Exclusive: Footballer sues over Spain scam
FORMER footballer Matt Elliott is heading a group of angry investors preparing to sue a British firm believed to be at the centre of a Spanish property scam.
Elliott, 40, is said to have lost more than £300,000 in a series of investments in the Costa del Sol that were arranged by Midlands-based Ocean View Properties.
The former Leicester City captain is joined by Ali Mauchlen, who also skippered the side in the Eighties and the club’s ex-sales manager Ade Danes. Both claim to have lost £70,000.
Mr Danes said: “Matt has not seen a penny of what he invested. We’ve had enough and there is now legal action.”
All three were persuaded to invest by Adam Sargent, a financial adviser whose other clients include Aston Villa’s Gareth Barry and Newcastle United’s Alan Smith.
Matt has not seen a penny of what he invested. We’ve had enough and there is now legal action.
Mr Sargent was named by the Sunday Express as one of four men integral to Ocean View. He was the main UK franchise agent who sold “off plan” buy-to-let Spanish apartments to sportsmen then used their names to promote Ocean View to other investors.
The other three were sole shareholder Colin Thomas, conman Sean Woodhall and Spanish developer Ricardo Miranda. Woodhall is believed dead after a plane carrying other debt-ridden Britons crashed in mysterious circumstances in Brazil in May.
For five years, the operation made a fortune out of finding prime sites and selling to British investors, which included BBC Homes Under The Hammer host Martin Roberts.
Customers would be asked to pay deposits of about £70,000 and fund the rest via a preferred Spanish mortgage broker.
In 2006 a corruption scandal triggered a freeze on further planning applications and hundreds of apartments that Ocean View took deposits on have failed to materialise.
Customers including the Leicester City contingent have demanded their money back, but have been told there is no cash left.
Ocean View, which has debts of more than £100million, has made all its staff redundant at its headquarters in Longdon, Staffordshire. Mr Thomas, who has paid himself millions in dividends, told the Sunday Express two weeks ago that customers should apply for a refund scheme being run by Mr Miranda’s company Sungolf. However, his spokesman said Ocean View had all the cash.
Following the Sunday Express’s investigations, police and Government fraud agencies have stepped up their own probes.
In another development, the Sunday Express has discovered that Lloyds TSB is investigating scores of successful applications sent to the bank by Mr Sargent. It follows allegations they were falsified to include inflated salary details that allowed customers to take equity out of their British homes.
Disabled former magistrate Elizabeth Ballinger, 55, said she was unaware that false income figures had been included on an application form signed off by her and Mr Sargent in 2003.
She fell seriously ill a couple of weeks later, since when her family have been managing her finances. She said: “I’ve only just started delving into things again and there’s no way that our income was at the levels he put in.”
Another application form allegedly countersigned by Mr Sargent and which has been obtained by the Sunday Express was for Michele de Havilland, Mr Thomas’s girlfriend. It says that in 2004 she was a “marketing manager” at Ocean View earning £250,000 per year. Yet when Mr Sargent was asked what was Ms de Havilland’s involvement with Ocean View, he said: “None I’m aware of.”
When asked if she was ever employed by the firm, he said: “I don’t know. All I know is that she was Colin Thomas’s girlfriend.”
Ms de Havilland refused to comment when asked about the application and whether she had been on the Ocean View staff.
Mr Sargent described Mrs Ballinger’s allegations as “utter nonsense” and denied any wrongdoing. Mr Thomas and Mr Miranda also deny all allegations.
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