£200m King of Crime signson... but is it all a con?
Terry Adams picks up his £73.10-a-week allowance... ... as he fights order to pay back £750k in illegal gains
The A-Team ‘made the Krays look like clowns’
AS THE boss of Britain’s most notorious crime syndicate, Terry Adams controlled an estimated £200million illicit fortune.
He had so much money he reportedly did not know where it all was, and would summon an underling whenever he needed cash.
But last week Adams, 61, found himself in the unprepossessing surroundings of a Hertfordshire job centre – signing on the dole.
Afterwards, he hurried out of the building wrapped against the chill in a black leather coat, his eyes fixed stonily downwards.
So was this the final humiliating act in the crime king’s ignominious downfall? Or was it, as many might suspect, just a charade to convince those chasing his assets that he is penniless?
Joining other benefits claimants at St Albans job centre, Adams sat on a plastic chair, perhaps reflecting as he waited to speak to an adviser on his criminal heyday when his associates would stand when he walked into a room.
When his name was called, Adams would have been obliged to describe his efforts to find work. In return, it is understood he was given £73.10a-week Jobseeker’s Allowance.
In the old days, he might have mused, he would not have needed to explain himself. The name Adams alone was enough to reputedly extract immediate payment. In fact, his family – linked to 23 murders – were so feared that they even franchised out their name to allow lesser criminals to say that they worked for them.
Police and security services spent a decade and an estimated £50million of public money trying to bring him down. Adams was jailed for seven years in 2007 for conspiring to hide £1million from the taxman, one of the lesser of his reputed multifarious crimes. Ever since, he has been fighting a court order to repay £750,000 of illegal profits.
These days, he says, he ‘lives like a ponce’ off his wife, Ruth.
Until a year or so ago he lived in a North London mansion – bought with cash, of course – filled with antiques and works of art, among them Picasso lithographs.
It is for the High Court to decide whether the couple, now in a onebedroom flat, are indeed on the breadline – or if they are enjoying the fruits of their family’s 30-year rule over London’s underworld.
When he made his benefits application, Adams, who the police believe still has millions tucked away, was required to detail his previous employment. Intimidation? Violent racketeering? Drug trafficking?
Most likely he recorded a recent incarnation: ‘head designer’ at the fashion company run by his wife – N1 Angel, named after the North London district where Adams grew up. Its website says: ‘It was in Angel that Terrence designed his first bespoke suit at the age of just 14, and it was in Angel that Terrence came to understand the transformative power of style...’ But as godfather of the underworld network, Adams ruled his empire with ruthless efficiency. The Adams family – or the A-Team – were said to make ‘the Kray twins look like clowns’.
Later, as his wealth and status grew, Adams told friends he wanted to ‘kosher up’ – go straight. He acquired restaurants and nightclubs and even tried to buy Tottenham Hotspur Football Club. At a hearing last year, a judge ruled that the lifestyle enjoyed by Adams since leaving prison, including trips with Ruth to The Ivy restaurant and the Royal Opera House, was ‘inconsistent’ with his claims of poverty.
Adams had not made a ‘full and candid disclosure’ about his wealth, she added, and had an ‘unidentified cash reserve’ obtained through crime that he had kept secret from the court. Last month, however, an Appeal Court judge ruled it was ‘arguable’ that her colleague had been ‘wrong in a number of respects’.
Another hearing will take place, probably next year, to decide whether Adams can be given a ‘certificate of inadequacy’ which will allow his debt to be cancelled or cut.
There was no answer at Adams’s flat in St Albans yesterday.