27/07/2011
A young student at Cambridge University is set to be left without a home, as a judge has ordered the sale of his house, held in his name, in order to settledebts left unpaid by his mother.
The 21 year old received the house from his mother fifteen years ago as a gift and is estimated to be currently worth in the region of £100,000.
However, the problem lies within the fact that his parents were found guilty of five different counts of theft in 2004 and sentenced to jail.
Brenda Ford-Sagers and her husband Robert, gave the family home, The Old School House, to their son in 1996, but had already started committing financial crimes in the previous year, 1995, the High Court heard.
The parents of Theodore took in excess of £100,000 to pay for a renovation to Eilan Glas Lighthouse, which had fallen into disrepair on the Outer Hebridean island of Scalpay. However, having no funds of their own, they pilfered the money from the estate of the late Roderick Walter, which they began dipping into in 1995.
When jailed by Southampton Crown Court in 2004, Mrs Ford-Sagers had been slapped with a £72,000 confiscation order, but to date, despite having her sentence slashed to just two years in jail, only £500 of the debt had been repaid.
Despite being asked to provide a repayment schedule, Mrs Ford-Sagers had apparently not provided a suggested means of payment and had refused to ask her son to sell the property, now held solely in his name.
However, the prosecution said that the gift was made after the criminal acts started and even though there is no suggestion that the house itself was funded by criminal means, the law states that it can be considered as collateral to settle criminally-incurred debts. Judge Milwyn Jarman QC agreed and issued a receivership order on the property.
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