A crooked solicitor who stole £146m from investors and spent it on a boat, cars and a Lake District shooting and fishing estate was ordered to pay back just £1m to his victims or serve up to 19 years in prison.
Timothy Schools, 65, was jailed for 14 years in August 2022 for pocketing cash invested into Cayman Islands-registered Axiom Legal Financing Fund.
Schools, of Sedbergh, Cumbria, had called his firm ‘ATM’ because he could simply withdraw wads of cash whenever he fancied.
More than 500 investors fell into his trap, handing over £100million the fund, set up by Schools in 2009 to provide loans to law firms pursuing no-win, no-fee cases.
Schools gave himself more than a £1million per year salary and funnelled the funds to himself while acting as the investment manager for the legal fund.
He even used some of the money from the scam to pay for an estate in Cumbria.
He also had a £45,000 corporate box at Blackpool FC’s home ground, claiming it was a business expense for the purpose of corporate hospitality.
The owner of Preston firm ATM Solicitors denied but was convicted of three counts of fraudulent trading, one count of fraud and one count of transferring criminal property.
Timothy Schools, 65, was jailed for 14 years in August 2022 for pocketing cash invested into Cayman Islands-registered Axiom Legal Financing Fund
Schools used the illicit money to fund a luxury lifestyle including the purchase of a motor boat, luxury cars and a £5million fishing and shooting estate in the Lake District (above)
He unsuccessfully appealed his 14 year sentence in May 2023 at the Court of Appeal.
The former solicitor, wearing a green zip-up Napapijri jacket and grey jogger bottoms, appeared at Southwark Crown Court today for a Proceeds of Crime Act (POCA) hearing.
Paul Raudnitz KC, prosecuting, told the hearing: ‘The confiscation order is agreed in the following terms: that the benefit figure is £146,890,129.32.’
He said this was based on the ‘£105m odd’ value of the fraid ‘plus an uplift to reflect the consumer prices index increase, which is the benefit from general criminal conduct.
‘This is the figure which, in principle, the Serious Fraud Office seeks to pursue in respect of the civil recovery proceedings, which as your honour knows are going on ancillary to these proceedings.
‘The available amount for the purposes of confiscation will be £1,083,67.38.’
Mr Raudnitz confirmed that ‘all of the confiscation order will be put to compensation, which ultimately will be received for distribution to the losers.’
He said the starting point for more jail time was five years if he fails to pay up in three months.
Schools, of Sedbergh, Cumbria, had called his firm ‘ATM’ because he could simply withdraw wads of cash whenever he fancied
Rudi Fortson KC, defending, said Schools had only ‘just scraped into the top of the £1million bracket’ and agreed with the ‘five year’ term of default.
Judge Gregory Perrins made the confiscation order for £1,083,67.38 and said Schools would serve five years on top of his 14 years if he fails to pay.
He said: ‘Mr Schools that brings matters to an end, all will be explained to you in due course.
‘I’m sure you’re fully aware of the consequences of this, that therefore concludes these matters.’
The former solicitor, of Sedbergh, Cumbria, showed no emotion as he left court.
Southwark Crown Court previously heard that investors were told their loans would be given to a panel of high quality law firms to fund legal cases with good chances of success.
But most of the funds, amounting to £40million, were paid to just three law firms – ATM, Ashton Fox and Bracewell’s – all of which Schools either owned or held undisclosed interest in.
Some 35,000 clients’ had their cases affected, according to the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) – the government department that investigates and prosecutes serious or complex fraud.
Schools was convicted on five counts of fraudulent trading, fraud by abuse of position and money laundering
He paid himself over £1million in salary, consultancy fees and other personal benefits, from funds received by ATM Solicitors, the SFO said.
Investigators said monies were also transferred and hidden in offshore bank accounts held within complex overseas trusts.
The cases Axiom funded were not independently vetted, often failed at court and case insurance policies failed to pay out when cases did not succeed, according to the SFO.
It explained Schools covered up these failures by arranging for the repayments of old loans with new Axiom loans, giving the false impression to directors, administrators and auditors that law firms were successfully repaying their loans and achieving returns on investment.
The loans provided to these law firms were siphoned off by Schools.
He was also disqualified from being a director of a company for 15 years on top of his jail sentence.
He was previously sanctioned by his professional body and struck off the solicitor’s register in 2014, the court heard.
Last year investment manager David Kennedy, 71, who enjoyed an ‘extremely lavish lifestyle’ on the proceeds of the Axiom fraud, was jailed for eight years.
Kennedy bought a Swiss ski resort chalet, a villa in Tenerife and renovated his home in Hull.
More than 500 investors had sunk money into the scheme, which claimed to insure lenders against unfinished cases or solicitors going bankrupt.
But savers ended up losing everything when the fund collapsed in 2012.
Kennedy was convicted of fraudulent trading last year after a retrial.
