Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Closing the book on bogus charity pair
Couple banned after taking cash for useless anti-drug material
A CONNIVING couple ran fundraising campaigns that pocketed hundreds of thousands of pounds that kind donors wrongly thought was going to help children.
The first was called Child Protection UK and claimed to provide schools with useful booklets to warn about the dangers of drug and alcohol abuse.
“Education is the key to saving lives,” its website said.
Founder Paula Carson gushed: “If, like myself, you are fortunate to receive letters from young people who have benefited from the material we produce, you too would see what a real and positive difference our campaign is making.”
In fact, Child Protection UK was not a charity, it was a profit-making limited company incorporated by Carson, then called Paula Kasser.
Following complaints about its tactics, the Government petitioned the High Court in 2010 to have it wound-up. Carson managed to get the action dropped by promising to change her trading practices.
The next year she met Paul Carson, who she later married, and they set up a second company, Child Guidance UK Limited.
This claimed to be “an independent campaign to combat the misuse of drugs in today’s society”.
Despite the earlier promises, there were more complaints from businesses who felt tricked into sponsoring the booklets.
Investigators from the Insolvency Service found that its sales script “contained potentially misleading statements which may have led to customers believing that Child Protection UK and Child Guidance UK were charities, worked on behalf of charities or were running a legitimate child safety campaign”.
The sales cold-callers claimed that the booklets were used by schools but some education authorities warned the material was “potentially dangerous” and should not be used.
That didn’t stop the companies charging businesses £169 to sponsor 32 books or £537 for 96 copies.
Anyone who did agree to provide sponsorship would then be targeted for repeat business.
The two “campaigns” run by the couple proved highly lucrative, raking in £1.7million during the period from April 2015 to December 2017.
In April last year both companies were woundup in the High Court in the public interest, on the grounds that Paula Carson, 46, from Congleton, Cheshire, had failed to stick to her previous undertakings given to the court.
Now she has been banned from running companies for 11 years. Paul Carson, 48, has been given a nineyear directorship ban.
“Both Paula and Paul Carson purposefully targeted small businesses to part with their cash with the promise of helping to produce educational materials for schools, with the added bonus of advertising space,” said Ken Beasley, the official receiver.
“However, customers were duped as they failed to realise the two companies were not charities, the materials didn’t comply with national curriculum requirements and very few schools found the materials of any value.”