The Swindling Solicitor and the Man Who Helped Me Walk Saints and Scroungers

Theft of public money costs the UK taxpayer over £20 billion a year.

This is the worst kind of theft I've come across in 40 years.

This is money which should be going into the public pot

to spend on essential services.

It could be used to build new hospitals and schools.

And there are specially trained investigators making sure

that justice is served.

That money will be recovered. But it is a massive loss.

In this series we meet the men and women across the UK committed

to catching criminals who steal from you and me, the British taxpayer.

No, I'm Kylie!

But we also hear the stories of people who genuinely need

assistance from public money.

Put this round you.

I look after Pete the way I do because I know

if the boot was on the other foot he would do exactly the same for me.

And sometimes they don't even realise they are entitled to it.

There are places for everyone with mental illness.

It's just a matter of finding the right place.

Coming up - a crooked lawyer leaves his clients

with thousands of pounds of tax debt.

He was breaking the law.

He looks like a very legitimate, very well-doing businessman,

but really his business was founded on this scam.

A well-heeled housewife claims to be a single mum

to fund a champagne lifestyle.

She spent something like £2,500 in the bar,

on spas, on beauty treatments.

And a disabled man raises £22,000 to fund a life-changing operation...

Take a step and grab my hand.

..and then simply gives it all away.

No way. This can't be right.

This is such an amazing amount of money

that...we could never ever have hoped for.

They say there are two things you can depend on in life,

death and taxes.

Taxes are essential for everything, from the roads

we drive on to the hospitals that treat us.

So, when someone claims to be able to slash those taxes

in half for you, you should tread carefully.

Because if they're not completely on the level, then it's your door

that Her Majesty's tax collectors will come knocking on.

The simple fact is, the tax is due and it's your responsibility

to make sure that you're paying the right amount of tax.

In 2007, house prices in the north-east of England were dropping.

But one firm of property solicitors was doing very well for itself.

SFM Legal Services, based in Gateshead,

was run by dad-of-four Malcolm Graham.

They were boasting a turnover of £4 million

and predicting those numbers would double within 18 months.

So why were they so popular?

They were claiming to make the cost of buying a house much cheaper

by promising to cut stamp duty due to the HMRC at the point of sale.

He was holding seminars explaining how great his business was

and he could save you this

and he could save you that and the other.

He was taking adverts in national newspapers saying,

"We can save you money on your stamp duty."

Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs is represented by Clare Merrills.

It's Criminal Taxes Unit roots out the criminals who evade tax

and they take stamp duty fraud extremely seriously.

What I understand from stamp duty, because I've paid it once or twice,

is that it's a levy that goes on top of whatever you pay for a house.

Yeah, that's right.

So, depending on the price of the house,

it will determine the rate of stamp duty that you pay.

Stamp duty cuts in at at £150,000,

so any houses that cost less than £150,000 you don't pay anything on.

But from 150,000 up to two million and over,

there are different rates of stamp duty that you have to pay.

It's a fairly painful tax.

And the reason it is because you've got so many expenses

when you're buying a house and then suddenly you've got a big

chunk of money going out that you've got to find from somewhere.

You can see why some people might be trying to work out ways to avoid it.

Indeed. Because as you say, you've negotiated your new mortgage,

you're paying for this, you're paying for that, removals,

and then you get the bill for the stamp duty as well.

And people may think,

"If we just negotiate this and if we don't include that

"in the cost price of the house, can we reduce the amount we have to pay?"

Well, quite simply, the price that you're paying for the house is the price that you

pay stamp duty on, and if you do start to manipulate figures

we find out and we'll come back to you and it's not very nice at all.

Now, tax avoidance, unlike tax evasion, is not illegal.

And Malcolm Graham was a self-proclaimed expert

on avoiding stamp duty.

A lot of people think, "Oh, this is great.

"I can save money and legitimately save money, because he's

"advertising in a national newspaper - it must be legitimate."

And on the surface, Graham's firm was respectable.

Then, in March 2009, Northumbria Police were investigating

a mortgage fraud in which Graham was the client's solicitor.

He was cleared of any wrongdoing.

However, this flagged up some anomalies which they passed

on to HMRC.

We launched our investigation.

We have a special unit called the Criminal Taxes Unit

that deals with this type of investigation.

They started looking at it and then they started to piece

everything together to see exactly what had been happening.

What was he trying to do?

What he was doing was offering people the opportunity to cut

the amount of stamp duty that they would pay.

He was looking at properties that were worth half a million or more.

So the amount of stamp duty payable on those were quite significant sums.

What he was saying was, "If you come to me and I can get you

"your stamp duty a lot less than you actually have to pay.

"What I save you, you give me half as my fee."

And that was how he was running his business.

We are talking about thousands or tens of thousands of pounds

-that he could possibly be saving people.

-Yeah.

But in fact he wasn't saving them at all, because it was all a fraud.

So in the short term, his customers think, "Brilliant!

"I've made this saving. I'm quite happy to hand over the fee

"to Malcolm Graham." What happens after that?

Well, after that, once we discovered what was going on,

we started going back over all his transactions

and realised that actually people hadn't paid as much as they should

have done, and then we go and say, "You should have paid us £10,000.

"You've only paid us £5,000." They go, "No, because I used this scheme

"and this was legitimate and I paid you what I was due."

At which point it all starts to unravel.

And then they have to pay the extra £5,000.

While HMRC was chasing Graham's clients for outstanding taxes...

..another group of investigators was chasing Graham himself -

the Solicitors Regulation Authority.

Gordon Ramsay and his team are there to protect us

from rogue solicitors.

We look at the behaviour and the conduct of solicitors,

making sure they are treating consumers properly,

and if there's any misbehaviour we take action to regulate that.

Solicitors Regulation Authority.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority is about protecting clients,

and they were worried that Graham's payment structure

would leave them vulnerable.

He was creating this scheme which meant that you could avoid

paying tax due on your house purchase,

and he was taking a fee on the amount he claimed he would be saving you.

The no-win-no-fee payment structure might have appealed to clients,

but what they didn't realise is that there was no provision

for reimbursing them if the HMRC did come knocking.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority contacted Malcolm Graham

to ask him about his schemes.

Mr Graham wasn't particularly helpful in his responses,

so we sent our trained investigators out to interview

and go through the books and the accounts of the firm.

And what they found caused them considerable concern.

He operated a number of tax avoidance schemes,

one of which was the stamp duty land tax avoidance scheme.

When dealing with a property purchase,

he would artificially structure the deal

so that one party would buy 90% and the other party 10%,

but he would only declare to the Inland Revenue, HMRC,

the smaller 10% of the deal.

He was misleading clients

and mortgage holders on the purchase price and the revenue,

so a £400,000 house he would sell to a husband and wife, possibly,

and the husband would buy for 350,000,

the wife would buy for 50,000,

it would only be the 50,000 sale that would be declared to the Revenue.

The investigation ramped up a notch when Graham tried to prove

that another tax avoidance scheme was legit.

Mr Graham provided to us a letter supporting his claim

that his capital gains tax avoidance scheme had been approved by HMRC.

HMRC were able to confirm to us that not only was this letter

fabricated, they wouldn't ever approve such a scheme.

Now, having the proof that Graham was not using

an HMRC verified scheme for capital gains tax,

and suspecting the same to be true for his stamp duty avoidance,

the SRA was closing in on him.

Graham was on the verge of losing his right to practise.

And with debts of 0.5 million to the public purse and clients

demanding to be reimbursed their fees, Graham liquidated his company.

Later, will Graham's story stand up when investigators ask him

to tell it to the courts this time?

Some people do everything they can to avoid paying tax, thinking

that if they don't ask for anything they shouldn't have to contribute.

Sometimes things happen in life that are out of our control

and that's when we realise that whether it's from family, friends

or financial help from the state, sometimes we all need a bit of help.

Dan Black was a lad in his 20s who didn't need to rely on anyone.

He had a band locally doing so well.

They were so well known around here.

They played gigs up in London, they played a festival in Spain.

I managed them and it was great, it was lovely,

because we all got on so well together.

And he was such a fantastic bass player.

Dan had just made a big decision about his future

and was working hard towards it.

Spent a lot of time going to the gym

and cycling around and playing my guitar.

Then I decided to do something completely different

and join the Army.

When I told my mum I wanted to join the Army she was a bit,

"OK, whatever." She didn't really believe me and then

a couple of days later I said, "Oh, mum, I've signed up for the Army."

He'd made his mind up

and then started to focus on the keeping fit side of it.

He really wanted to make sure that he was ready to go in there.

But one morning something happens which was to

change Dan's life for ever.

My morning routine originally was get up about six, shower,

have breakfast, watch the news for a bit and then drive to work.

And after I decided to join the Army I knew I needed to get fit,

so I scrapped the car, well, took it off the road

and then cycled everywhere.

Cycled to the gym, cycled to my girlfriends, cycled to work.

Dan always left for work at the same time every single morning.

This one day he was early.

He was never early for work, he was always late. Always got away with it.

That morning I was...

..a bit earlier than normal.

Just the way it worked out.

A car appeared in front of Dan as he cycled down the road.

SCREECH OF TYRES FOLLOWED BY CRASH

They collided and he was thrown from his bike,

hitting the tarmac at high speed.

I remember all of the accident apart from...from the actual impact.

And then I don't know what I remember.

I felt like I fell asleep.

In a split second every single thing that he wanted to do

through his life was just taken away from him.

When we got to the accident he was on the floor.

I went in the ambulance with him to the hospital

and the ambulance driver had drawn a pen across his chest

to say that he couldn't feel below that.

And then while we were in the hospital he started to...

..he started to say that he...

Sorry. He said that he couldn't feel parts of his legs and I just knew.

And then his face dropped, and I kept saying to them,

"There's something wrong with his face.

"Why has his face dropped?" And he kept saying, "I love you, Mum."

And he never tells me he loves me, so I knew something was going on.

Dan was rushed back into surgery.

A constricted artery in his neck had caused a blood clot,

leading to a massive stroke.

If only they'd have known at the start,

they could have possibly dealt with the stroke, but we didn't know.

They put him straight into an induced coma

and he was there for six weeks.

And then I was just... I lived there.

To be honest with you, it's one of those where I was at the hospital,

but to sit around his bed was just awful.

As the days and weeks passed,

Dan's family slowly learned about the full extent of his injuries.

He had a collapsed lung, a crushed kidney and a ruptured spleen.

He also had permanent brain damage.

His spine had been shattered on impact

and he'd broken 19 bones, one of which had crushed his spinal cord.

I kept saying, "Please don't, don't wake him up."

I don't want to tell him he's never going to walk again. How do you tell him?

How do you tell him he's never going to actually be able to join the Army,

he's not going to play his guitar any more?

The day that they were fearing came too soon.

It was time to wake him from his coma.

Well, when I woke up, I had my, my mum, my dad, a doctor,

my best friend and my girlfriend

around the bed and the doctor started describing my injuries to me.

It was all pretty devastating, I suppose you could say.

It slowly started to hit me, like, oh, I can't move my legs.

I can't even feel my feet being tickled, can't move my arm.

The doctor...

..sort of skirted around the idea,

but basically told me, oh, you're never going to walk again,

your injuries are too severe to be repaired.

And I'm sat there and I'm crying, because I'm...

The doctor's telling him and he passed me a tissue.

SHE GASPS It's like, Daniel, it's YOU that should be crying.

And he passed me the tissue.

I'll never forget that.

Far from being over, though,

the real struggle for Dan and his family was just beginning.

Home at last after months in hospital,

he then had to get used to life in a wheelchair.

Because I was right-handed before my accident, I've now lost my right arm.

So, well, it's still there, but no, I can't use it.

So I've basically had to get used to everything again.

So, eating, going to the toilet, getting dressed,

everything is completely different.

And it wasn't just Dan's life that had changed.

Parents Michaela and Rick had to give up work

and they saw their lives pulled apart.

I didn't think about how our lives would change at all.

They changed in respect of, I've lost my job.

My husband lost his job, you know, we had the car taken off us,

so we had nothing, we had no money coming in.

We were lending money off so many people.

Because we just had no other way of paying bills.

The family was forced to leave their beloved village of Mathern,

childhood home of mum Michaela,

to live in a wheelchair accessible new build six miles away.

This doesn't feel like a home.

Not to Daniel, not to me and not to Rick.

It's just a house.

I think it's because our home is back in Mathern, but it's gone.

Dan's now coping with depression on top of his physical injuries.

Always puts on a brave face.

You speak to him, you think that he's fine,

that everything's fine, but as his mum,

I just know that what's going on inside,

and what he's feeling deep down is completely different.

'I've got no choice.'

It's not bravery, it's down to, what else can I do?

With Dan and the family struggling with their difficult situation,

they began to research ways in which his life could improve.

We had folders full, where people, including ourselves had printed off,

so we knew that these things were happening.

They were looking at experimental treatments

that might restore the use of Dan's legs.

'This one man was taking samples from the person's own nose'

and putting them into, the spinal-cord

and it's been quite promising, they were getting rats to walk quite easily.

We were just preparing ourselves, ready for it,

because the minute there's any form of a trial, Daniel wants to be on it.

He wants to trial anything at all with regards to stem cell.

Some people don't agree with stem cell,

but when you're in the situation we're in, it's our only hope.

Experimental treatments are not available on the NHS

and mostly happen in the United States.

The family quickly realised

that should an operation become available,

they'd have to fund it themselves.

However, the community rallied round them,

with mum's best friend, Tracey, leading the way.

She raised the money, she organised an auction in the village.

She really got the village together

and everybody in Mathern and the surrounding area were so generous.

They all donated money.

They did fun days, they did, you know,

charity walks across the Severn Bridge.

The auction in our local village raised thousands

and it's a small village, it's a tiny village.

Everybody came together for Daniel, everybody.

And Tracey organised it all.

It was hard work, but they did it.

After four years, they'd raised £20,000.

Dan's improved life was beginning to look like a possibility.

All they had to do was wait for the science to catch up.

But meanwhile, just six miles away, a little boy was growing up.

Later we find out how his fate

was going to become inextricably linked with Daniel's.

At the end of the day, he's six and he just wants to walk

and be like everybody else.

Britain's not a country to let those in need fend for themselves.

We have a proud tradition of caring for the sick and elderly

and giving a helping hand to those that have fallen on hard times.

A single mum struggling to raise children on her own

is one such vulnerable member of society,

needing an extra bit of help

to meet the bills without a husband or partner to provide.

CREAKING

That's just what the system's designed to do.

It's not designed to provide people with exotic holidays,

whether they're a single mum or not.

Dispensing it like, £2,500 in the bar, on spas,

on beauty treatments and all this money was meant to help people

who are the most vulnerable people in our society.

Hot on the trail of the people who abuse the system

are the counter fraud investigators from the DWP.

Following strict guidelines from the Regulation Of Investigatory Powers Act,

these surveillance experts stop at nothing

to claw back taxpayer's money and bring fraudsters to justice.

Their lead investigator in Liverpool is Steve Snead.

Benefits is meant for people who, through no fault of their own,

find themselves in financial difficulty.

It is not there to subsidise a very lavish lifestyle.

On the surface, Victoria Tracey was a hard-up single mum of two.

She first made a claim to benefits in 2008.

She stated that she was single, lived on her own with her children

and that she was renting a house from a Mr Andrew Kenny,

whom she described as "her landlord".

On submitting claim forms, Victoria Tracey was awarded benefits

to help her pay rent to her landlord,

and this continued for four years,

until the department received a tip-off in November 2012.

We received an allegation, which said that her landlord was in fact

her partner, and they were living together as man and wife.

It was time to hit the streets and do some surveillance.

We need to establish a significant pattern of movements

of Miss Tracey and of Mr Kenny.

We were aware that he could come along and say to us,

"I stayed the odd night,"

or, "It was a matter of convenience - I couldn't get home."

We need to establish the fact that he was there on a regular basis,

and actually is having a lifestyle with Miss Tracey that would be

commensurate with a couple in a relationship.

Steve Snead and the team started their visual surveillance

and wrote up their findings.

CAMERA CLICKS

We do receive a lot of allegations that people are living

together with a partner when they claim to be single.

Obviously from a financial point of view, there's a lot of incentive.

We found that Mr Kenny was in fact not Miss Tracey's landlord,

but was in fact her partner

and that they were living together in her house.

And the team dug a little bit deeper to see how Tracey

and Kenny were operating financially.

We have certain powers which enable us

to gain certain information from financial institutions,

but also, we made checks -

we conducted surveillance to ascertain the person's true circumstances,

we also made a number of enquiries to third parties and

bit by bit the investigator was able to paint a picture, which painted

a completely different portrait of this lady and her circumstances.

In the course of the investigation,

Steve and his team contacted a mortgage company,

insurance companies and the DVLA,

all of whom corroborated that Andrew Kenny was

listed at the same address as Victoria Tracey,

and they were living together as partners.

But even more outrageous evidence was about to emerge.

Victoria Tracey was not only able to run a cabriolet car with

a personalised number plate,

but she and Mr Kenny had numerous holidays abroad,

including cruises on Royal Caribbean lines,

which they paid £6,000 each,

plus while they were away, they spent something like £2,500 in the bar,

in spas, on beauty treatments.

And all this money was meant to help people who are the most

vulnerable people in our society.

With Victoria Tracey living a life more akin to

Footballers' Wives than a single mum on the poverty line,

Kenny was still claiming to be her landlord.

They invited them both in for interview under caution.

He was interviewed initially and he actually denied that the

children were is children - he was quite strong in that conviction.

It was only when the investigator pointed that on his arm, he had

the names and dates of birth of the children tattooed,

that he eventually admitted the fact that he was their father.

Busted!

After that, Victoria Tracey had little option but to come clean too.

She'd been living it up at the taxpayers' expense.

When this matter came before the Crown Court,

the amount involved was over £85,000.

On 20th of January 2014,

the couple pleaded guilty at Liverpool Crown Court.

Despite their two children,

they faced a prison sentence of up to ten years each.

Victoria Tracey and Andrew Kenny

appeared in Liverpool Crown Court in 2014.

Both were sentenced to nine months in prison, with immediate effect.

In passing sentence, the judge said he took into account

the fact that they had dependent children,

but the amount of money was such that only an immediate custodial

sentence was merited.

Behind bars, and it's not over yet - the DWP won't rest

until they're recovered all the taxpayers' money.

We are seeking to recover every penny of this,

and will pursue Miss Tracey and Mr Kenny

until we have all the money back.

Back in Tyneside, Malcolm Graham's firm, SFM Legal Services,

had been operating a highly dubious tax avoidance scheme,

which had left many of his clients out of pocket to the HMRC.

When the company folded, a third agency had to

step in to find the money - The Insolvency Service.

Their chief investigator in Tyneside is Anthea Simpson,

who had to face some very disgruntled property investors.

Creditors with sums totalling in excess of £500,000,

made claims to the liquidator in relation to fees which they

were attempting to recover from SFM.

Given that he owed so much money,

you would have thought that Mr Graham would have been skint,

but you would have thought wrong.

Investigations showed he'd been taking quite a few pay packets home.

Mr Graham received director's remuneration of approximately

£1.5 million,

and also received dividends from the company of in excess of £300,000.

So his firm collapsed owing over a million,

and Graham had taken over a million as it's director.

As a publicly-funded body,

The Insolvency Service has the power to investigate and take action.

A detailed analysis of the accounting records was carried out,

and the investigator then also contacted any other relevant

third parties in order to obtain the evidence whether or not

disqualification proceedings should be commenced

and what any allegations of misconduct that were made should be.

By now, the Solicitors Regulation Authority had taken

disciplinary action against Graham.

What we have here is the actual findings of the tribunal

and we had 16 findings of dishonesty against Mr Graham.

With overwhelming evidence,

the shamed solicitor had to face the music.

Mr Graham misled clients, he misled the mortgage providers,

he misled HMRC and in providing us with a fabricated letter,

he misled the regulator.

And in December 2009, the tribunal struck off Mr Graham,

and by striking him off,

he was no longer allowed to act as a solicitor.

He was also banned from acting as a company director for five years -

he'd lost his job and livelihood.

Meanwhile, HMRC was conducting a criminal

investigation into how he lured his clients in.

He claimed that he'd found a loophole

and he claimed he'd got this document from a top London

tax barrister, which claimed that this system that he was using

was all legitimate and it could save people money.

So the legitimacy of his stamp duty avoidance scheme all hinged on

one document - but where was it?

Not very many people saw the document - he kept that under lock

and key most of the time and nobody was allowed to get it out

and show other people.

But he was talking about the document,

"Oh, yes, yes, of course this is all legal and all above-board.

"I've got proof.

"I've been told by this top barrister in London that

"this is going to work - of course it'll be fine."

Using their powers to seize evidence,

The Criminal Taxes Unit eventually located this elusive

piece of paper that supposedly proved the legitimacy of his scheme.

In actual fact, the document didn't say that and it had been doctored.

He'd actually written to the tax advisor,

but the response hadn't been what he'd hoped.

Not being one to let a little thing like the law stop him,

he'd taken matters into his own hands.

This document was advising him it's not going to work.

It had then been changed to say it is going to work.

I mean, it was as simple as that.

It's very technical, but that's the change that he'd made.

So you've got a document here that's actually been doctored to

give the opposite meaning to what it should have said,

-and that's been used to convince people to take part.

-Yeah.

So people would think,

"This is great, I can save thousands of pounds here,

"thousands of pounds there - great."

And they were taken in by it.

So he'd tricked his own clients, cheated the Revenue out of over

a million in stamp duty taxes and distorted the property market.

Malcolm Graham was brought before Newcastle Crown Court

on the 30th November 2013.

He pleaded guilty to seven counts of fraud.

I think, the judge, because he had admitted,

gave him a sentence that was suspended,

rather than actually sending him to prison.

OK, so he stays out of prison...

The people that he's conned, the customers,

could you feel sympathy for them?

Cos they've tried to...

They've done what they think is legal...

Yeah, and they've put trust in him, and I think that's the thing.

So whilst, yes, I have some sympathy for people in the fact

they were conned,

the simple fact is the tax is due and it's your responsibility

to make sure you're paying the right amount of tax.

Do you have any idea how much money we're talking about,

that was being withheld from the public purse?

We reckon £1.6 million - that's what we took him to court on,

£1.6 million.

That was about 280 different transactions that he'd

carried out using this piece of paper that he'd doctored.

So these are big money transactions and there's a lot of them.

-Yes.

-So you end up with this huge sum - £1.6 million,

a lot you can do with that,

if you start thinking of hospitals, schools and the things that we need.

Yeah, mending the roads.

It is a lot of money to go towards all of that, yeah.

Malcolm Graham walked free on this occasion,

but with a further 11 years' disqualification from being

a company director,

he lost his credibility, his livelihood and his career.

How common is this?

How often do you come across stamp duty land tax fraud?

-Is it something everyone's trying?

-To be honest with you,

this was actually one of the first cases that we'd taken to prosecution,

because it was a large one.

People are always trying to find ways round it,

but it was a big fraud he was working on - 1.6 million -

it's a lot of money. We needed to pursue that.

Now from those who line their own pockets with public money to

those that need all the help they can get.

Brecon Vaughan was born in the same village as Dan Black

and, like him, was predicted a future in a wheelchair.

Brecon's family were told their son would never walk.

Brecon's a six-year-old lad who's had a lot to contend with.

He's the cheekiest, funniest lad - when I look at his face,

I just smile.

Brecon was born with both hips dislocated

and neurological damage to his brain.

But his parents had heard of an operation that could help him.

We had heard about an operation called SDR -

selective dorsal rhizotomy. Hadn't really looked into it much,

it was just something we'd heard about.

The more we looked into it,

the more we realised that that was going to be

an alternative for him that would

hopefully enable him to walk properly.

The procedure was based on the same science that Dan Black had

been researching, but unlike Dan,

six-year-old Brecon was considered

an ideal candidate for this sort of operation,

and it had to be carried out soon.

Had we left it, Brecon's tightness in his legs would only increase.

As he grew older, the likelihood was his legs would tighten up

and he'd actually become less mobile.

The problem was that the hospital carrying it out was in America

and they'd have to fund it themselves.

The ball park we had was around 60,000

but that wasn't only for the operation.

Although the operation is vitally important

the after-care is just as important.

We looked at all the different avenues of what we could do -

selling the house, remortgaging the house - whatever we had to do.

The family started to fundraise.

We did do really well -

within the first two months we'd raised £11,000, which was

friends and family and local donations and things like that,

but we knew we couldn't keep the momentum up.

It was getting harder and harder

and it did start to weigh quite heavy on your mind.

Where are you going to get this money?

What were we going to do?

Then Dan Black heard about his plight

and he wanted to make a difference.

If he could have raised cash constantly at the rate I did,

it would have taken him at least 12 years...

..to give him the money,

so that would have put him at late teens before he starts walking,

so he would have missed out entirely on his childhood...

which is quite sad.

Everyone deserves a childhood.

An idea began to form in Dan's mind -

one that would change his life and Brecon's for ever.

No reason for me to have the money cos there's no treatment for me,

whereas there is a treatment for him and all he needs is money.

So why should I be holding on to that money whilst it's not helping

anybody when it could help someone?

There was no time to waste - he called his parents into his room.

He said, "Mum, I'd rather just give him all the money - all of it."

I thought he would give him £1,000 or £2,000 , just to help him out.

He said, "No, he's never walked, Mum - I have,

"so he deserves it.

"He can have that operation now and by the time he's 16, 17,

"going out with the lads and meeting girls,

"he'll be able to walk.

"That's not going to happen for me,

"so he should have that money now so that he can walk."

Dan's mum, Michaela, was the one to call Brecon's parents Rob

and Anne, to break them the news.

We were blown away with the idea that we were going to move that

much closer to our goal.

Rob and I couldn't really take it in.

We just thought, "No way, this can't be right."

This Dan wants to give Brecon £20,000, such an amazing

amount of money that we could never, ever...

have hoped for.

And Dan's gesture wasn't just recognised by the Vaughans.

The news was picked up by the papers

and the media attention led to a surge in donations.

I was driving to work and my phone started going, I was getting texts.

By the time I got to work,

people I work with were saying, "You ain't going to believe this."

And they were just watching Brecon's JustGiving page going up

and up and it was just phenomenal.

By the end of... That was a Friday -

I think by the end of the Saturday night we'd made the target.

I didn't think it would make that much difference cos it was

only about a third of what they needed.

But then it went pretty much global

and people from all over the world were donating,

and within two or three days, they had all the money.

Now they'd reached their target, there was no time to waste.

It was all really, really quick - once it started happening

it was just a big, massive snowball and it just didn't stop.

On October 11th 2013,

Brecon and his parents boarded a flight to the US to go

and get the operation that they hoped would change his life for ever.

The operation was a success, but it only took him half of the way there.

We knew when we entered into the operation, we were going

to have a very hard couple of years ahead with the physio, the training.

He still has years of phsyio ahead of him to build up strength.

We'll have a few sits-to-stands.

You know what it is. OK.

Ready? Up we go.

Zero!

One, two...

Ready? Final one. Slow all the way down.

Five, four, three...

ROB: 'Since the operation, we've just noticed gains all the time

'and they go in stages.'

You ready?

'You see small gains and you think, "Was it really worth it?

'"Was it the right thing?"'

All of a sudden you just see a big change very quickly

and then you just think,

"Yeah, it was 100% worth the effort."

'He's becoming more confident in his own ability

'and the main thing is he's got control,

'which he didn't have pre the operation.

'It was stopping him being able to walk.

And today...

..eight months after the life-changing operation...

Hello!

..they're here to meet the man who made it all happen.

Look at you - no frame!

After six longs years of pain, struggle,

worry and setbacks for the Vaughan family...

Take a step and you can grab my hand.

Take a big step.

..Brecon is finally walking.

-WOMAN:

-That is absolutely amazing.

ROB: 'My biggest hope really is that he can just walk with his friends,

'just like any other child really.

'He may never run properly, but if he can do the majority of the things

'other kids can do, chances are he's going to have a good little life.'

Go on, I'm behind you.

It's really good. It's good to see improvements that he's made.

-WOMAN:

-Well done!

-DAN:

-'I wasn't expecting to see him walk as well as he was.'

Dan's just Dan and he did a marvellous thing,

an amazing thing,

but I don't know whether Dan really understands what it's going

to mean to Brecon in the end.

It doesn't really seem like that big a deal to me.

I just helped people out cos it was the right thing to do.

Dan may not have been able to serve his country in the way he hoped,

but he's made an incredible difference.

I'm just proud of him any way, money or not.

What's he's had to go through and how he still thinks of me and others,

I'm so proud of him.

Giving the money away, that's nothing.

-ANNE:

-I think Dan has given Brecon the ability to be able to walk

far more sooner than we could ever have hoped for.

We would have been a long way down the road yet before we would

have got anywhere.

Daniel's selfless, amazing...

..gift...

means Brecon, within the not-too-distant future, will be

able to walk around independently...

..and lead a much more normal life than we could have hoped for him.