A COVENTRY loan shark who was charging his customers a flat rate of 40 per cent interest on the money they borrowed made an estimated £100,000 from his illegal activity.
And that is the amount a judge at Warwick Crown Court ordered Colin Devereux to pay under the Proceeds of Crime Act as he jailed him for 22 months.
Devereux (52) of Deedmore Road, Wood End, Coventry, had pleaded guilty to being concerned in a credit business without a licence and engaging in money-lending without authority.
Simon Mortimer, prosecuting on behalf of the Illegal Money Lending Team at Birmingham City Council, explained that the industry was highly regulated to protect those people who need to borrow money from bodies other than a bank.
Devereux had been acting as an illegal money-lender for just over seven years between August 2011 and December last year.
The first charge related to a breach of the Consumer Credit Act, under which a licence was required to conduct a consumer credit business, and the second charge was a breach of the Financial Services and Markets Act which replaced it in 2014.
“Mr Devereux came onto the radar in October 2017 when information was received by Birmingham City’s Trading Standards department from the police who had recovered items showing he was running an illegal loans business.”
When Devereux was interviewed, he admitted he had been lending money for around eight years, charging a flat 40 per cent interest regardless of how long it was borrowed for.
And at his home investigators found £8,000 in cash under the bedroom carpet and a further £1,000 in a kitchen drawer.
Paperwork and records he kept on his phone indicated loans to 120 people, of which 65, all women, were identified.
One of them had been taking loans from Devereux for three-and-a-half years, the first of which was for £300 on which she had to repay £420.
Then at the following Christmas he had turned up at her home and offered her £1,000 which she ‘could not resist,’ despite having to repay £1,400.
By the time she had reduced it to £800 she said she had felt intimidated by him, although Mr Mortimer pointed out there was no indication he had made any direct threats to anyone.
Another woman borrowed £100 and then a further £300, but then stopped because she said Devereux was making sexual advances towards her daughter, while another customer said she stopped over her daughter’s concerns about him being ‘friendly’ towards her.
But Mr Mortimer said there was no suggestion that if the daughter was receptive Devereux might go easy on the mother over the repayments.
Simon Hunka, defending, pointed out: “In the cases of a number of these individuals, when they didn’t pay up that was the end of it. They were not chased for money, he simply wrote debts off, although not in the case of all of them.
“Because of the situation people found themselves in to go to someone like Mr Devereux, I appreciate the court wishes to send out a message, and Mr Devereux realises that.”
He said Devereux, who had three adult children, lived on his own and led ‘a simple life,’ and had always worked and been careful with his money.
It began when he lent money to a friend who had been out of work and got a job for which he needed to buy a car, after which ‘it became something of a sideline business.’
Mr Hunka said: “Mr Devereux has a particular view of what he did, and there’s a degree of self-justification.”
But Judge Anthony Potter commented: “The legislation is to protect people from themselves and from exploitation.”
Devereux was jailed for 20 months, consecutive to two months of a suspended sentence imposed in October last year for supplying cannabis which he was also ordered to serve.
He was given three months to pay the £100,000 under the Proceeds of Crime Act or face a further 12 months inside – after which he would still have to pay up.
Judge Potter told him: “I reject the suggestion in the pre-sentence report that in any sense you were performing this role out of any sort of charitable endeavour. You were doing this to make money.
“The menace the legislation seeks to address is that of individuals without any supervision taking advantage of individuals who have no approach to banks and the like.”
