£2.5m scam far from charitable

CHARITY CON Ashton, left, in 2012 Lawyers tried to stop me writing about Stephen Ashton’s bent charity operation six years ago, but now the crooked accountant has been jailed for stealing £2.5million.

Ashton was the company secretary of Total Contact Management Limited, a call centre and fulfilment house for various “good causes”, including Morris Cerullo World Evangelism.

I’m no fan of Cerullo, a US preacher who distastefully told the crowd at one of his London rallies to “show your faith” by handing over £25.

Now it turns out that Ashton faked accounts to steal money from Cerullo to fund a luxury lifestyle.

The married cheat spent £500,000 on a home for his mistress and more than £100,000 on a bespoke horsebox.

He was arrested at Birmingham Airport with a one-way ticket to Tenerife.

The 62-year-old from Dunstable, Beds, admitted fraud charges at Luton crown court and was last week jailed for five years and seven months.

Besides Morris Cerullo, Total Contact Management had a client called Child Survival Fund, but donors were not warned that it had been struck off the register of charities.

Ashton dismissed this as an accounting error when I confronted him in 2012.

“We submitted accounts to Companies House which were not in the correct format and to be honest it was my fault,” he said.

Total Contact Management employed law firm Russell-Cooke who told the Mirror to halt publication of our article, saying it would imply that fulfilment house “may be engaged in a conspiracy to defraud”.

I never suggested Total Contact Management was fraudulent. But to be honest, as Ashton might say, its company secretary certainly was. JAILED Ashton got five-and-ahalf years