Jody Smart – aka Bell, Kirby and Pearson – has just been imprisoned for three and a half years for fraud against two victims. If she does not pay them (Tim and Sally) the money they lost (£320,000 and £70,000 respectively) Jody will serve over a year more. https://www.theolivepress.es/spain-news/2026/10/05/jody-smart-jail-continental-wealth-management/
But is this a victory for just a couple of victims of fraud? Or does it beg the agonising question – how much more fraud is out there which still goes unpunished? And how many more victims are there? Perhaps the biggest question is why there isn’t a huge outcry across the World – that so many firms such as CWM are defrauding victims like Tim and Sally every day?
Jody Smart had been the sole of director of Spanish company Continental Wealth Trust SL (previously Continental Wealth Management SL) – “CWM”. She described herself in an interview as being a “get up and go person” and explained her role in the company as “expanding the company and bringing on board the best people to work for us”. She also admitted to operating a “pension release” service – an illegal way to access a pension before the age of 55 (which attracts a 55% tax penalty). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eCr7MHzHrM&t=463s
On the subject of “release”, Jody may not be out of prison until at least 2031 – although she could be out earlier if she pays Tim and Sally what she owes them. But Tim and Sally were only two victims out of 1,000 similar CWM clients who lost their pensions and life savings. The victims’ losses broadly ranged from slight, to moderate to extreme (and in some cases, total).
With around £100,000,000 under the control of CWM, the money was invested fraudulently in high-risk structured notes (from Commerzbank, Royal Bank of Canada, Nomura and Leonteq) and placed in toxic insurance bonds from fraud facilitators and accomplices Old Mutual International or Generali (now Utmost International), and SEB.
But this was not what Jody Smart was prosecuted for. The Alicante court found her guilty of swindling Tim out of money on a property deal, and of conning Sally into “lending” money to CWM (which Smart promised would be paid back). Interestingly, the court was not interested in the extent to which Jody was directly involved in these fraudulent transactions – or even whether her signature had been on any documents. https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-16186805/British-ex-model-fraudster-jailed-Spain.html
The court only cared that Jody Smart was the sole director of the company – and, therefore, the ultimate controller of all the company’s activities and transactions. And, ergo, fully personally responsible for any fraud or swindling.
So this begs a very interesting and important question. If Jody Smart can be convicted and imprisoned for fraud just for being the director of the company responsible for it – can this now be used as leverage and a precedent against all the directors of other companies involved in obvious financial-services fraud? Jody’s defence had been that her signature had not been on any of the documents involving the transactions with Tim and Sally – but the Alicante court deemed this to be irrelevant. She was the director. End of.
The other companies involved in the CWM fraud included (inter alia):
- Momentum (QROPS in Malta and Gibraltar)
- STM (QROPS in Malta and Gibraltar)
- Generali (now Utmost International)
- Old Mutual International (now also Utmost International)
- SEB
So if fraud charges could be brought against all these parties successfully – would that mean that all the main directors could also be jailed? Perhaps we could see Mark Gaywood of Momentum; Alan Kentish of STM; Paul Thompson and Peter Kenny of Utmost all behind bars? Plus directors of SEB/Irish Life and all the structured note providers?
Going back to Jody’s statement in the interview that she was responsible for “bringing on board the best people to work for us”, then a successful criminal prosecution could – and should – now bring convictions against all those involved at adviser/introducer level in the CWM fraud:
- Darren Kirby of CWM
- Dawn Kirby of CWM
- Stephen Ward of Premier Pension Solutions
- Martyn Ryan of Global Financial Options
- Dean Stogsdill of CWM
- Richard Peasley of CWM
- Anthony Downs of CWM
- Neil Hathaway of CWM
- Phill Pennick of CWM
- Anthony Bishop of CWM
- Dennis Radford of CWM
But let’s go back to Jody’s defence that her signature had not been on any of the documents involved in the swindling of Tim and Sally. In fact, of the many thousands of investment dealing instruction forms submitted by CWM to the QROPS trustees and life offices – few (if any) had genuine client signatures on them. When each of the fraudsters (most of them named above) signed up the victims, they were conned into signing a blank dealing instruction. And this was then copied multiple times so that CWM could invest the victims’ pensions and life savings in whatever structured notes paid the highest commission (without the victims knowing).
This method of forging victims’ signatures has routinely been used by a number of leading “wealth management” firms in Spain, Dubai, Malta and beyond for more than a decade and a half. As has the use and abuse of structured notes – which are only suitable for professional investors and should never have been used for retail investors.
