Nearly £2 million in cash and assets was recovered by financial investigators from the Kent and Essex Serious Crime Directorate in the last financial year.
Specialist police staff from the Proceeds of Crime Team use legislation under the Proceeds of Crime Act to strip suspected drug dealers, fraudsters and other organised criminals of money and possessions believed to have been illegally obtained.
During 2022/23 a total of £1,799,664 was recovered through the granting of 110 separate court orders applied for following an in-depth review of each offender’s personal circumstances.
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Successful applications from the past year include:
• In August 2022 a convicted cocaine dealer from Lamberhurst was told his £20,000 BMW sports car would be sold along with a personalised number plate and quad bike. The man in his 20s had been jailed for three years and nine months the previous December after officers located a large amount of cocaine inside a property he had been renting.
• A Gravesend couple were ordered to forfeit around £110,000 in December 2022 after they were unable to demonstrate how they legally obtained the cash. Officers found two vacuum-packed bags of banknotes following a search of a property, which the couple claimed had been left by a relative shortly after they died. However an in-depth investigation revealed it was unlikely the relative in question would have been able to amass such a large sum, and that some of the cash had been issued by the Bank of England after they had died.
• In October 2022 a fraudster who helped trick people into paying for cars that did not exist had his own Porsche seized when local officers spotted him driving it through Sheerness, aware that he still owed more than £1 million from a previous court order. The man in his 30s had previously received a 16-month suspended prison sentence after admitting his part in a conspiracy in which innocent members of the public were duped into handing over their savings to fake online traders.
• Ten victims of a complex investment fraud were compensated for their losses after a Gravesend man who tricked them into parting with their money was ordered to pay back £72,982 in January 2023. The offender who was in his 30s had previously been sentenced to 18 months’ imprisonment for fraud and money laundering.
• In February 2023 a drug supplier from Paddock Wood who arranged high value cocaine deals using a heavily encrypted messaging service was ordered to pay back £78,000. The offences committed by the man in his 40s came to light when law authorities in France and the Netherlands cracked the illegal EncroChat mobile phone platform.
Orders
The Proceeds of Crime Act allows for investigators to recover money through two different channels – a confiscation order or a forfeiture order.
A confiscation order instructs an offender to pay the amount they have benefited from crime. The Proceeds of Crime Team secured 63 orders for a total of £838,928 in 2022/23.
A forfeiture order deprives an offender of assets and property gained through crime. A total of 47 orders were obtained from the courts, worth a total of £960,736.
The legislation also allows police staff to freeze bank accounts and seize cash and ‘listed assets’ including watches, precious metals and artistic works, and last year the team recorded a combined value of just over £2.7 million from those methods.
Fantastic
Assistant Chief Constable Andrew Pritchard, Head of the Kent and Essex Serious Crime Directorate, said: ‘Our financial investigators do a fantastic job ensuring offenders do not continue to benefit from their crimes after being released from prison.
‘Even when someone has spent all of their money and has no available assets to recover, the team will continue to carry out regular reviews of their finances until every penny they earned through the sale of drugs, defrauding of innocent people or any other type of offending is paid back.
‘There will be no let-up in our efforts to target people who bring harm to our communities and anyone seeking to benefit from criminality in Kent should be aware that we have the resources and expertise to target them and bring them to justice.’
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Assets recovered under the Proceeds of Crime Act are distributed to operational agencies including Kent Police under the Asset Recovery Incentivisation Scheme (ARIS). Broadly, ARIS divides recovered assets between operational agencies and the Home Office which is then reinvested into policing.
If you believe someone you know has unexplained wealth or is benefiting financially from crime, please report it to Kent Police at this link. Alternatively call the independent charity Crimestoppers in Kent anonymously on 0800 555111 or complete the online form at this link.