Episode 3 Ill Gotten Gains

When the cell door slams shut on a criminal,

you might think they've got their just deserts,

but the law doesn't stop there.

Criminals are now having their most prized possessions hunted down,

seized and sold at auction to the highest bidder.

Welcome to Ill Gotten Gains.

In this programme, we meet the man who conned the system

by saying he lived humbly in a shed,

but did he actually live here, in a mansion?

It all depends which side of the road you look,

but investigators are after his assets.

He thought he was sophisticated and cunning.

He thought that he was better than us.

We've proved that he wasn't.

And we see how immigration officers and police

seize a people smuggler's assets,

and will watch as this boat is sold off at a Proceeds of Crime auction.

So, the Fortunella kicks things off.

And one young victim of crime who lost a lot of money

wants his cash back and thinks that jail time is the least

a crook should have to do.

I think he should be kept in prison until he gives up the goods.

He's scammed innocent people for money they didn't have at the time,

like myself, so why should he be let free?

Across Britain every day,

teams of specialist police officers are using a powerful law

called the Proceeds of Crime Act to take cash and property

from people who made money in illegal ways.

They might be fraudsters, drug dealers or benefit cheats

but any cash they made through breaking the law

will be taken away by police.

They've seized over £150 million from crooks in a year.

And it is not just cash that gets seized.

This building may not look like Sotheby's,

but millions of pounds' worth of goods owned by crooks

get sold off here every year.

This is a location miles away from London, where they hold

barely advertised auctions called Proceeds of Crime sales.

They are open to the public and any ill-gotten gains

are seized by the police and sold to the highest bidder.

Mick Beattie has spent most of his professional life fighting crime

as a police officer. He is now dedicated to working with financial

investigators across the country,

recovering money and property that has been made illegally.

He's one of the country's leading experts on retrieving money

and luxury items back from criminals.

It's our job to ensure that criminals

who come into the criminal system

are prosecuted, and to make sure that when they leave the system,

they don't leave with that criminal benefit intact.

The items can often be purchased legitimately,

but the source of the income or the means to acquire that asset

have been obtained by foul means, ill-gotten gains.

It's not always the big crime bosses that will attract the attention

of a financial investigator.

Well-to-do white-collar businessmen who think they can cheat the system

are coming under closer scrutiny.

This property in the West Midlands is being searched by elite officers

from the Asset Recovery Team.

They are the officers who are called in when the police need to do

a forensic examination of what money you have and how you made it.

Living room three.

The team suspect that one of the residents at this property

has been assisting people to get mortgages illegally,

and making a sizeable income from it.

The West Midlands team have paid the homeowner an early-morning visit

and are now carrying out a thorough search of the property to try

and find evidence to prove he has made money through fraud.

The suspicion with this individual, this mortgage adviser,

is that he was actually facilitating people obtaining mortgages

with false documentation.

This room may be being used to work from,

so it's being searched and videoed, and the team know what to look for.

When we go through the door or investigate anybody financially,

then we look for lots of documentation

which would then identify money,

where it has been to, things like mortgage applications.

There's lots of documents, both digital documents and real documents

that we would be looking for.

DC Tinsley and his colleagues think

there is definitely evidence of wealth.

This individual lived in quite a large detached house

in a rural area, the likes that

you and me would just dream about living in, really.

Likewise, he had vehicles on the drive

which were very pristine and very expensive.

I found an inside safe.

And, in a downstairs area, they have found evidence

of the suspect mortgage fraudster

having a large amount of money to spend.

The team finished their search of the house, and back at their base,

they had this jewellery valued.

Well, this jewellery is what we recovered at the house on the day.

It is valued, at the moment, of just over £200,000, and if we manage to

secure a conviction, then this financial adviser

could lose all of this jewellery and more besides.

But what has the team most interested is something they have

found hidden away in the suspect's files that they found in his house.

We found some crucial pieces of evidence within the house,

which is central to our prosecution.

Later on, we will see what investigators have found

that makes them suspect major fraud.

Police work very hard to identify property that criminals have built

through crime, but one man was SO good at hiding his treasures,

the law very nearly didn't catch him.

The case was initially taken on by a government department

specialising in fraud in the management of companies.

They were looking into Alan Yeomans,

a company director who had been avoiding tax

before filing for bankruptcy,

but the police believed this wasn't all Yeomans had been up to.

They were suspicious of how he had been able

to make his money and who he was associating with.

In order to bring down what they suspected to be a criminal gang,

they needed to follow the paper trail.

Yeomans came to my attention when a detective inspector from Derbyshire

contacted me and told me that they had an organised crime group

that they were trying to dismantle,

they were trying to do something about.

So in order to work together with the police,

I went and looked at his bankruptcy files and it soon became clear that

he'd done some very naughty things.

In the last three months prior to declaring himself bankrupt,

he'd spent £90,000 on a credit card,

that clearly the official receiver couldn't get back.

When looking for loopholes in his finances,

they discovered the fraud ran much deeper.

Keen to get his teeth stuck into one of the more unusual cases that

passed through his desk, Glenn wanted to make a house call.

So it was clear that Alan Yeomans wasn't working alone.

There were other people involved in it, there were other people

who were being directors. There were family members who were involved.

So, it was... We had to execute a number of warrants

across six different premises, and I went to Shedley Manor.

Yeomans had said that he only had £300 worth of

furniture to his name and that he lived in a shed

in his mother's back garden.

Suspicious of this, Glenn and his team made a visit.

I had no idea what to expect. I thought we were going to a barn.

I'd driven past it, and from the road, it just looks

like the biggest barn you've ever seen - a big, green shed.

I was astonished when I walked round the corner and found

that it actually contained this six- or seven-bedroom manor house.

Yeomans's shed was in fact a £1.2 million six-bedroom property

hidden inside an agricultural barn

to slip through planning regulations.

It's very difficult to describe how odd this situation is.

This is a beautiful area of Derbyshire in a very select village,

with a beautiful set of electronic gates and a drive going down to it,

and a sign that says, "Shedley Manor," in front of it,

and then this monstrosity of a house.

So we went into the house.

The police made the arrest of Alan Yeomans.

It was a very big premises so we started to search and there were

specialist search teams going through the building.

It was full of luxury items.

There was a very expensive fountain outside that was worth thousands.

Inside the house, there was a hot tub, there was a gym,

there was every trapping of luxury and wealth.

Inside the so-called shed

was a treasure trove of luxury goods worth £83,000,

from oil paintings to designer ladies' shoes

and jewellery. But the surprises didn't stop there.

One of the police officers had come across three Victorian oil paintings

on the wall that were about six foot tall.

One of the police officers

ran his fingers down the side of the oil painting,

realised there was a catch and it was hinged,

opened it up, and behind it was a secret room.

As we went into this room,

it was clear that it had been used for something very unusual.

The secret room had been rigged up with filters and equipment

to grow cannabis, and further searches inside an outbuilding

at the property revealed an established cannabis factory.

It was clear that it was a very professional cannabis grow.

One of the most professional cannabis grows

that the local police had come across,

and just the plants alone were worth £40,000.

Police now had all the evidence they needed that Yeomans' so-called

legitimate business was nothing more than a smokescreen

to launder the money for an even bigger crime.

Far from penniless, he had in fact amassed

a £2.2 million fortune

through the growing and dealing of cannabis.

Yeomans was arrested and police then set about stripping the house

of every valuable antique,

oil painting and even wine to help claw back

as much of his proceeds of crime as possible.

It's important when you're moving fine art and antiques that you don't

damage it so it was taken away to storage

and valued by a professional valuer.

This is just part of the contents of Shedley Manor.

Fine art, paintings, furniture, vintage wine.

These are very valuable, very high-quality antiques.

For example, a 19th-century alabaster French clock set

that's worth about £600.

A pair of silver candlesticks from 1921

that's valued at probably £650.

Then we have this lovely clock,

a Regency mahogany bracket clock with a fusee movement in it

that's valued at £2,800.

It's all sitting on this beautiful

Regency-designed extending dining table

that we hope to get £10,000 for.

Three oil paintings behind me set up as they were at Shedley Manor,

together valued at £5,000.

Queen Elizabeth I, Robert Dudley - her favourite -

and Cecil, her spy master, most important of all

because he hinges away from the wall, and behind it

was a secret room, and that had been used for growing cannabis.

Yeomans was charged with nine separate offences

and sentenced to six and a half years in prison.

With all of his pricey antiques now ready to be flogged,

he's paid a high price.

This has been a great result for us.

He's going to come out of prison with nothing.

His house will have gone, the contents will have gone,

and more to the point, the creditors, the victims,

will have been paid off.

He thought that he was sophisticated and cunning.

He thought that he was better than us. We've proved that he wasn't.

Smuggling has always been a historical problem for Britain

but today, it's not cigarettes or drugs

that cause the biggest problems.

There's a far more shocking cargo

that's being brought to these shores.

Behind every item the authorities seize to sell

in a Proceeds of Crime auction,

there's a story of criminal wrongdoing,

and in the case of the Fortunella catamaran,

the story is bizarre and unusual.

The Fortunella is a nine-tonne catamaran that was sometimes

in the waters between the Isle of Wight and Chichester.

It was sailing through this exact area, when a passing marine patrol

decided to question the man sailing it.

The patrol approached the catamaran

and asked the captain to identify himself.

He gave his name as Stephen Jackson.

Alarm bells went off for the patrol members.

Their computer records were telling them that Stephen Jackson was wanted

by police, and they'd just found him.

When the marine patrol stopped the vessel,

Stephen Jackson identified himself.

Subsequently, the police instigated normal intelligence checks.

It was identified that Jackson was actually wanted

on a European arrest warrant issued from Spain.

The boat was allowed to continue on its journey,

but as it sailed into the marina, authorities at Chichester

were calling the police to come and arrest the boat's skipper.

As he sailed into the marina to moor his boat,

staff were closing up the entrance behind him.

The police were on their way.

But Stephen Jackson had no idea he had been rumbled.

With these gates shut,

the Fortunella catamaran was going nowhere.

As soon as he got into the locked gates, they were closed behind him,

prohibiting any form of exit or escape.

The boat was kept under watch as officers from Border Force

and the local police made their way there.

It was a tense moment as no-one wanted the suspect to flee on foot.

But as the team watched the boat,

they could see that the captain was still inside.

He was about to get a surprise.

Sussex Police boarded the vessel with a view to arresting Jackson.

They were somewhat taken aback to find 17 male Albanians below decks,

who clearly were part of a people-smuggling attempt

into the UK.

It looked like Stephen Jackson was smuggling the Albanians in

and safety was not a big concern.

The boat was only equipped to carry up to eight people,

but had 17 on board in very cramped conditions for a long journey.

The police called Immigration Enforcement Criminal Investigation

immediately and we deployed officers to the scene within an hour to then

take control of the formal investigation.

People smuggling like this has become an enormous crime

all across Europe, and some are paying as much as £8,000

to have themselves smuggled into

the UK's various ports and waterways.

Yes, people smuggling by small vessels

from the near continent is an ongoing threat

and it's always going to be an ongoing threat because the

UK borders now, through the ports and the airports,

have increased security, increased capacity,

so it's increasingly hard now for organised crime groups to penetrate

through those control point areas,

so they're looking at alternative options.

And having stopped the Albanian men

from illegally entering the UK at Chichester,

there was a further surprise for immigration officials

when they checked the background of one man

who was moments away from hitting the streets here.

One particular Albanian had been convicted for sex offences,

had been subject to a deportation order,

so we were particularly pleased to apprehend him.

He was subsequently prosecuted, convicted,

sentenced to 16 weeks in prison and then immediately deported.

Thankfully, he was refused entry to the UK.

Eight of the other 17 Albanians were immediately deported,

whilst nine were jailed here in the UK to be deported later.

But the longest sentence was reserved for Stephen Jackson.

The captain of the boat received four years and nine months' jail

for his part as the organiser of the smuggling operation.

And that's not the only punishment.

He claimed he was given the catamaran as payment

for smuggling the people in, but now it's been seized by the Home Office

and he will sail it no more,

because it is to be sold off in a Proceeds of Crime auction.

Later, we'll see how much it fetches.

Anything bought from ill-gotten gains can be seized

under the Proceeds of Crime law.

Prized possessions, such as jewellery and watches are common,

but it's the fast cars that sell for big money.

Some sale items that come to auction from the Proceeds of Crime

create a buzz, like this one -

a top-of-the-range Audi.

We can't tell you about the case concerning its former owner

because it's currently being kept under wraps,

but what we CAN tell you is this Audi R8

does 0 to 60 in under four seconds,

and would make the ideal getaway car in a pursuit.

Brand-new, one of these could cost over £120,000,

but buyers at the auction will be looking for a better deal than that.

A white Audi R8 V10 Plus

is a desirable item, and what we also notice in

the auction trail is that these things rarely become available.

They are traded in at certain times.

Sometimes if you have a particular model of car that's only

a year or two old, it's rare that it's actually available

and on the market for someone to buy.

And expectations for the car are high.

We think that particular type of Audi should fetch anywhere

in the region from £60,000 to £70,000.

So it's time for the car with the mystery past to be sold.

And it seems a written bid has been submitted already.

The Audi R8 Plus 5.2 litre Quattro V10.

Very happy to be selling this this evening.

Directly in from the government to be sold with no reserve.

Only 8,000 miles on it.

The written bid is going to kick things off on this at £50,000.

It's away at £50,000 on the R8.

50,000. And 52.

52,000 now.

54. 55 with me.

With the written bid at 55,000. 56. 57 with me.

It's still with me now at the written bid.

At 57. 58 with the online bidder now.

And 59. Multiple online bidders at 59.

Bid in at 59,000. 60,000 now. At £60,000.

Bid in at 60,000. That is still very cheap for an Audi R8.

-61...

-With the Audi sitting just a few yards away,

someone in the room has been tempted.

At £62,000.

63, seated, in the middle of the hall.

£63,000. 63,500.

I have got to give online the same chance, at 63,500.

Three online bidders. At 63,500.

64?

At 64,000, it's with the hall, at 64,000.

I'll take it down to 250s.

It is at 64. Straight in.

64 and a half? 65?

65,000.

It's in the hall at 65,000.

I'll take 250s. It's at 65,000.

The gentleman's bid seated at 65,000.

Any further bids? At 65,000.

65,250. At 65,250.

65,500.

Seated. I'll take it in hundreds.

At 65,500. 65,500.

On lot 130, the Audi R8, gentleman's bid at 65,500.

Only 8,000 miles.

At 65,500.

And the hammer's up at 65,500.

Once, twice,

third and last. Sold.

Well done, sir. 706.

-Great bidding.

-Sold.

But what sort of person buys himself a car as fast as an Audi R8?

Very nerve-racking. I've been to quite a few auctions.

We buy and sell a lot of cars.

Yeah, it was good. We managed obviously to succeed,

which was even better.

And auctioneer Aidan is particularly pleased with how the sale went.

It was nice to see an actual physical user,

someone put their hand up and bid and was able to buy it and fend off

all the competition online.

He was a very happy man at the end of the auction.

Yes, I was fairly happy, to say the least.

Very happy indeed.

Sometimes crucial evidence can take the form of a bloodstain,

a weapon or a bag of drugs, but in one recent case,

elite financial investigators think

a few sheets of paper may be all they need to crack a case.

Earlier on, we saw how West Midlands financial investigators

were searching the house of a man

they believe has been carrying out mortgage frauds.

They suspect that he amassed a great deal of wealth

by charging people for his services to get the mortgage offers

they shouldn't qualify for.

The investigators believe that he does this

by creating false identities

for people who have bad credit ratings,

and paperwork they found in his house

might prove their suspicion that the man is conning the banks.

DC Tinsley is now sifting through the paperwork

back at the police station.

Well, this is a mortgage application that we are looking for

in the name of an individual.

And when we actually go through it and look at each document

a little bit more in-depth,

we come across a photograph of the individual

relating to the mortgage application,

but we can see a document that was provided to the mortgage company

in support of this application

and it is stamped at the top by the mortgage adviser.

When we look at the passport itself,

this passport number here doesn't relate to the individual.

It relates to somebody completely different.

Therefore we think that this is a fraudulent passport

or a made-up copy.

Some mortgage companies only require photocopies of original documents to

be submitted, so someone has taken a photocopy of a real,

genuine passport and doctored it with a new name and photo,

presuming that the banks won't check that the passport number matches

the person in the photo.

What I can see with this passport is when you turn it round,

you can see that the original name has been Tippexed out.

The actual name of the applicant in typeface

has actually been glued on the front of it.

And then that has then been photocopied

and sent with the mortgage application

as a true representative of the individual,

when actually the individual doesn't own a passport at all.

And the team feel this kind of fraud is a regular occurrence for them.

Yeah, we do look at quite a lot of professional enablers,

as I would put it, down to mortgage advisers,

and this is a normal thing that we would see because in order to get

a fraudulent mortgage, there needs to be a certain amount

of false documentation provided.

Often we see a fraudulent passport or made-up passports,

um, utility bills that have been doctored into the right names,

false payslips, even bank statements have actually been altered to,

you know, improve people's income

to try to get a mortgage that they want for that house

that may be just too much for them.

And Derek has found different types of documents in other people's names

which may have been used in different frauds.

What we've also found within the file is cut-out identities

with names and addresses on it,

which relate to these phone bills.

So, in effect, what tends to happen is they will

cut out the name and address,

hence being cut out from a document like this.

It will then be glued on, in this instance,

or it's been attached on loosely,

and again, that document is then photocopied

and then you actually end up with a pristine document like this.

So this document has probably been used a couple of times to falsify

people's identity to obtain whatever they effectively need to obtain.

And the evidence in these files suggests

that the faked documents have been convincing bank staff

to open up their coffers.

In a large number of applications that we've got,

quite a few of them have been submitted to the bank

in support of mortgage applications

where actually the banks have loaned and made mortgage advances

as a consequence of these documents, yes.

Derek and his team know that if they are correct in their suspicions,

they will have stopped any further false identities being used to con

the banks into lending money,

and then the investigators will turn their attention

to illegally made profits.

If we are successful in obtaining a conviction,

then we will be looking at stripping him of his assets

and his ill-gotten gains in order to repay the victims of this crime.

The burden is now on Derek and his team of financial investigators

to prove that their suspicions are correct.

What is five years of your life worth to you?

Police in London have a criminal on their hands

who would happily give up that time just to hold on to a pot of cash.

This is fraudster Daniel Bukhari.

He was jailed for selling drivers in the UK false insurance.

The City of London Police brought a case against him

and his insurance con. Investigator Simon Stiles led the case.

Daniel Bukhari was selling policies

to unsuspecting members of the public and he was making

a lot of money out of it.

Bukhari was selling people fake insurance policies

and business was booming.

He worked out of this apartment in west London.

To enhance his con, he built a nice website,

and if you phoned him, he would play this noise in the background

to make it seem the customers were ringing through to a busy office.

INDISTINCT CHATTER

But if you gave him money,

he would simply pocket it and send out a meaningless certificate

he had made.

These are the original tapes from Daniel Bukhari's police interview.

They demonstrate how little he actually knew about insurance.

Have you got experience of car insurance?

His opportunity turned out to be another person's misfortune,

as Simon Stiles began to interview

the many victims of Daniel Bukhari's fraud.

Throughout the whole of our investigation,

it was 600-plus victims that came forward and said they had received

fake insurance from Bukhari.

A lot of victims I spoke to throughout this investigation

had a piece of paper they put in their glove box

believing they were covered, which were absolutely worthless.

One victim that was brave enough to come forward was Jack,

who had only just bought his first car after passing his driving test.

Whilst browsing for insurance, he came across Ashton Midshires,

the company Daniel Bukhari had set up.

He made the fateful decision to click on the web link

and take a look.

My first experience with Ashton Midshires

was initially through Google.

I typed in "cheap insurance for young drivers",

and that is when I found Ashton Midshires.

Much of the website Bukhari had produced

was designed to appeal to young drivers, and it frequently offered

to undercut the well-known insurance companies.

The website looked professional.

It didn't raise any alarm bells, it just looked the part.

My next step was to obviously ring the number that was on the website.

Once again, it sounded very legitimate.

It was sort of a call-back principle

where they took my details and I was contacted back.

Jack didn't know the busy office noise

he could hear in the background on the other end of the phone

was all part of Bukhari's con,

and he agreed to stump up a large deposit.

The initial deposit was £1,059, if I remember correctly,

with ten monthly instalments of £105.29.

It was a big chunk of money,

it was nearly a month's wage, probably, or there or thereabouts.

But Jack thought it was worth it because it meant he was on the road.

Getting a certificate meant everything for me,

it was ultimate freedom,

I could go out with my friends wherever I wanted,

whenever I wanted. It was just freedom.

Jack got in his car and drove away,

not realising that in the eyes of the law, he was heading for trouble.

The documents were put straight in my glove box and I was away driving

for the best part of two months, three months.

I was taking my friends home mid-afternoon one day

and I was pulled over by the side of the road.

The police officer asked me to step into his car.

He showed me on his ANPR system inside the car

that I subsequently had no insurance.

It came as a huge shock for a young driver

-who thought he had done it all by the book.

-Yes, 100%.

I thought he had it wrong completely,

knowing in my mind that I was insured.

I showed them my cover note that Mr Bukhari had sent me but obviously

their ANPR system said otherwise.

So the next day, I had to hand my licence

into the local police station.

I loved riding my motorcycle,

I love the freedom of having my car,

and it had all just been taken away from me.

It took Jack months to get back on the road.

Insurance companies would not believe he had lost his licence

due to a fraud, and he has no kind words

for the man who took his money.

If I met Daniel Bukhari, there would have been many words said,

but it would mostly be anger and obviously it was very upsetting

at the time. I suppose they were the emotions that he would receive.

Thanks to Jack's testimony and hundreds of others,

Daniel Bukhari was convicted and jailed for four and a half years,

and Simon Stiles, through the Proceeds of Crime investigation,

was able to prove that Bukhari had received £658,000 through his ghost

insurance broking scam.

To date in the UK, this was the biggest ghost-broking investigation

that has gone on and was undertaken.

But after the trial, Simon also discovered a big problem.

Throughout all the time Bukhari was working his scam, he had made sure

to remove all the money he was making via ATMs.

As you can imagine, £658,000 all disappeared

via ATM cash machines around London,

so he was out nearly every night withdrawing not his cash,

but the victims' cash, and he had pocketed the cash

and where that went to, we didn't know. We still don't know.

And nothing in his office showed

where his stockpile of cash was either.

By taking out all the scam money from ATMs,

Bukhari had made sure there would be no easy way for investigators to

trace where the money was going.

He did everything to ensure he would keep the illegal profits.

The judge at his trial

has ordered Bukhari to repay all of the money he stole.

Bukhari says it has gone.

Simon believes it has not.

Mr Bukhari had withdrawn £658,000.

What does anybody do with that money?

That money is somewhere, we just haven't found it yet,

but that's waiting in a pot ready for him when he comes out,

I've got no doubt whatsoever.

It may seem like a stalemate but the Proceeds of Crime Act has given the

police one major power to utilise to make a crook pay back what he owes.

As a result of a confiscation hearing

when we look to find the money,

the judge will give a default sentence

to say you have got six months to pay that money back

or you will go to prison for a length of time.

There is a sliding scale.

£658,000 equates to five years in prison.

There are no half measures, you do the five years.

So that is a further five years in jail

if Daniel Bukhari won't give the money back.

The fraudster might fancy toughing his way through the extra jail time,

but Simon has other plans.

I hope for his sake that Daniel Bukhari,

when he enters his five-year default sentence,

he thinks of the victims at that point

and he thinks again and repays them.

That is my hope.

But Simon believes greed might keep Daniel Bukhari sitting

in his jail cell for a while longer yet.

If you think you will get something out of it,

you sit tight, and that is what Bukhari has done.

He is sitting tight waiting for the five years to end,

the door opens and he will walk away and try and get his pot of gold.

It's my job to make sure he doesn't.

And the sting in the tail is that even when Bukhari has served his

five-year penalty sentence,

they will still come after his ill-gotten gains,

and for the victims, it is good to know

that the Proceeds of Crime Act is working for them.

Mr Bukhari has got his just deserts

for someone like me who is a victim of his fraud.

I think he should be kept in prison until he gives up the goods.

He's scammed innocent people

for money they didn't have at the time, like myself.

So why should he be let free?

Obviously, if you have scammed people for money,

it's not yours in the first place,

so why should you be allowed to keep it

after you have committed a criminal offence?

It's not just victims who can benefit from proceeds of crime.

One charity had the foresight to contact their local

crime commissioner for desperately needed funds.

Every year,

the amount of money police seize from criminals is increasing

and some of that seized money is given to police

and crime commissioners across the country

to distribute to worthwhile causes.

Lylac Ridge farm in Risca, south-east Wales

is one of many that have benefited.

What the farm here does is help young people,

as well as former offenders,

learn to be better citizens by getting them to work with animals.

Lylac Ridge was founded in 2009 as a non-profit to do animal-assisted

activities for children and young people and adults with any type of

disadvantage or deprivation.

So coming in and just sitting with them,

and they will interact with you.

The team here are firm believers in the benefits of animal contact.

They will let you groom them, they will let you feed them,

so that was the reason for us starting, that is our vision.

A little bit? No?

But the animal community at Lylac Farm

were having a problem with an unpleasant neighbour.

This used to be a landfill.

It was nothing but empty fields.

It was a public footpath,

but they had to wade through mud to walk through here,

so a lot of the rambling societies

and everything weren't using the land the way that it should be used.

And dumped rubbish wasn't the only problem with the disused land

-next to them.

-There was antisocial behaviour, there was fly-tipping.

When we went and looked over the land,

people had been stealing cable, cable stripping.

Jakki thought the problems with the strip of land next to her were too

big for her to deal with, and Lylac Ridge could never utilise the space.

Until she learned about a new source of funding.

We needed to advance Lylac Ridge

so that we could offer these children, more people could come

do the animal-assisted therapy with us and we would have more tasks

and more animals for them to be able to engage with.

Then we realised we needed to obviously work here,

and that is where the PCC fund came in,

to help pay for all the work that we wanted to do.

In response to the antisocial behaviour in the area,

Jakki applied for money from her local police and crime commissioner.

Commissioners have funds they can award to worthwhile projects

in the area, and they decided to award Jakki £9,000.

The Partnership Fund is actually funded through money we have seized

from organised crime,

convicted drug dealers

and through the sale of repossessed properties and vehicles.

It's a fantastic scheme, it's well worth it,

and it is great to come to projects such as Lylac Ridge today

and see the fantastic difference it has made to the lives of

people who work for the project,

including ex-offenders and volunteers in the community.

And this is what it has done.

It has paid for the corridor for the public to walk through.

It has allowed us to put massive enclosures in for our animals

and for the public to be able to view our animals.

And Jakki didn't just ask for money.

She reached out to a local group

who work with ex-offenders to find out if any of their service users

could help reclaim the fly-tipped land.

Mike Mogford works with young offenders like these two lads,

trying to find them jobs in the community.

We heard about this project last year, when Jakki phoned me up saying

that she had a fund that was coming from the Proceeds of Crime

and there was a lot of work to be done up at Lylac Ridge,

and it was quality type of work

which we are looking for all the time for our service users

to help them back into work.

A service user is someone who've committed a crime

against the community and therefore they discharge their hours

within the community, that's the idea of that.

The young men working here now have been in trouble in the past,

but by coming to Lylac Ridge, they are getting a chance to learn

work skills whilst discharging a community sentence.

I find it's opening up a lot of work towards our service users in a way

of getting them into work.

The first thing is they get up in the morning, we start pretty early.

The second thing is that they're out all day

and they have got to take work instructions.

All this helps them to find work

when they go to Jobcentres and things like this.

So young offenders are being helped by a scheme that is funded by cash

seized from grown-up criminals, and it's quite a large sum of money.

We've established a partnership fund about three and a half years ago

here in Gwent, and over that time, we have distributed about

half a million pounds in cash seized from criminals

to around 150 community-based projects here in Gwent.

Without the funding from the crime prevention from ill-gotten gains,

would we have been able to expand? Would we have been able to offer

more people more opportunities on this site? Probably not.

It's a good use of money, yes, without a doubt.

It has benefited the project and the community and it's definitely

benefiting our service users.

And for Lylac Farm's head honcho, the support they have received

has made her work feel all the more worthwhile.

Proud is not a word for it.

I am extremely proud of everything that everyone has achieved here.

We've seen criminals and suspects use crime to make money,

but if their property ends up in a Proceeds of Crime auction,

we could all benefit just a little bit.

Earlier on,

we saw how the Fortunella boat was used by people-smuggler

Stephen Jackson to transport people into the UK illegally.

He sailed the eight-man catamaran into Chichester Marina

with a large number of people hidden inside.

Police and authorities closed up the gates...

sealing Stephen Jackson and his boat inside the marina.

Before he realised anything was wrong,

the police and immigration officers pounced and arrested Jackson.

They discovered the catamaran had 17 Albanian men on board,

none of whom had permission to enter the UK.

One of the men had a criminal record for a sex offence.

He was very nearly free to walk the streets of Britain.

All the men bar one were removed from the UK, and the boat's skipper,

Stephen Jackson, received four years and nine months in jail.

Immigration officials believe he benefited by thousands of pounds

through smuggling the Albanians in

and they believe he should pay that money back,

so his boat, the Fortunella,

has been seized and will be sold at a Proceeds of Crime auction.

The money made will be returned to the state.

Let's kick things off with the aforementioned Fortunella.

This catamaran has been sent to us by a government agency to be sold

to the highest bidder, with no reserve.

It will be sold in this hall.

So, the Fortunella kicks things off.

Where are we on the Fortunella, folks?

Three, five, straight in. I like your style. 3,500, at 3,500.

The written bid is out at 3,500.

3,600 in the hall. I'll take hundreds.

At 3,600, it's in the hall at 3,600.

Bidding at 3,600 on the Fortunella.

3,700 online.

It is on sale at 3,700 with the online bidder at 3,700.

A bid in at 3,700, it's online.

Lot number 29.

And I'm selling. I'll take it down to 50s.

At 3,700, I'm looking for another 50.

At 3,700, on lot number 29, any last-minute bids in the hall?

At 3,700...

3,750, online, took your time.

At 3,750. Give online bidders the same chance.

At 3,750.

3,800. At £3,800, bid in at 3,800.

At £3,800 on the Fortunella.

£3,800. A bid in at £3,800.

I am going to have to rush you online.

At £3,800, and the hammer is up once, 3,800 twice.

3,850, the hammer wasn't down.

A bid in at £3,850.

Are there any bids in the hall?

On the Fortunella. Who doesn't want a catamaran?

3,850. 3,900, that got your interest.

At £3,900.

A bid in at 3,900.

At 3,900 on the Fortunella.

At £3,900, a bid in at 3,900.

At £3,900 on the Fortunella, 3,900 once, 3,900 twice.

3,950. At 3,950.

On the catamaran. £4,000, thank you.

At £4,000 on lot number 29.

At £4,000 once,

4,000 twice, third and last.

Sold online, well done, online.

Lot number 29.

The Fortunella has sold for £4,000,

getting some money back to the public purse.

It is the silver lining on the cloud that is people-smuggling.

Even when criminals are behind bars,

they are still paying off their debt to society.

And when they come out, if they haven't cleared that debt,

the police will continue to hunt down their ill-gotten gains.