Drug dealer fights Crown bid to recover cash from alleged currency scam
A DRUG dealer linked to an international Bitcoin scam is facing a bid to claw back £800,000 of his criminal fortune.
Dale Pearson, who is serving five years in jail for drug running, had been charged with setting up a web design company to front a large-scale fraud.
Pearson was said to have scammed a £250,000 mortgage before “concealing, disguising, converting and transferring” cash and Bitcoin amounting to £789,046.64 over the course of six years.
The money laundering charges, said to be connected to serious and organised crime, were dropped when Pearson admitted dealing cocaine and ketamine.
In 2018, he faced a 12-charge indictment in court alleging he moved vast sums of money around and used a fraudulent mortgage to buy a luxury six-bedroom property in Dundee.
Prosecutors claimed he laundered cash through various bank accounts and converted £25,900 into the online cryptocurrency Bitcoin.
In a complex scheme, he was alleged to have set up a business and website in the name of Pearson Web
Design to front the fraud. The Crown alleged that Pearson Web Design did not undertake the business of web design and that no VAT returns were ever filed.”
One of the charges alleged that Pearson “did conceal, disguise, convert and transfer criminal property” – namely “sums of money and bitcoins” amounting to £789,046.64 between 2011 and 2017.
He was eventually convicted of drug dealing after Parcelforce staff found bags of white powder stuffed inside a board game being sent to a Dundee address.
Pearson told Dundee Sheriff Court yesterday he intended to conduct his own case against the Crown’s action to recover £800,000 from him under Proceeds of Crime legislation.
But Sheriff George Way warned him: “This is a complicated matter and features some complex tests that even some lawyers get wrong on occasion.
“You have the absolute right to defend yourself and I am not saying you can’t, but it is difficult.”
Pearson said he would not speak to a lawyer before the case calls again.