Three are guilty of £10m Majorca swindle

AN ESTRANGED Yorkshire couple and their financial adviser have been found guilty of running a £10m fraud scheme swindling more than 100 British ex-pats in Majorca out of their savings.

John Hirst, 61, of Millroyd Mill, Huddersfield Road, Brighouse, and his 70-year-old financial adviser Richard Pollett, made millions from targeting vulnerable elderly people and families who had recently moved to the Spanish island in the so-called Ponzi scheme, similar to the £41bn fraud for which United States financier Bernard Madoff was jailed for 150 years in 2009.

Pollett, an accountant who was known as an upstanding member of the community in Majorca, was convicted of fraud by a jury at Bradford Crown Court yesterday, while Hirst’s wife Linda, 62, was found guilty of money laundering charges.

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John Hirst, who moved to Majorca after being jailed for another bogus £500,000 investment scheme defrauding Yorkshire miners out of their redundancy payments in the 1990s, had already pleaded guilty to fraud and money laundering.

The true scale of his involvement, however, can only be revealed today after reporting restrictions were lifted.

His solicitor son Daniel Hirst, 36, of Marsh Lane, in Leeds, and step-daughter Zoe Waite, 36, of Sandy Lane, Send, Surrey, who had denied money laundering charges, have been cleared by the jury.

Hirst and Pollett ran the scheme between 2001 and 2009, promising investors lucrative returns from growth on the US stock market while diverting the money to support their own lavish lifestyles.

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The trial heard details of victims who had their lives ruined after entrusting the pair with their savings.

Judge Jonathan Durham Hall QC will sentence the trio at the end of this month, and yesterday ordered Pollett and Mrs Hirst to serve a nightly curfew and have their passports confiscated.

“The sentence is self-evident in both cases,” he said. “This is a crime of the upmost gravity. We all know the reality.”

Prosecutor Simon Bourne-Arton QC told the trial Hirst and Pollett defrauded investors through the company, Gilher Inc, which was registered in Panama and the Seychelles.

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Victims were promised high rates of interest in return for capital investment with their money guaranteed.

In reality, the money was going to off-shore accounts controlled by Hirst, with only small amounts going back to investors every month, enough to persuade them the scheme was working.

It began to unravel in 2009, however, when there was a series of delays in payments to investors and the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) began an investigation into the scheme, called Operation Noble, alongside West Yorkshire and Surrey Police.

The defendants were charged on various dates between March and July 2011, with Pollett extradited from Spain.

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Overall it is estimated Hirst and Pollett obtained more than £10m through the scheme over eight years, around £4.6m of which was returned to investors.

Linda Hirst, who wept as the verdict was read out yesterday, was found guilty of money laundering and evasion of a liability by deception.

The jury failed to reach a verdict on three further counts of money laundering against after deliberating for more than 30 hours over the course of the past week.

Pollett, of Lilliput Road, Poole, was found guilty of conspiracy to defraud and making misleading statements. Sentencing will take place on August 31, with confiscation and compensation proceedings to follow.

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