He was a founder member of the National Action group which is now banned in the UK and a member of the National Front which is believed to be one of the longest-running neo-fascist hate groups in the world. Unfortunately, violent racism and neo-Nazism is experiencing a terrifying resurgence across the world mainly thanks to the internet. I asked Geoff what had led him to become a member of such extreme groups and his answer shook me as he felt he was 100% right in doing so. After leaving school his family moved to Boston, Lincolnshire which is famous for the Pilgrim Fathers who set sail from Boston in 1607 to find religious freedom in the new world which we now call the United States of America. Many people think that the Pilgrim’s set sail for America from Boston but in fact they sailed from Boston to Holland and a few months later the English Separatist Protestants later crossed the Atlantic to New England in the USA. Geoff said that he wasn’t always a so-called white supremacist but when the likes of Romania joined the EU in 2007 everything changed in Boston. He said that since 2007 eastern Europeans could catch a plane to the UK without requiring a visa. This open-doors policy was fatal for many cites and large towns across the UK as it let in thousands of undesirable men and women into the country. There was no check on anybody’s criminal record, and we opened the door to welcome murderers, rapist and even child molesters.
This has resulted in Boston becoming the most segregated town in the UK. Many immigrants headed for Boston as they knew that there was work for anyone who wanted to pick the likes of Brussel sprouts and in many cases it was cash-in-hand. The local authority had to provide housing and education for thousands without a penny extra being paid by either the UK government or the European parliament. Geoff felt that it was like your next-door neighbour tipping a bucket of shit over your garden fence every day. Locals accused the government of 'dumping' asylum seekers’ on Boston at the same time as huge cuts in funding for public services. Nearby towns of Wisbech and Spalding are suffering the same problem as immigrants are tempted by the abundance of agricultural and factory jobs in the area.
It wasn’t surprising that Boston led the way in voting for exit in the EU referendum. English Defence League (EDL) marched in the town in October 2016 unsettling many migrants and stirred up ill feeling. Geoff said that he was proud to have marched shouting 'get the immigrants out'. In a way I can understand his concerns but there is a legal way to get your concerns over rather than join nasty groups such as the National Action group who like all terrorist groups use social media to freely get the wrong message across. I asked Geoff if he agreed to what the NA group did after the terrorist murder of Jo Cox MP in June 2016. The National Action shared photos of her killer Thomas Mair with the caption: ‘Don’t let this sacrifice go in vain!’ They also tweeted things like ‘Only 649 MPs to go’ and ‘Jo Cox would have filled Yorkshire with more sub humans! Did he also agree with National Action members also celebrating the terrorist attack on the Pulse nightclub in Orlando last year, where its shared images of a police officer’s throat being slit? He showed no remorse and he was going to be a tough case for me to handle.
It was Geoff’s affiliation with National Action that lead to him being charged under the Terrorism Act 2000 and ending up sitting in front of me. The likes of Geoff Laxly are hard work as the prison service must segregate them from other prisoners for their own safety. He wouldn’t last a night if we didn’t and many would say that he shouldn’t be segregated and that he should be made to face what he calls the “sub humans”. We must protect every prisoner even if it goes against what we believe but we have a moral duty of care. I tried all my usual tricks such as asking what he would do if he had a car accident and needed lifesaving surgery, but the nurse was from Eastern Europe and the surgeon was from Nigeria. Would he say please save me or would he stick to his morals and tell them to fuck off to where they came from. They never like to answer but it would take more than a tricky question or two to change the likes of Geoff Laxly.
I was shocked when I saw on the news that a near riot in Charlottesville, Virginia had cost a life and left many more injured. The USA has some of the largest “white supremacy” groups in the world yet nearly 96% of today’s Americans come from immigrant stock. It worries me to think about the future as unless the powers that be do something to bring us all together then there will be greater divides. The ethnic communities also need to do more to integrate within the UK. I can remember when the city of Leicester was mainly white but during the 1960’s and 70’s the Asian community started to take over sectors of the city by buying up homes in a particular post code. Wherever you look you can see separation in any city. The new City of Milton Keynes is a fine example as many of the districts have been totally taken over by non-whites. An old friend of mine use to have a council house but he moved out as the estate had been taken over by people arriving from Somali. I don’t have all the answers, but something must be done before it’s too late.
Geoff Laxly will not be invited to the heist as I have my concerns that he may be too wild for the job in hand.
Chapter 35. Mickey Mouse approach to credit cards
James Smith who was 32 years old and was a likeable chap who had got into debt after borrowing more than he could pay back. Instead of declaring himself bankrupt he got into drugs and later went on to selling drugs to both feed his habit and to help make money to pay off his mounting credit card debt. When he was caught and found guilty of drug running, he had to declare himself bankrupt in the end. He is currently serving a five-year sentence, but he was worried that if he didn’t cure himself of his addiction he would leave prison and go right back to dealing again. He wanted to get off drugs as his wife still loved him and he wanted to make up for some of the damage he had done. His wife and children had lost their home as he obviously couldn’t keep it once he was declared bankrupt.
I asked James why he hadn’t sought advice on his mounting debt problem before it reached the critical stage. He said that he didn’t want to admit to a stranger that he had well and truly cocked up. He told me that at the start it was easy as he was in a good job as a retail store manager and he wanted to take his family on the holiday of a lifetime to Florida as his two girls were Disney mad. The holiday cost around £2,500.00 and he paid for it on his credit card. The holiday was great but tickets for all the attractions and eating out pushed the true cost of his holiday to over £3,000. At the beginning paying back the interest wasn’t too difficult but when his wife was made redundant, he only had his income to try and pay for everything. He really maxed out on his credit card, so he got another one and then a few more later, just to try and keep afloat but with the interest they were charging he just kept digging a bigger hole for himself and his family.
I had seen James problem far too many times and wondered why the government hadn’t come up with a safety net that would be better than losing his home and liberty. What IMO the FCA and the government should introduce was a safety net plan that would give the debtor a better way out of the dire situation they had got themselves in to. How it could work is that the debtor could apply for the safety net route either via the court or a body such as the Citizens Advice Bureau. The debtor or his advisor could choose one of the credit card companies to consolidate all his debt. Obviously, the debtor should go for one which offers the lowest APR and that company would take over all the debt. He would then be given a debit card to pay his bills with and a plan would be put in place to repay all his debt but at an affordable level. He would agree not to take out any further credit cards or debt until he was free of the safety net.
I explained to James how people fall into the credit card trap without ever realising the dire consequences. If you borrow £2,500 (let’s say to pay for a super 50-inch TV) as many people fall for the sales pitch where they state that it would only cost you £50 month. Most people would think that that’s not a problem, I can afford that. What they do not realize is that they will end up paying more in interest than for the original cost of the television. It is a common mis
take to let yourself get used to paying only the minimum amount that is due on your credit card bill. Most credit cards have an annual percentage rate (APR) of around 18 per cent (store cards are considerably higher). A minimal payment is typically determined by using a percentage of your entire balance. The percentage amount is usually about 2 percent but can vary depending on the card issuer. For the £2,500 plasma television, 2 percent of your original debt would be £50. With an APR of 18 percent, your payment would cover £38 in interest and just £12 towards your £2,500 liability. After the first payment, you would still owe £2,488. If you paid only 2 percent of your total balance due every month, it would take 334 months to pay off your debt. In other words, it would require 28 years to pay off a £2,500 liability. The television will probably have stopped working long before you have paid it off. Even if you decided to pay for 28 years, you would also have paid £5,897.00 in interest. Your true cost for the plasma television would end up being £8,397.00.
Why this isn’t being taught in schools rather than the useless algebra, I’ll never know. Teenagers need to be taught the basics of life such as how do mortgages work and will they ever be earning enough to take a mortgage out. How much smoking 20 cigarettes a day will cost them in a year. The answer is with a packet of 20 Dunhill International costing around £13.00 every day, they would be spending a staggering £4,745.00 a year on their nicotine addiction. It will not only be bad for your health but also your pocket. The same goes for a bottle of wine a day. This addiction would cost you around £2,190.00 a year and won’t do your liver any favours. Sorry James for having a rant but it makes me angry why we are letting children leave school without the basics being learnt. It also annoys me that the likes of MasterCard charge the supplier around 2.5% of the price to process the payment. This is on top of the 18% APR MasterCard charge the card holder.
The UK Government brought into Law in January 2018 a rule where the seller could no longer charge the cardholder the 2.5% as a fee, so all that will happen is that the seller will add the 2.5% to the price. The likes of MasterCard have always charged this fee even in the good old days when the shop had to place your card and a payment slip in a machine to emboss the slip. The shop then had to log all these slips on to a banking slip and his bank would then have to manually log the transaction and process it for payment. Nowadays no one must write or log anything as it’s all done by computers, yet they still charge the same rate as they did back then. It’s about time the government took on the big boys and get them to levy a smaller charge.
But back to you James. What do you think your job prospects will be once you are clean and are set free? James said that he was hoping to train for a trade to do with construction. Either a sparky or plumber would be nice. I don’t think I’ll get a job in retail as they don’t like employing convicts for obvious reasons. I didn’t argue that point, but I told him that I would investigate getting him a start on one of the much-needed trades within the construction industry. I would also be keeping a close eye on his addiction.
I’m glad to say that James got on top of his drug addiction, but he wasn’t inside long enough to qualify as a sparky or a sparkies assistant. He said that the job centre had told him about a training scheme which was mainly done at home and after 12 months you could pass the exam and become a sparkies mate. You could then continue with the course whilst being employed and hopefully after a further twelve months he could become a certified electrician. I asked him why he hadn’t taken up the course and he said that it would cost him £36.00 every week and he didn’t have that type of money as he only got job seekers allowance. Why the government hadn’t paid or loaned him the money at a low interest rate for the course beats me as it would be far better than paying him benefits for the rest of his sorry life and even more cost effective if it kept him out of jail.
I was pleased that James had kept clean and he accepted my offer to be a guest at the Bedford heist as he would then be able to afford the training course to become a fully qualified electrician. James Smith will be my team leader for Team D.
Chapter 36. Money laundering is a growing problem
Steve Marshal who had been sent inside for money laundering was as black as the ace of spades and was currently serving a four-year sentence at Her Majesties Pleasure for money laundering and fraud. Although originally from Nigeria Steve came to Britain as a young child with his family in 1969 who were escaping the Nigerian civil war. His family changed their name to Marshal as soon as possible as they didn’t want anyone from Nigeria finding out where they had moved to as they would want to settle old scores.
When a prisoner falls under my watch, I try to re-educate them and change their way of life, so that they contribute to society instead of always taking. It was difficult to place Steve on any training course as he only wanted to do the same course, he had done last time he was inside. This was at another prison in the north of England where he was put on a design and printing course which he found extremely helpful as it helped him become better at the forgery side of his illegal business. I had to laugh with him when he said that he would be eternally grateful to the British prison service for providing him new and better skills. I told him that he wouldn’t be so lucky this time around and he ended up helping in the prison’s kitchen.
As with all prisoners under my care I asked him what had led him to his current way of life. He said that his family were housed in Manchester and when he left school, he joined a local print and design company and was quite happy with life until he lost both parents in a car accident when he was just 20. The house they called home was a modern three-bedroom house on the outskirts of Salford. His parents had a mortgage on the house which was more than he could afford so it ended up being sold and he did raise just over £50,000 from its sale. He wanted to do something with the money and he also needed a roof over his head, so he ended up leasing a rundown printing shop in Salford which had a nice flat above the shop. Things went ok for the first few years, but once large companies started trading on the web, he just couldn’t match their low prices and he started to lose money fast.
It was then that a contact he had made at an ex pats due held at the King’s House Conference Centre in Manchester suggested that he did some work for them. I knew it was iffy but when your down on your luck there was little, I could do but to go into partnership with them. I had to sack the two staff as they weren’t in on the plan and his new friend replaced them with four of his own team who knew the game well. We started off by printing cheque books and made a lot of money producing the forged cheque books for a wide range of false accounts. It was easy to get the clients details as on many debit cards it also showed the clients name, account number and sort code. These details were supplied from another Nigerian group who were scanning cards when someone used a cash point.
This went well for a few years, but the banks were getting wise to our scheme and kept changing the paper used and kept introducing more security features. The paper wasn’t too much of a problem as we could get this made in Eastern Europe but one shipment from the paper mill was traced to our shop and we were raided by the police. I ended up serving three years as I had told the court that I had been forced to do what I did or my family back in Nigeria would be killed. The course I took was immensely helpful and within two weeks of being released I was back printing new forged cheque books for the same people but this time it was based in Rochdale which was a depressing part of the city.
I asked Steve what went wrong this time around. He said that he was only charged as a worker this time as he didn’t own the printing outfit. I tried to use the same excuse as last time and I think that this helped keep the sentence down. He went on to state that there are companies who keep an eye on cheque fraud and act as an early warning system for its members. They found out that we had just hit a few companies who banked with the Royal Bank of Scotland and somehow, they traced it back to our set up. Steve would be released in 2020 and I told him just before he left that I may need hi
s services later but I couldn’t tell him more at that time as I was unsure if I would invite him to the Bedford heist.
In the end I did make Steve a full member and he would be busy on the day robing one of our target banks and later helping us to launder the money so that we only got back genuine untraceable notes. Steve Marshal will be my third guest for Team D.
Chapter 37. Allegedly robbed by the bank
Jacob Henningsson who was born in Jamshog, Sweden but moved to the UK in 2002 to teach Mathematics at Christ’s College in Cambridge. Probably the most famous student ever of Christ’s college was no less than Charles Darwin best known as an English naturalist, geologist and biologist, and for his contributions to the science of evolution. Jacob settled down and married an English girl in the village of Grantchester in 2004. He later sired two lovely girls which were named Katarina after his mother and Carol after his mother-in-law. Everything was rosy and he settled into the British way of life and was becoming well known for his work at Christ’s College, Cambridge.
Whilst in Cambridge he met up with other tutors from the various colleges and he started a small firm as a joint venture and developed a software programme that would help teach mathematics to students that had a learning difficulty such as dyslexia. They set up the company with their own funds but to get the product to the world’s marketplace they would need a worldwide patent which would not come cheaply. They decided to approach the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) for a loan and based on their standing they borrowed £100,000 to gain the protection and patent they desired. Things went well but the cost were spiralling out of control and they needed to go back to the RBS and ask for a further £50K to see the finished and fully protected product reach the market.
The Bedford Heist Page 17
