£3m Diamond Fraud Case collapses due to expert witness and disclosure failings
20 October 2021
Mark Heywood QC and Gregory Fishwick instructed by Bark & Co, and Natasha Wong QC and James Martin instructed by ABV Solicitors successfully argued that the Crown’s disclosure was fundamentally flawed and their clients were acquitted midway through a 3 month trial. The clients were charged with a multi-company boiler room fraud that sold diamonds as investments. The Crown’s case was that a team of brokers including Lewis Bloor from The Only Way is Essex used false identities and pressure sales techniques to con elderly and vulnerable people form hundreds of thousands of pounds.
The evidence against them included a purported confession that was excluded upon application by the Defence. The Crown also sought to include companies either side of the Indictment period as evidence of bad character but this again was successfully resisted.
The Defence managed to show that the Crown’s disclosure was fundamentally flawed. Having read the written submissions the Crown initially dispensed with their own expert who had valued the stones and nearly worthless. Having then considered the supplemental written submissions on disclosure the Crown had to concede that they could not continue to prosecute any and all of the Defendants.
The BBC News Report can be found here.
