Court tells scammer who gained £85k to forfeit £1
A woman involved with two other people in a scam drugging and selling sick and potentially dangerous horses will pay just £1 despite gaining more than £85,000 from her criminal conduct.
Equestrian centre partners Charlotte Johnson, of Wagtail Place, Hayle Park, Maidstone, and Aniela Jurecka, of Prospect Place, Collier Street, Tonbridge, were each jailed for two and a half years in July 2016 after they were convicted of conspiracy to commit fraud.
The same sentence was handed out to vet David Smith for deliberately carrying out “cursory and inadequate” examinations of the horses before they were sold, as part of the fraud.
A jury heard at the trial that horses, priced from £1,950 to £5,700, were drugged at South East Horses, based at Great Thorn Farm in Marden and at hired land at Duckhurst Farm in Staplehurst, to cover up lameness and other problems.
It was estimated hundreds of horses were sold, bringing in potentially hundreds of thousands of pounds for Johnson and Jurecka, both aged 28.
Adverts were taken out in equestrian publications, but buyers were left with horses dramatically different to those advertised.
Several customers were thrown and at least one was in hospital for two months with life-threatening injuries.
Maidstone Crown Court heard last week that Smith made £59,050 from his part in the crime.
A confiscation hearing was told Johnson benefited to the tune of £85,795 from her criminal activities, but that her realisable assets were “effectively nil”. She was, therefore, ordered to pay a nominal £1.
Because she was in hospital and unable to attend the hearing, she was given 28 days to pay or she would be jailed for one day in default.
Prosecutor Alex Rooke said Jurecka’s financial gain from her criminal activities amounted to £105,553.
Her realisable assets totalled just £104.96. She was given seven days to pay or face a further seven days in jail.
But Deal-based vet Smith has been told to hand over £59,050 because his assets were said to total £491,000.
Mr Rooke said there was also the “vexed question” of compensation which needed to be paid out of the confiscation orders.
“I ask that it be expressed as compensation to be paid from the confiscation orders recovered and distributed pro rata among those who have not been hitherto compensated.”
Jurecka and Johnson also lost their appeals against conviction but Johnson was given a sixmonth reduction in her sentence. They have since been released.