£245m scam financiers who spent profits on prostitutes and trips face sentencing

A group of corrupt financiers who carried out a £245 million loan scam and squandered the profits on high-end prostitutes and luxury holidays are due to be sentenced.

Consultant David Mills, 59, bribed HBOS manager Lynden Scourfield, 54, with designer watches, sex parties and "boys' jollies".

The perks were a reward in exchange for him agreeing inappropriate loans to businesses, which allowed Mills and his associates to profit from high consultancy fees.

Some of the owners lost their companies and even their homes as a result of the scam.

Scourfield, Mills and his wife Alison Mills, 51; Michael Bancroft, 73; Mark Dobson, 55; and John Cartwright, 71, have been convicted of various roles in the fraud between 2003 and 2007.

The two-day hearing at Southwark Crown Court is due to start on Thursday, with sentences to be passed on Friday.

Scourfield looked after corporate customers at HBOS's branch in Reading, Berkshire, until 2007 when he resigned.

Mills lavished the banker with clothes, jewellery, luxury hotels, business-class flights and expensive meals at an oyster bar and a cheesecake restaurant.

His wife also played an active role in the scheme.

She 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.

Mills has been 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.

Bancroft was convicted of conspiracy to corrupt, three counts of fraudulent trading and one of conspiracy to conceal criminal property.

Cartwright, from Hyde, Cheshire, was convicted of fraudulent trading and conspiracy to conceal criminal property, while Dobson, from Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire, was found guilty of conspiracy to corrupt and conspiracy to conceal criminal property.

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