Former KPMG management consultant jailed for five years over £850,000 Yorkshire will-writing and fake investments fraud

Peter Grant Holbrook, 75, befriended the victims and offered to write their wills and handle probate for their deceased spouses’ estates – but gambled most of the money away after claiming to have invested it overseas.

Holbrook, of Oxenhope, a well-known figure in Yorkshire table tennis leagues who was a director of Keighley Table Tennis Centre, even told his ‘clients’ that he had been out of contact because his daughter was suffering from terminal cancer, but Bradford Crown Court was told that she is alive and well.

He pleaded guilty to seven counts of fraud, which resulted in him gaining almost £850,000 – much of which was never repaid.

The court was told that Christopher Hatton and his wife Elizabeth were introduced to Holbrook through a colleague at the school in Queensbury where Mrs Hatton worked; and when she died in service in 2011, he dealt with her estate. He also wrote the will for her mother Marjorie Calvert, who died in 2023.

Holbrook offered to invest money for both parties, and issued them with fake passbooks with details of client accounts which did not exist. When Mrs Calvert’s other daughter, Gillian Farr, contacted him after becoming suspicious in 2014, he was evasive and lied to her that the money had been held in a frozen bank account in the US.

He even sent fake letters from banks to ‘buy himself time’ after Mrs Farr reported him to the police, who took no further action because he agreed to repay the money. Although £13,500 was returned, the majority was from the funds of his later victims.

Mr Hatton was left unable to fulfil his retirement plans or pass on inheritance to his children.

Barbara Middleton, now 88 and present in court, had both her and her husband’s wills prepared by Holbrook in 2004. After he died in 2017, Holbrook told her and her two daughters that she was a ‘very wealthy woman’ due to her spouse’s investments, and offered to invest the funds further for her benefit. £236,000 was sent to him and never repaid.

John and Pamela Chambers also hired Holbrook to write their wills in 2013, and when John died in 2017, his widow gave Holbrook £52,000 to invest. Her daughter became suspicious after John’s pension fund said they were owed money from an overpayment, and Holbrook had not been contactable.

The family said that Holbrook had ‘turned Pamela against her children’ after her health declined, and even alleged her daughter had in fact stolen the money.

Three siblings even signed over power of attorney to Holbrook after the death of their father, retired Keighley tools manager David Tonks. He ignored them once the agreement had been reached, and pressured them to sell Mr Tonks’ home at auction despite the likelihood of its value being lower. A cheque with part of the proceeds to one of the daughters bounced, and he even persuaded a woman to impersonate a police officer and contact the family, claiming the case was ‘not a police matter’.

Stuart Bottomley, whose mother Kathleen was advised by Holbrook, said he had concerns about him turning up to meet his mother ‘unannounced’ despite asking if he could be present for meetings between them. The widow transferred £39,000 which was gambled away.

The money belonging to final victim Joan Dobson was £384,000, of which £43,000 was given to Holbrook’s wife and other funds used to pay for a holiday he took to Belgium and the Netherlands. The terminally ill widow was ‘constantly visited’ by Holbrook after trusting him for 20 years.

In his first two police interviews, Holbrook denied wrongdoing, repeating that his daughter had died of cancer and accusing the Tonks family of ‘talking rubbish’. He could offer no evidence of the investments he had supposedly made for Mrs Chambers, and called her children ‘spiteful and two-faced’. He claimed to be a professional gambler who enjoyed helping people. In a third interview, he made full admissions of his addiction.

In mitigation, John Batchelor said that Holbrook felt ‘contempt and disgust’ with himself and wished he could repay every penny. He had spent 12 hours a day in a home office gambling online, at the expense of relationships with his wife, son and daughter.

He added that Holbrook disputed exaggerating his daughter’s condition, as she had recovered from breast cancer. The physics graduate is a former management consultant who worked for large firms including KPMG, and the offending began after he decided to semi-retire and set up his own advisory business.

Jailing Holbrook for five years and three months, Recorder Richard Thyne KC remarked that he had shown ‘little victim empathy’ and ‘thought only of himself’.