Four guilty in Crown Currency collapse case

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-32597375

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Four people have been found guilty of offences connected to the collapse of a currency exchange firm that went bust.

Crown Currency, based in Hayle, Cornwall, was one of the UK's largest personal currency exchange businesses before it collapsed with debts of £20m in October 2010.

Up to 13,000 people are believed to have lost money, a court heard.

The accused were found guilty of fraudulent trading, false accounting and money laundering.

Established in 2004, Crown allowed individuals and business customers to pre-order foreign exchange at a set price, up to a year in advance.

It provided money in 80 currencies, as well as travellers' cheques and money transfers, sometimes for people to buy property.

The six defendants are:

Prosecutor Peter Grieves-Smith told Southwark Crown Court the firm found holes in profits after poor speculation on the markets and used new customers' cash to pay existing clients.

Crown's day-to-day manager Roderick Schmidt was convicted of two counts of fraudulent trading and cleared of two counts of false accounting.

Crown's former accountant Stephen Matthews was convicted of two counts of false accounting but cleared of two counts of fraudulent trading.

Julian Benstead - who ran Crown's sister company, which specialised in trading cash for gold - was convicted of one count of fraudulent trading. He was cleared of the theft of 25lb (11.3kg) of gold which went "missing" in the days leading up to Crown's collapse.

Susan Benstead was convicted of one charge of money laundering, using nearly £900,000 of customers' money to buy a luxury home in Cornwall.

Former Crown director Edward James, ex-mayor of Glastonbury, was found not guilty of two counts of false accounting. The jury is still considering two charges of fraudulent trading.

Jurors, who have so far spent 45 hours and 30 minutes deliberating, have yet to return verdicts on counts against Peter Benstead, Susan's husband and co-director of Crown.

They are due to continue deliberating on Thursday.