HOW A TOP HBOS BANKER AND A CROOKED BUSINESSMAN MADE MILLIONS BY TARGETING SMALL BUSINESSES THE HBOS SCAM: HOW IT WORKED The QCS 'consultants' - Mills, his wife Alison, 52, Michael Bancroft, 73, and John Cartwright, 72 - ransacked the businesses' accounts by charging exorbitant fees and expenses Senior Impaired Asset [IA] manager Lynden Scourfield, 54, exploited 'systemic and personnel weaknesses' within HBOS to make millions with crooked businessman David Mills, 60, and his associates. The bankers asked struggling business owners to employ a turnaround consultancy as a condition for getting a loan and they were obliged to pay the consultancy high fees for services and, in some cases, hand over ownership. He is the devil to whom you sold your soul, for sex, for luxury trips with and without your wife – for bling and for swag.”

During the four-month trial, one woman giving evidence said she worked at a pornographic magazine company under Scourfield’s portfolio and was asked to arrange girls to come to parties for the “posh twat banker friends”. Scourfield, who was bribed with designer watches, sex with prostitutes and exotic foreign holidays by his business associates for his role in the scam, was sentenced to 11 years and three months in jail. After a five-month trial at Southwark Crown Court, former banker David Mills, HBOS employee Mark Dobson and three other finance professionals Michael Bancroft, Alison Mills, and Tony Cartwright were convicted on 30 January of various corruption offences. Mills's wife Alison, 51, also played a major role in the corruption and was sentenced to three-and-a-half years. Judge Beddoe described Scourfield as an “utterly corrupt bank manager” who, driven by “rapacious greed”, had “got his tentacles into the businesses of ordinary and honest people and ripped them apart without a thought for those affected”. She added: 'The other victims have gone through terrible things, they have gone through the loss of businesses and lost homes. Paul and Nikki Turner, from Cambridge, were ignored for years when they tried to report what was going on after their publishing company, Zenith, was run into the ground in the scandal. The Guardian view on HBOS fraud: sex parties, lies and an almighty crash | Editorial Read more

“They defrauded us, denied for 10 years that the fraud had happened, ignored the debt from the fraud and tried to evict us 22 times in order to cover up the fraud,” Mrs Turner said. While he (consultant David Mills) has been waiting for trial he has lived a luxury life on all the assets that he has built up. For three years between 2004 and 2007 there were also no audits at the Reading branch where Scourfield worked, the court heard. People who could have expected to be comfortable in retirement were left cheated, defeated and penniless.”

Mills lavished the Scourfields with clothes, jewellery, luxury hotel stays, business-class flights and expensive meals at an oyster bar and a cheesecake restaurant. Alison Mills invited Dobson and the Scourfields to go on trips to Ascot, while Mills, Bancroft, Scourfield and their wives holidayed together in Barbados to celebrate her 40th birthday. Scourfield worked in a section of his bank which was supposed to help struggling businesses but instead, motivated by greed, he went about stripping them of their assets.”

Mills was convicted of conspiracy to corrupt, four counts of fraudulent trading and conspiracy to conceal criminal property, and his wife of conspiracy to conceal criminal property. His wife Jacqueline Scourfield was the sole director of a 'slush company' called Zudiki which prosecutors say was 'established to enable Lynden Scourfield to receive and launder the proceeds of the corrupt relationship between him and David Mills'. The 54-year-old, also known as Gerard, admitted one count of conspiracy to corrupt, four counts of fraudulent trading and one count of conspiracy to conceal criminal property in August last year. Bancroft received 10 years in prison, Alison Mills received three and a half years, Dobson four and a half years and Cartwright three and a half years.
Former HBOS manager Lynden Scourfield and other bankers and consultants are found guilty of corruption and abuse of power in stealing £245 million from the bank and small businesses in a loans scam, which was spent on personal luxuries. Scourfield was sentenced to 11 years in prison.