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

by Michael Gillard

  Baree had opened the CMC account for Page thirteen months earlier. He regularly received emailed statements showing Page’s trading activity and notification that the gambling debt was unpaid. But he said he didn’t pay any attention because Page insisted it would be reversed with his next win.

  The November letter, however, was different because for the first time it threatened legal action against Baree if the balance wasn’t cleared in seven days. Page agreed to cover the CMC debt. But Baree wanted more than his word. He had seen how Page operated with other investors. Ringing in his ears was his best friend’s favourite phrase when investors got angry, which was getting more frequent. ‘Change their nappies. Make sure they are all fresh for tomorrow. I’ll deal with them.’

  But of course Page never did, leaving Baree to take increasing flack, especially from his BAT colleagues and now from his boss Rahul Sharma as well.

  While Baree never dreamed Page would shaft him, he wanted to make sure there was something in writing indemnifying him from the CMC debt. Page provided an undated letter to that effect, which wasn’t worth the paper it was handwritten on. Baree told me he had no idea until much later that the barns had been bought with a huge mortgage. Up until this point he believed the Pages had bought the barns outright and then borrowed £250,000 against it to fund the conversion.

  Baree had earned some returns and commissions but his initial stake was still in the syndicate by November. He said:

  Ultimately I was waiting for mine like all the people who’d put in thirty thousand. Ultimately their dividends were coming at the end of the year, or quarterly or [Page would] say, ‘Look, if I don’t pay you this dividend just roll it over’. So it would be rolling over with some who never got anything. I got something out of it, which I gave back in two months. There was some very happy people, very happy people. For a period of time they would think the sun was smiling out of Paul’s mouth. He couldn’t do a thing wrong.

  But by the winter of 2005 that time had long passed.

  £ £ £

  Laura Page was very surprised to hear such a distressed voice on the end of the line when she answered the home phone that day in early November.

  ‘Is that Laura?’ enquired the sobbing female caller.

  ‘Yes. Who’s this?’ she responded.

  ‘It’s Beatrice Humby, Richard’s wife.’

  The Humbys had invested £180,000 in Page’s syndicate since January. They’d done so without proper due diligence, not even a site visit or the involvement of lawyers. Richard Humby, an officer at Jimmy’s, had simply piled in on the recommendation of his colleague Mark Copley and Page’s promise of an incredible 40 per cent return by the end of 2005.

  The couple had a small buy-to-let empire of properties on the south coast but were getting concerned about the lack of return from their substantial ULPD investment. Page had been ducking Humby’s texts and calls since September. When he did respond, invariably it would be with a short text playing on the death of a relative, his great uncle, or some exotic medical condition.

  Humby had sent a condolence card and was still willing to give his fellow SO14 officer some leeway. But his wife, who was not bonded by the brotherhood of policing, had other ideas. Beatrice had lost all patience with Page and also over one stone in weight from the stress of feeling he was conning them.

  When she rang Laura in early November, Beatrice was sitting in her car. Through the tears, she explained how the situation with Page now meant she was taking anti-depressants.

  After mollifying Beatrice, Laura rang her husband convinced that the woman on the end of the phone was suicidal; although Beatrice would later claim that she was laying it on thick to gain sympathy and get their money back.

  ‘I’ve just had that Beatrice Humby on the phone, Paul. She’s told me she’s drunk a bottle of wine and is going to drive into a wall.’

  ‘For fuck’s sake! I don’t think Dick’s told her the full fucking story. I’ll ring him right away, love.’

  Humby agreed the three of them should meet in south-east London to straighten out the situation. A few days later, Page arrived in his Porsche. He came with what he hoped was a reassuring lie that their money was safe with ULPD and some bank statements as props to falsely reinforce it.

  Page admits he went there to deceive. But he maintains that Humby was also ‘in the shit’ with his wife for investing money without her knowledge. The couple flatly deny this.

  In any event, Beatrice was not buying Page’s spiel. She listened as he tried to seek her sympathy about his own personal problems and why he never picked up the phone.

  ‘If I’m honest, me and Laura are also going through a bit of a difficult patch,’ he said. ‘And like I told Dick before, it didn’t help when I had that spider’s hair in me eye.’

  Page did keep tarantulas at home, but Laura was still the scariest thing in Hatton Close. One day, during feeding time, he’d managed to infect his eye with one of the spider’s hairs. He was certainly in need of hospital treatment but it was taking it too far to claim this was why he had ducked so many of Humby’s calls.

  Beatrice had heard enough. She was feeling sick just listening to the lies and excuses.

  ‘I don’t believe any of this,’ she shouted at Page. ‘You know what you are?’

  ‘No. What am I?’ Page fired back, realizing the game was up.

  ‘You’re a bent cop.’

  If this had been a karate match, Beatrice Humby’s words were a knockout blow. Page was floored but seething with rage. There are very few things that strike at the heart of a police officer’s psyche than being called corrupt, especially by another officer’s wife.

  ‘A tax dodger, yes. But a fucking bent cop? You cunt,’ he thought to himself as he gathered up his bank documents. Beatrice watched with some satisfaction as Page screeched off in the Porsche.

  When he got home, Page told Laura about the meeting. ‘How dare she fucking accuse me of being bent?’ he exploded. In Page’s polluted mind, his actions may have amounted to sharp financial practice but not criminality and certainly not police corruption. A bent cop is one who sells out the force or his colleagues to criminals for a pound note, he believed.

  Laura shared her husband’s outrage, but for different reasons. The Humbys had been on a free trip to Bruges by Eurostar and received returns, like all the other greedy whingers. They knew what they were getting into, she thought.

  That night, Laura rang Beatrice and expressed in the least diplomatic way she knew how that she was never again to speak to her husband like that. Beatrice shot back that Page had sworn at her and been threatening.

  But Laura wasn’t buying it. As she later explained to me, ‘He don’t talk to women, because if he did I’d stab her and him. You know what I’m like!’

  Beatrice Humby was not going to be intimidated. For a few days after the meeting it seemed that the wives had taken over what the husbands had started. Beatrice would sometimes call Wicked Wardrobe and put the phone down or have her say.

  ‘Are you going to back up your husband’s claims, then?’ she asked during one call.

  ‘You rude bitch,’ Laura replied then hung up.

  The Humbys were determined to find out what had happened to their money and hatched a plan based on a less confrontational strategy.

  On the morning of 7 November, the couple drove to the Pages’ house. Beatrice had a tape recorder in her handbag. The plan was that she would go in first while her husband parked the car.

  When the bell rang, Laura looked out of the bedroom window to see a forlorn Beatrice outside. As soon as she opened the front door, her unwanted guest burst into tears. Laura, still in her nightdress, gently ushered Beatrice into the sitting room. Both women were surprised at each other’s appearance.

  ‘You look quite younger than I expected,’ Beatrice said with tears streaming down her unmade face.

  ‘You look like you’ve lost weight,’ replied Laura in a sympathetic tone.

  ‘Is you
r husband in?

  ‘No, he’s out.’

  ‘I need to know what has happened to our money,’ said Beatrice, clutching her handbag and a tissue.

  ‘You should take that up with your husband,’ replied Laura with a little more steel in her voice, but not enough to appear abrupt or rude.

  At that moment, Richard Humby walked into the sitting room. Laura felt his manner was cocky and didn’t take to being asked to put the kettle on.

  The three of them sat drinking tea. Beatrice did most of the talking and felt Laura was being sincere when she promised to do what she could to get some of their money back.

  ‘I know how you feel. I will sort it out for you. I’ll get the money back, half of it before Christmas. I can’t promise the whole amount. I would rather just pay everybody off.’

  ‘I don’t mean to be rude but can we have that in writing please?’ Beatrice asked.

  ‘I’ll ask Paul when he gets back,’ Laura promised just as the phone rang again. ‘It doesn’t stop. I’m sorry. I’ve got to get that. It’s probably for him. He’s so busy at the moment.’

  When Laura returned she confirmed it was her husband on the phone.

  ‘I tell Paul, “Don’t offer holidays just pay people their money’. I take the brunt of the phone calls. I don’t have a problem with people turning up at the house but I do have a problem when people are rude to me. I have my own business now, which is going well.’

  The Humbys had wrung all they could out of the encounter and left shortly. The secret tape recording did not yield any incriminating admissions or clues, just an earnest agreement by Laura to help.

  At 10 pm that evening, Beatrice received an email with Page’s repayment plan. It promised £50,000 on 30 November and £67,000 in January. The Humbys were told they had already had £43,000.

  Beatrice immediately pinged back an email disputing the figures. Her husband read the exchange with deepening concern. He later said this was the moment he knew he and his wife were ‘in a lot of trouble’.

  At the end of November, Page met Humby in a motorway service station with the first instalment. The £13,000 cheque was well short of what the email had promised and was drawn on the bank account of Laura’s mum.

  When it bounced, Page told Humby it was because his affairs were now under investigation by the Inland Revenue and the taxman had frozen his bank accounts.

  It was a variation on a theme of false excuses he had been developing over the winter. Other police investors were told that monies he had invested with Baree in Dubai were also frozen because of new banking vigilance around terrorist financing of UK-based jihadists.

  Phil Williams was another Jimmy’s officer Page was letting down in November. Williams and his financial analyst wife were fans of the TV programme Grand Designs and had invested almost £40,000 in a scheme to develop the Esher, Surrey bungalow site, Meadway.

  Page, however, had failed to turn up at a motorway layby to hand Williams his first return. Instead, he called to apologize, blaming his no-show on a dead relative. In the same breath, Page offered to make it up with a free Gripper Airways holiday. The couple decided on Egypt and Page gave them Baree’s details at BAT.

  However, shortly before their departure near Christmas, Williams received a call from Baree to say the trip was cancelled. Page, he told the couple, had gone AWOL without paying for the holiday package at the cut-off date.

  £ £ £

  Dave Newman, the foreman at the barns site, slid down his window as he approached St James’s Palace one evening in early December. He was running an errand for his boss who’d told him to mention his name when he got to the palace gate.

  ‘I’m a friend of PC Page,’ Newman informed the SO14 officer standing guard. ‘I’m here to see PC Surinder Mudhar.’

  Newman waited while the officer located the Turbanator. Minutes later he was waved through without any checks of the car or what Newman was couriering: a tightly wrapped, thick brown envelope for Mudhar.

  The delivery was Page’s response to family pressure on the Sikh officer to get back the £150,000 invested since 2003. £20,000 of it Mudhar had borrowed from his bank at Page’s request who promised to pay the interest, but didn’t.

  The Sikh officer was not a confrontational character but had recently called Page at home to ask for his £20,000 back. It was Laura who answered the phone. She sensed the despondency in Mudhar’s voice and told him that her husband was out but would soon be getting over £800,000 into his account.

  There was no large imminent injection coming in December. But Page was telling the truth when he rang Mudhar to explain how ‘a man called Dave’ would shortly be dropping off some money at Jimmy’s.

  As Page was bouncing cheques all over the place and, in the Internet gambling world, was regarded as something of a busted flush, it wasn’t obvious from where the £20,000 was coming from. He claimed to me that the tightly wrapped brown envelope sent to St James’s Palace came from Essex gangsters wanting to invest in the ULPD syndicate through a mutual contact of Khan’s. There is no evidence to corroborate Page’s claim and Khan flatly denied it.

  Mudhar was unaware where the money came from when Newman handed him the brown envelope inside Jimmy’s. The courier was also clueless but impressed by his regal surroundings. St James’s Palace is not open to the public but used for official functions and the offices of some of the most important royal households. Clarence House is also inside the palace grounds and was the home to newly remarried Prince Charles and his two sons Princes William and Harry.

  ‘Is anyone famous in the palace tonight?’ Newman enquired.

  ‘Cherie Blair is here,’ Mudhar responded, ‘and one of the princes.’

  ‘The wife is going to love that. Can I use the toilet before I head off?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Mudhar, pointing out the way.

  On his way home, Newman rang his wife to tell her all about his unusual royal errand.33

  Mrs Mudhar was less impressed with the evening’s events. She wanted the rest of their investment and was tiring of Page’s latest excuse that his mother was ill.

  One cold December morning, the Mudhars made an unannounced visit to the Pages’ house. There was no answer so Surinder made door-to-door enquiries, which confirmed that the family had not gone away.

  After a coffee break at the local Sainsbury, at 8.45 am the Mudhars returned to Hatton Close and knocked again. This time Laura answered the door.

  ‘What the fuck are you doing here?’ she said loudly.

  ‘We’ve come to speak to Paul to get our money,’ replied Surinder, a little taken aback by Laura’s stance.

  ‘You can whistle for it.’

  ‘What would you do if you were in my position?’ Surinder asked.

  ‘I wouldn’t get in your position,’ Laura retorted. ‘Now fuck off!’

  The curtains in the cul-de-sac were twitching. Surinder didn’t want to make more of a scene so the couple returned to their car and left.

  Later that day, Page called Mudhar at home.

  ‘Hello, Paul,’ he said putting the call on speakerphone so his wife could listen.

  ‘Why are you coming around to my house, Surinder?’

  ‘Because I wanted to see you.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘I need my money back, Paul. I don’t believe all the excuses, the tax investigation, your mother’s illness.’

  ‘You won’t be getting your money now. You’ll have to wait like the rest of them. You shouldn’t fucking insult my wife,’ Page told him.

  ‘I didn’t, Paul. She was the one swearing at us. Calm down, Paul. Please.’

  £ £ £

  In the run-up to Christmas, Jim Mahaffy and his recuperating wife received a new kitchen without knowing that Page had paid for it from investors’ money. It was Gripper’s alternative to paying back the couple’s entire six-figure investment.

  The value of the kitchen was in dispute. Wendy Mahaffy claimed it wasn’t worth more than �
�10,000. Page said the granite surfaces gave it a £28,000 price tag.

  Regardless, it still left the Mahaffys wanting the rest of their money. They too had tired of Page’s silence or excuses. Like Mudhar, Jim Mahaffy had paid an unannounced and emotional visit to Page’s house where Laura, once again thrust into the front row, assured him he would get what was coming to him.

  In early December, Mahaffy emailed Page. ‘I don’t know what you are up to but not talking is not good,’ he wrote. ‘It’s about time you spoke to me face to face. You keep telling me the money transfer is done and nothing turns up. You agreed to pay back £120,000. I’m going to be forced to do what Wendy has been wanting for months and seek legal advice.’

  Page responded on 9 December. He promised things would be ‘sorted’. They weren’t and he went silent again. Mahaffy had already consulted a solicitor to look into the bona fides of ULPD. None could be found, so he placed a charge on the Essex barns, making the couple the second in line after the equally concerned Mortgage Guarantee.

  Page’s ostrich act towards his key investors was a big mistake. Mahaffy’s charge on the barns had a ripple effect on other officers at Jimmy’s. They too began reaching for lawyers to recover money they now believed Page was hiding from them. A period of recrimination was about to begin and some investors would try to strike private deals with Page. Like penguins desperate not to miss out on a feeding frenzy, one by one they had jumped into choppy waters and now they were jostling each other to get back on the slippery rocks.

  In 1841, Charles Mackay described the phenomena in Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds when discussing the end of the tulip bubble:

  Confidence was destroyed, and a universal panic seized upon the dealers … The cry of distress resounded everywhere, and each man accused his neighbour. The few who had contrived to enrich themselves hid their wealth from the knowledge of their fellow citizens; and invested it in other funds. Many who, for a brief season, had emerged from the humbler walks of life were cast back into their original obscurity.

  Journalist Michael Lewis observed the same phenomena in his book Liar’s Poker about 1980s Wall Street’s casino capitalism: