An illegal money lender has been ordered to repay £315,000 of the £425,000 he made by charging ’swingeing’ interest rates to vulnerable customers.
Paul Stretch grew rich by running his doorstep lending scheme for nine years and was only caught when carers looking after a vulnerable man with learning difficulties alerted the police.
He lent money to around 100 customers in Newton Abbot and Torbay, including a cancer patient who had been refused credit by other lenders because of her condition.
Stretch had worked for one of Britain’s leading licensed finance company but set up in his own right even without any official authorisation.
He will now be forced to sell property and liquidate bonds to repay most of the money he made from the scam. Around £200,000 will come from bank accounts and policies and the rest by selling property.
He faces serving a further three years in jail unless he hands over the £315,000 within three months.
Stretch, aged 58, of Twickenham Road, Newton Abbot, was jailed for two years and three months at Exeter Crown Court in August last year.
He admitted engaging in a consumer credit business without a licence, engaging in a regulated business activity without authority, and two charges of money laundering.
He was brought back to the same court in custody under the Proceeds of Crime Act and Recorder Mr Paul Dunkels, QC, rubber stamped an order which had been agreed between his lawyers and the prosecution.
The judge set the amount by which Stretch had benefited as £425,000 and the available amount as £315,000. He also ordered him to pay £11,545 costs.
He told him: ’You may feel hard done by, but this is the inevitable consequence of your conviction.’
The scale of Stretch’s illegal money lending was set out when he was jailed last year. Police raided his home in January 2016 and seized records which showed he had dozens of customers.
He was found with £3,070 cash and more than £100,000 in his bank accounts. He and his wife Mandy owned two homes and two cars outright.
Investigators traced £350,000 moving through their accounts over nine years. The judge who jailed him said the interest rates were ’swingeing’.
The police inquiry started after a complaint from an NHS trust about the exploitation of a vulnerable adult.
Notebooks showed that between June 2015 and January 2016 Stretch had lent £22,500 and received repayments of £95,000. In that time he made new loans to 60 customers.
Mr William Parkhill, defending, told the sentencing hearing that Stretch was not a loan shark and there had never been any threats or violence used to secure repayment.
He said the rates of interest he charged were often lower than those levied by big-name payday lenders whose advertisements appear on television every day.