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The Great SmallBridge £9.3m Scam (2012)


photo

This magnificent moated house, is believed to be one wing of a much larger Elizabethan mansion.
The house is surrounded by a moat and fronts onto the River Stour.

The Hall has been repossessed due to a fraud on a massive scale. The owner of the business at the Hall attempted to defraud HM Revenue and Customs of £1.8million
by pretending to sell cars abroad and claiming back the VAT
.
Jailed for 6 years:


Albon arriving at Ipswich Crown Court


Courtesy of the EADT
18 October 2012

Mother-of-five masterminded £7.5m luxury car fraud in Bugattis, Ferraris and Maseratis from her 14th-century moated mansion

Note:- The fraud figures seems to vary up to £9.3m if you take into consideration her additional HMRC fraud.


" Kankamol Albon, 41, lived in a £4m 14th-century mansion with ten bedrooms
" Jailed for six years after it turned out her life was built on pyramid scheme
" She talked victims into handing over huge sums of money for prestige cars
" Many customers never received them from mother-of-five, known as 'Minky'

To her wealthy clients and friends, she was a successful and charming businesswoman.
Kankamol Albon's skill at convincing people to buy luxury cars allowed her to live in a £4million, 14th-century mansion with ten bedrooms and a moat, take expensive holidays and send her five children to private schools.

But her lavish lifestyle turned out to be built on a pyramid scheme in which she defrauded investors of £7.5million. She has now been jailed for six years.

Albon, 41, known to her friends as 'Minky', talked her victims into handing over huge sums of money to buy prestige cars including Ferraris and Bentleys, but many customers never received them.
In one deal, she sold the same vehicle to two different people, Ipswich Crown Court heard on Wednesday.

She complicated Ponzi scheme saw Albon use money from new customers to pay off her most disgruntled creditors. Some people took out loans of hundreds of thousands of pounds on the promise of huge returns.

A few lost their homes, cars and businesses.
Even while on bail after her arrest, she tried to fleece HM Revenue and Customs of £1.8million by pretending to sell cars abroad and claiming back VAT on the deals.

Albon was sentenced after admitting charges of false representation and cheating the public revenue in what Judge Rupert Overbury called a 'massive', 'greed-driven' fraud.

He told Albon: 'You persistently defrauded investors who were told that you were able to buy and sell high-value motor vehicles, such as Bugattis, Ferraris, Rolls-Royces and Maseratis, which you claimed could be immediately sold for profit and would be available for the personal use of investors.
The majority of investors never saw a car.

'You persistently defrauded investors who were told that you were able to buy and sell high-value motor vehicles, such as Bugattis, Ferraris, Rolls-Royces and Maseratis' said
Judge Rupert Overbury
'They were persuaded to roll over so-called profits you were making so you could maintain the illusion you were running a profitable business.'

Albon, who was raised in Thailand and came to Britain 28 years ago, started working as a bookkeeper in 1993 at NA Carriage Company, which was in the name of her now estranged husband Nigel, 55, a former racing driver.

She took over the company in 2004 and the court heard that it made vast sums.
At one point, she withdrew £580,000 and spent it on her home, Smallbridge Hall, in Bures, near Sudbury, Suffolk, where she ran the business and lived with her three daughters and two sons.

Courtesy of the Daily Mail
By Andrew Levy
PUBLISHED: 15:27, 18 October 2012 | UPDATED: 7 November 2012