For Queen and Currency: Audacious fraud, greed and gambling at Buckingham Palace

by Michael Gillard

  Separate to these ULPD investments, McGregor was still feeding the Currency Club’s bottomless pit of loss. Between October and December 2003, he put £33,000 into his CMC account for him and Page to spread bet.

  In the second week of November, McGregor’s brother came over to meet his recently born nephew for the first time.

  Robin McGregor, a Royal Marine Commando based at Taunton in Somerset, was awaiting orders to go to Iraq to join the 18,000 British troops stationed there after the US-led invasion in March.

  When he arrived, McGregor and Page were sitting around a table covered with plans for the barns conversion. Page had paid £4000 to have them drawn up. The pair enthusiastically described the barn project to Robin, who listened with little interest or disposable funds.

  That all changed days later after a call from his brother.

  ‘A lot of my colleagues at SO14 are investing and Paul asked me if you were interested. Are you?’

  ‘What do you think?’ Robin enquired.

  ‘I’ve invested a lot of money. Now’s the time to do it.’

  ‘I know property is the thing to be in and the extra cash wouldn’t go amiss,’ Robin replied.

  Days later Page was on the phone offering a 25 per cent return over one year on whatever Robin invested. As he had no savings, he told Page he would see if his bank would loan him £15,000. Barclays, in fact, offered a £25,000 unsecured loan, which surprised Robin given his earnings were so low. Page of course encouraged him to take it.

  The next day, 14 November, Robin transferred £19,500 into the ULPD NatWest account, which at the time was only £340 in credit. A few days later Page transferred over £6000 to his William Hill online betting account.

  Robin had no idea about the gambling side of Page’s operation. So when the police officer called soon after with a new request, the marine was willing to listen.

  ‘Hello, mate,’ said Page. ‘I was thinking, would you be able to get me into your barracks in Taunton to make a presentation to some of the lads there?’

  Robin McGregor was not sold. He was a few weeks from leaving for Iraq and wanted to keep the investment opportunity tight. But he agreed to introduce Page to a fellow marine who wanted to invest.

  Meanwhile, Adam McGregor was promoting the ULPD barns conversion to police colleagues in and outside of SO14 over a game of golf while off-duty at Balmoral Castle in Scotland, where the Queen’s firm took their summer holidays. On other occasions he would puff the barns project after a round of golf near his Essex home.

  In the clubhouse, McGregor pitched the idea to Steve Tree, a sergeant on the Met’s Territorial Support Group, which deals with riots. Tree and his wife, also a Met police officer, had just had a child and sold their house leaving them with £60,000 to invest. McGregor took them to meet Page and visit the barns site. The couple was concerned about investing so much money.

  ‘Property prices were going through the roof but there was always a chance of a crash,’ said Tree. He could remember the last one in the early 1990s. However, Page reassured the couple that there would be plenty of equity in the barns project when they were sold and offered a crazy return of 30 per cent. Tree was reassured by the involvement of other police officers and transferred £60,000 to ULPD without any receipt or documents.

  Such imprudence was repeated time and again by other police investors. Their trust in Page may have been deserved if he could at least demonstrate a degree of record keeping. But there was none, or at least none that he was willing to show investors. And to be fair to him, they weren’t asking.

  Although Tree’s money did go towards purchasing the barns, a lot of other money was going on spread betting and sports gambling with very mixed results.16

  Page had also asked his Aunty Pat to re-mortgage the family’s Leytonstone home for £150,000, which he said would go towards redeveloping the barns. She loved her nephew and wanted to help him through his financial difficulties. He promised he would keep up the loan repayments but created a wholly false legal financial guarantee for his aunt. It claimed that her £150,000 loan was secured against Clippers Hair Salon and the freehold. But the business was bust, and he didn’t own the property.

  Even family were now fair game.

  Chapter 9

  Jimmy’s

  Constable Mick ‘the Don’ Hickman approached Page at Buckingham Palace with a serious look on his face.

  ‘Paul, the chief inspector wants to speak to you.’

  Hickman was a trusted friend and one of the few older Royal Protection officers who Page looked up to. He was also the interface between SO14 bosses and the officers.

  Hickman derived his nickname from being a Police Federation representative at BP. The Federation is the nearest thing the police in England and Wales have to a union. Police officers are not allowed to be in a union. Instead, lower ranks pay a monthly sub to the Federation that covers them for all types of assistance, including legal representation in any disciplinary or criminal matters.

  ‘It’s about the council tax,’ the Don explained.

  Page was none the wiser. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You haven’t paid it mate, and the council have written to human resources. They want to take it out of your job money.’

  The penny dropped and Page was straight on the phone to Laura. ‘Love, you’ve got to pay the council tax, like now.’

  ‘It’s not just them, there’s water rates as well, Paul,’ Laura reminded her husband.

  ‘I’ll deal with them fuckers later, just pay the council tax for now, love.’

  ‘And what about the mortgage? We’re two months behind on that. I’m not losing the house, Paul, not now, not in my condition.’

  ‘Love, love, just pay the fucking council, I’ve been pulled in to see the chief inspector. Got to go. Bye.’

  As he walked to Chief Inspector Brian Patrick’s office across the road from Buckingham Palace, Page began confecting an explanation. It would have to be convincing flannel because almost two years earlier, in March 2002, he had promised the chief inspector to put his house in order after IG Index had contacted SO14 about an unpaid spread betting bill of £2700.

  Page was left to honour his word. He didn’t and IG Index wrote off the debt and banned him. Chief Inspector Patrick had no insight into how much worse Page’s gambling had become when once again he was inviting the constable to have a seat in his office and explain himself.

  Only a month earlier on 2 January 2004, Kensington Mortgages had written warning the couple they were £3540 in arrears and had £190,630.14 left to pay on their Hatton Close home after recently borrowing against it. The monthly payment was now £1492. It had just gone up as a new 9.5 per cent interest rate kicked in. Anglia Water was also threatening to take the couple to court over a £400 bill and Page had a dispute with CMC over one of his spread-betting accounts. The company was chasing him for a £15,000 gambling debt. ‘What’s going on, Paul?’ Chief Inspector Patrick enquired politely.

  ‘Well, sir, I’ve just been so busy at work and at home. My wife’s pregnant with our fifth and she’s having a bit of a hard time of it all.’

  ‘Look, Paul. You need to sort it all out.’

  ‘Yes, sir. I’m sorry. My wife is paying the bill as we speak.’

  Page left the office surprised that he had not been disciplined. He had only recently come off restricted duty over the gun incident with his brother-in-law.

  Page rang Laura on the way back to BP. ‘Did you get your bottom slapped, then?’ she asked sarcastically.

  ‘Not even words of advice. I’m untouchable, love. Maybe they are concerned that too many people will be pissed off if it is stopped. They’ve never asked me to stop, not once. Stop shouting share prices over the fucking radio and stuff, but not stop doing what you’re doing. It was too blatant not to be noticed by very senior officers.’

  ‘So what happened, then?’

  ‘I’m sticking out like a sore thumb now. They want me to reel it in, love.’
<
br />   ‘We got a baby coming in three months, Paul. I can’t have all this coming to my house.’

  ‘It won’t love. I promise.’

  Later that day, Page returned home to tell his wife the new plan and how she featured in it.

  ‘I’m applying for paternity leave. It’s a piss-take but it means I can concentrate on ULPD.’

  ‘Oh! That’s nice, using me as an excuse to get off work. You better pull your weight at home, then. How long they going to pay you for sitting on your arse?’ Laura enquired, mindful of the unpaid bills piling up.

  ‘Love, it’s unpaid leave. I’ll get paid paternity leave when the baby’s born.’

  ‘I’m not due until May. How we going to live for the next three months and pay the mortgage?’

  ‘I’ve got spare cash floating around and if I’m running the syndicate full time and not on police wages then everyone knows they are going to have to sub me.’

  ‘You promised me it was not coming to my door anymore!’

  ‘It won’t. I’ll still be going to the palace to drop off the dough and stuff.’

  Page was not being straight with his wife or himself. The pressure of trying to make money gambling, the property development project and delivering cash returns in brown envelopes while pretending to work was taking its toll on him. ‘I was starting to burn out,’ he told me.

  It was either stop pretending to be a Royal Protection Officer or stop the syndicate. He chose to stop being a police officer. SO14 management didn’t object to his proposal. Perhaps it was a convenient way of getting Page out of BP without having to do anything.

  A few weeks later on 28 February 2004, Page went on leave, initially for a month. But it was extended for the rest of the year when he claimed Laura needed his help after their fifth son, Harry, was born on 16 May. Laura certainly needed help but Page was too busy building interest in ULPD to give it.

  Four days after Harry was born, Mortgage Guarantee paid £250,000 towards the £450,000 purchase price of the barns into Laura’s NatWest account. Four days later on 24 May the contracts were exchanged. This, in turn, triggered the release of a chunk of money for the conversion to begin.17

  Laura had visited the site with Paul in the later stages of her pregnancy with Harry. Her jealousy was out of control. One of the builders had joked that the owner’s wife would sometimes appear in a bikini around the site and on one occasion had asked Page for help. Laura went berserk and made her husband swear the impossible – not to visit the site again.

  When Harry was born, Laura’s jealousy got worse. Watching her husband bashing the phones at home to bring in new investors would send her into a rage if it was a woman on the line. One day in July, Page snapped.

  ‘You’re fucked in the head love. You’re not in a state to look after Harry,’ he told her before getting in his car and driving off with the two-month-old baby. Laura was furious. She rang and rang his mobile until her husband relented and answered.

  ‘Get back here with my son!’ she ordered him.

  That afternoon, Laura was expecting a visit from the midwife, who found her patient in tears. Laura discussed the situation at home and acknowledged for the first time that she was suffering from post-natal depression and needed support.

  Page had moved out to a hotel for a while. That night, he sent a text to the husband of one of their friends telling him to come over with a crate of his favourite beer.

  £ £ £

  As the Range Rover with blacked out windows approached St James’s Palace, the cameras in the control room were apparently turned away so as not to record the scene that followed.

  It was the summer of 2004. Page was on leave and doing his rounds. It felt like he was in an ice-cream van. A number of SO14 officers at Jimmy’s, the SO14 nickname for the palace, waited their turn to get into his car and left seconds later with an envelope of cash stuffed inside their uniform.

  Inside his new mobile office, Page handed out copies of the ULPD brochure and guided officers to a section called ‘Advantages to our investors’, in particular the part that promised a cash bonus for those who brought in friends and family.

  Page ‘guaranteed excellent financial returns’ of 25 to 40 per cent, far above any high-street bank and the best-performing hedge funds. Anyone putting in serious money was told they would receive a loyalty bonus of an even higher rate of return for signing a second one-year contract with ULPD.

  Perhaps the most attractive of all of ULPD’s promises was the continued and financially insane guarantee against investors’ losses. The brochure boldly claimed there was ‘no risk’ to investors’ capital because in the ‘unlikely’ event ULPD made a loss on a property, the company would pay out from its own funds.

  The brochure described three types of investment scheme. The first was effectively a continuation of the Currency Club: investors gave Page money to gamble and he gave them returns, no questions asked. The second scheme was an investment in ULPD and any other opportunity the company was involved in. The third investment scheme was a straight investment in ULPD for a specific property. The investor was assured they could secure their investment by taking a legal charge against the property into which they had sunk their money.

  This was by far the safest option. But strangely, it was also the least attractive to Page’s investors. There was little wonder about how ULPD was able to offer such fantastic returns and why in the space of three years they had gone from monthly to quarterly and now yearly.

  Page had been desperate to get into officers at Jimmy’s since starting up ULPD in January 2003. Jim Mahaffy, the St James’s Palace officer most involved in the Currency Club, was the first to invest in the new property venture.

  The blurred line between the old spread-betting operation and new property venture didn’t overly bother Mahaffy at the time. He kept his original £5000 spread-betting stake with Page and invested additional money in ULPD.

  Mahaffy was promised a 25 per cent annual return on a £15,000 investment. He liked the figures and on 20 February 2003 transferred the money from his joint bank account into Laura’s NatWest account for Clippers, her bust hair salon. In June, after getting a £1000 quarterly payment in cash, Mahaffy and his wife transferred another £15,000 to the Clippers account.

  The couple believed their money was going to develop a property, but ULPD owned nothing. The Mahaffys signed no contract with the company for this £30,000 investment, all of which Laura transferred to Page’s CMC spread betting account.

  In August, Mahaffy visited the barns site in Essex, took photographs and discussed a further investment with his wife. ‘There appeared to be a lot of profit to be made from the whole thing,’ he said. Later that month, at around the same time that they received another £1000 cash return, the couple transferred £10,000, this time to the ULPD bank account.

  Although the company didn’t own the barns, Page felt able to offer Mahaffy a new deal. The £40,000 the couple had already invested in property plus the £5000 Currency Club stake would be rolled together and a whopping 40 per cent return paid annually. Mahaffy agreed and, in late September, transferred another £25,000 into the ULPD account for the barns project.

  Out of the blue, Page contacted him with a very generous offer. ‘You are a loyal investor, Jim, so I want to send you and the wife on holiday.’ Mahaffy was stunned. Wendy, his wife, was about to turn forty-five in November.

  ‘I’ve been to Las Vegas. It’ll probably cost more than you want to spend so I’ll pay the difference,’ Mahaffy suggested.

  ‘No, mate. It’s on ULPD. Look up BestatTravel online, pick a holiday package in Vegas and then speak to my best mate Fahim Baree, he’s a travel consultant there. He’ll sort you out.’

  Mahaffy chose the pyramid-shaped Luxor hotel with its 120,000 square foot casino. On their return from the mecca of gambling, Jim and Wendy Mahaffy invested £15,000 for a development property in Esher, Surrey, that Page had falsely claimed ULPD was going to develop. The cheque was again pai
d to Laura’s Clippers account on 14 December. No contract was drawn up.

  As a token of their satisfaction, the Mahaffys sent the Pages a Christmas hamper. By the end of 2003, the couple had invested £80,000. In February 2004, they went even deeper, transferring another £45,000, once again to Laura’s Clippers account. The extra money had come from re-mortgaging the family home, which had increased in value from £230,000 to £290,000 in the bubble. With their investment now standing at £125,000, Wendy Mahaffy suggested it would be a good idea to get something in writing. Page was happy to oblige; however, the document he provided contained some very odd wording. It said that Paul and Laura Page ‘acknowledge receipt of £150,000 paid to us in the form of a loan by Mr and Mrs Mahaffy which will be repaid at a time of their choosing’.

  Mahaffy didn’t dispute the wording, but was looking for something more formal. So Page scribbled and signed a similarly worded one-page note that was witnessed by an Essex solicitor.

  Since the beginning, Page had kept Mahaffy on side by regularly paying amazing cash returns and gifting him a free holiday in Las Vegas. There was, at least in Mahaffy’s mind, a beautiful friendship developing between the two Royal Protection officers. The SO14 officer was happy to talk up his investment to other colleagues, hand out ULPD brochures and pass an envelope of cash returns to a fellow officer.

  However, by the summer of 2004, when Page’s black Range Rover rolled into Jimmy’s one more time, Mahaffy was no longer his biggest police investor.18

  £ £ £

  Constable Mark Copley had been at St James’s Palace since 1994, but it wasn’t until December 2002 that he had his first proper conversation with Page about business.

  Copley recalled being in the canteen when he noticed Page scanning the financial news pages and keeping an eye on Teletext. Mahaffy had already told Copley how well he was doing as a member of Page’s spread-betting club. It was a far cry from the share club Copley had helped start at Jimmy’s.