I got to know Garland through a deal he was arranging for the club. It folded through lack of finance."

The Manleys' dark financial future after Garland means:

Philippa Manley, 45, could not afford to travel to Malta for her mother's funeral.

They nearly lost their house and have had to rearrange their mortgage so that they now face repayments until printer Brian is 75 - in 25 years' time.

They cannot help their children pay for further education.

They faced solicitors fees of £42,000.
"Football conman led life of luxury"

From Last November's Manchester Evening News: Pal Conned Out of £160,000 "


See Also:
Boardroom Blues "PAUL GARLAND NAMED AS POTENTIAL INVESTOR - From the Hammersmith Times 1 October 2003"
http://www.boardroomblues.co.uk/ht011003.htm

Also - Boardroom Blues
http://www.boardroomblues.co.uk/loan.htm