ALICANTE CRIMINAL COURT CASE
CWM fraudster Jody Smart has been convicted and sentenced to jail in Spain. Jody Smart of Continental Wealth Management (CWM) has been found guilty of fraud in the Alicante criminal court. The judge found she was responsible for deliberately swindling £370,000 out of two victims – Tim and Sally. And a third victim also lost £800,000 but sadly passed away several years ago.
DENIA CRIMINAL COURT CASE
Ironically, Jody – along with Stephen Ward of Premier Pension Solutions – escaped prosecution in the simultaneous criminal trial in the Denia criminal court. This had been for a £100 million fraud committed against 1,000 victims – represented by 17 individual lead complainants.
In the Alicante court proceedings, Jody Smart appeared as defendant alongside her accomplices Alan Gorringe (Company Secretary of CWM) and Patrick Kirby (brother of Darren Kirby). But, Alan Gorringe died and Patrick Kirby escaped.
ABOUT JODY SMART THE CONVICTED FRAUDSTER
Former “fashion designer”, swimming pool cleaner, porn model, would-be actress (“Drug Dealers Birds”) Jody stood alone in the dock – convicted of continuous crimes of swindling, fraud and misappropriation. Also mentioned in the judgement were the crimes of obtaining an illicit financial benefit for the company and for herself.
HOW JODY SMART’S FRAUD WORKED
The court heard that in 2017 Jody convinced one victim – Tim – to pay CWM £299,000. CWM had promised him that they would use his money to buy him a house on the Costa Blanca. Jody instructed Tim to pay £99,000 to CWM and £200,000 to Christine Walker – wife of a CWM employee Eddie Walker.
But when Tim went to sign for the purchase of the house, Jody demanded even more money. She informed him that he had lost all the money he had originally paid. He therefore lost both the house and his £299,000.
Also in 2017, Jody gave the other complainant, Sally, a job as an admin assistant. Jody then swindled her into “lending” €70,000 to the company. Jody promised that she would repay the loan in 12 monthly instalments plus interest – totalling €75,600.
However, as the company was on the brink of failure anyway, Jody sacked Sally a month later. Then she informed her that CWM was closing. Jody never repaid the loan.
THE ALICANTE COURT JUDGEMENT
The Alicante court judgement held Jody criminally responsible for the crime of continuous fraud. Jody tried to claim that it had been her partner Darren Kirby and Alan Gorringe (Company Secretary) – who were responsible. She said they had managed the day-to-day operations of the company.
But the court ruled that this attempted defence was inadmissible. The sole director cannot exempt or exonerate themselves from the responsibility or criminal liability for the activities of the company. The judge was aware that Jody had “closed her eyes” to the fraudulent activities of Darren Kirby and Alan Gorringe. But Jody chose to ignore them because she was benefitting personally (and “succulently”) from their activities.
The court ruled that Jody had deliberately concealed the fact that Tim and Sally would never get their money back. So this constituted swindling, deception and clear fraud.
JODY SMART’S CRIMINAL SENTENCE
Finding Jody guilty, the judge sentenced her to four years and three months in prison. He also ordered her to pay back the money swindled out of Tim and Sally. Plus a further fine. Plus legal costs.
THE EVEN BIGGER FRAUD
But this is far from the end of the story. This trial only covered a tiny portion of the fraud perpetrated by Jody Smart and her various accomplices. In addition to defrauding Tim and Sally, Jody defrauded 998 other victims out of their pensions and life savings. This ruined many lives and caused several deaths.
In the two years while CWM was finally collapsing, Jody paid herself at least €996,435.86 from one CWM bank account. Plus, Jody and CWM received a total of €3,391,876.28 in commissions which they concealed from the victims. This money came out of the investors’ own money. The only hint that Jody and CWM would receive these illegal commissions was in the client care documentation which stated:
“In most cases we are remunerated by the institutions we place business with. The remuneration is typically paid by commission directly by the institution and recouped generally by annual management charges.“
This is a “half secret” commission. The fraudsters do not disclose how much commission they receive and how this will affect an investor’s portfolio’s performance. Fraudsters never explain to the victims that the commissions come directly out of the victims’ own funds. Victims themselves are unaware that they pay back the institutions through spurious and loaded “management charges”.
Fraudsters such as Jody Smart never explain that the reason for using an insurance bond is for the commission. The insurance bond in no way benefits the victims. And such fraudsters never explain that they choose every investment purely for the further commissions they earn.
JODY SMART’S ACCOMPLICES
So who else was complicit in Jody’s and CWM’s fraud? There is a long list of further accomplices:
- Darren Kirby – “shadow” (or “de facto”) director
- Alan Gorringe – company secretary (deceased)
- Dean Stogsdill – CWM adviser/salesman
- Anthony Downs – CWM adviser/salesman
- Neil Hathaway – CWM adviser/salesman
- Stephen Ward – Premier Pension Solutions
- Martyn Ryan – Global Financial Options
- Momentum Pensions – Malta
- STM Pensions – Malta
- Corinthian Pensions – Gibraltar
- Pantheon Pensions – Gibraltar
- Old Mutual International – Isle of Man and Ireland
- Generali – Isle of Man and Ireland
- SEB – Ireland
- …and many others….
It’s about time she/ we’re we’re brought to rights.
I am a victim of their scams and while j only lost 9000.00, its still an amount I couldn’t afford to lose.
We knew Jody quite well and this makes it worse somehow.
Nettie
JAILED!!!! I think not
Was seen in Orba yesterday
She has probably appealed the judgement and she won’t be sent down until that appeal is concluded. Meanwhile, she has probably had her passport taken away so she can’t leave the country. But appealing a criminal judgement where the judge has already said there is no valid appeal as she was the legal director of the company, will not go down well with the court. Like it or not, the law says that the company director is responsible for the actions of others. End of. There is no getting out of this conviction or the sentence and penalties.
The stress this greed has caused is untold. I have lost money I urgently need for surgeries and these con artists have robbed me of a more comfortable life with my health. No sympathy for greed and karma will prevail!
I was also one of these victims and still await to see if I get my investment back, after year of loss of interest and suffered two heart attacks in this time, i hope they all get punished for there crimes.
Please can you make sure you put the correct info on this high profile case as she is not in jail as you keep stating & I put something on f/b then the next thing I know I am getting threats from her husband Franco Pearson by private msg it got quite nasty first he accused me of libel & said he had reported me to the police then he said he was going to find me & speak to me face to face as I was a coward this went on for about an hour late at night a friend said block him but I need it all as proof for a denuncia when he could see I wasn’t going to take the post down he started to be nice to me eventually he gave up as I wasn’t really responding to him I don’t live to far away from the restaurant that I have used but not since all this has happened
Jody Smart is not in prison yet as she has appealed the verdict and sentence on the grounds that “her signature was not on the documents involving the fraud against Tim and Sally”. There is an appeal process and this will now have to play out while the court hears her grounds for appeal and makes a further decision. I will be providing further evidence to the court on behalf of the complainants to ensure that her appeal will not be successful.
It’s about time some justice was seen to be done. If you follow the trail of blogs linked in the article exposing CWM they go back to 2017 – 8 years ago and only now do we see some justice. Will Tim & Sally actually get their money back as ordered by the judge? Who knows.
However, this is just one of many scams that has ruined hundreds/thousands(?) of lives for over a decade that Angie has documented and campaigned for justice that began with the ARK scam back in 2010/11. This website has dozens of blogs spanning over a decade exposing the scams and is a fascinating history of actual pensions scams and scammers.
As well as scammers there were institutions that also participated in facilitating these scams – the QROPS – the “qualifying recognised” overseas pension schemes. Many were based in Guernsey, Isle of Mann, Hong Kong and Malta, to name just a few. Malta played a huge part in scamming the victims of CWM along with victims of Trafalgar Multi Asset Fund and Blackmore Global (the offshore fund operated by Nunn & McCreesh).
Many media outlets (like this one) often investigate and expose the scammers but they don’t go after the QROPS for their part. Without the QROPS these scams would probably never got off the ground. Malta’s version of our Ombudsman is what they call the Arbiter for Financial Services. There are documented cases of many victims getting awarded 70% of their losses by the Arbiter when they submitted complaints again their QROPS. Those reports consistently show the trustees violated Malta Trust Law and regulations. Why were the regulators turning a blind eye to the blatant facilitation, by their QROPS, of what were obviously pension scams?
The number of complaints however seem small compared to the total number of victims. I think many victims were/are even now, completely unaware they can complain to the QROPS. CWM seems to have been the most successful for number of victims awarded compensation, largely because they had a Facebook group and were highly organised and submitted consistent complaints, sometimes in bulk.
One person, scammed by Blackmore Global (Nunn & McCreeh’s operation), got 70% of his losses from the Arbiter and then much of the remaining 30% by going after the ceding pension providers from the UK Ombudsman by arguing they shouldn’t have transferred his pensions in the first place following the Scorpion Guidelines from the Pensions Regulator in 2013, so the ceding providers should bear some of the responsibility for his losses. The Financial Ombudsman agreed.
He’s the only one (out of hundreds of Blackmore victims across at least 3 QROPS in Malta I know of) that seems to have submitted a complaint to the Arbiter as there are no other published cases on the Malta website regarding Nunn & McCreesh’s operation.
There’s a class action in Isle of Man yet to be decided. Seems to be taking a very long time for the judge to decide. Some details here:
https://international-adviser.com/325m-class-action-launched-against-international-life-insurers/
It was started by Coburn Corporate Intelligence. CCI submitted a paper to the Parliamentary Inquiry into Pension Scams (circa 2020) and that gives more details on the substance of the allegations:
https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/20898/html/
It seems another class action has been filed recently in the IOM againt the same against the same insurance giants:
https://www.iomtoday.co.im/news/new-lawsuit-is-set-to-be-the-costliest-ever-heard-in-the-isle-of-man-759220
There are thousands of victims scammed out of their pensions by dozens of scammers over the past 15 years … and only now are we seeing some justice? A small number managed to get some compensation by being organised and using well drafted complaints to the “ombudsman” organisations in the UK and in Malta and one victim took her QROPS in Guernsey to court with her own funding (another long story, there is a blog somewhere here about it). However, these success stories are a drop in a bucket and whilst welcomed news, it just isn’t good enough in my opinion.
The perpetrators do indeed need to be brought to justice. But the jurisdictions (governments and regulators) also need to be brought to account. Malta, Gibraltar, Cyprus, IoM, Ireland, Hong Kong and the UK all need to step up and stop leaving it to the victims themselves to shine the spotlight on the scams and scammers – frauds and fraudsters – and all those who facilitate them.