An estate agent who handed himself over to police admitting to a £180,000 fraud during the housing market crash, has been spared jail.
Paul Stephen Onslow, 45, traded as Stephen Paul Estate Agents in Harlow, Essex.
He has been given an 18-month prison sentence suspended for two years, a six-month electronically tagged curfew which means he must stay at home between 9pm and 6am, and 250 hours of unpaid work.
His sentencing follows a guilty plea at Chelmsford Crown Court to one offence of fraudulently abusing his position as the proprietor of an estate agency business between April 2008 and April 2013 by using £43,736 of client money.
Judge Christopher Ball said that Onslow, of previously good character, had avoided jail because he had walked into Harlow police station to give himself up.
In mitigation, Robert James said that not one landlord or tenant had lodged any complaint, and that no one was aware of the fraud until Onslow confessed.
The court heard that the charge related to 14 landlords.
However, Onslow had confessed that the total was almost twice as much, at £180,000.
He had used the money, robbing Peter to pay Paul, while trying to trade out of financial difficulties.
Before the crash he had sold up to ten houses a month. He was then selling none. Instead, he relied on money from his lettings business.
The judge told him: “Rather than bow down to the inevitable, because your area of work was devastated by the recession, you tried to trade your way out of it, and in order to do that you deceived and cheated people entitled to money you were holding on to.”
Onslow had failed to pay rent over to landlords, had increased rent without telling landlords, amended rental agreements and signed agreements on behalf of landlords without their knowledge.
One landlord was unaware that rent was not being paid into his account until his bank told him, to the point where the lender threatened to repossess his family home.
The court heard that Onslow had borrowed money from his parents and sold his own home to start his business. He had not, the court heard, enjoyed an extravagant lifestyle as the result of his fraud.
However, as the judge pointed out: “He was running two women at the same time.”
He had had an affair, with children from two relationships.
If that is what the judge actually said about 'running' two women then he/she should be investigated for using terminology akin to cars, offensive.
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Not to condone in any way what Mr Onslow did, I did however feel a twinge of sympathy. It sounds like he had a successful business, and the irony is that it was ruined by firstly government policy with the onset of HIPs and then the banking crisis, and of course, the perpetrators of that were bailed out by the tax payers. There but for fortune, I had two offices that I wound up in 2008 selling an average of 16 a month between the two prior to the crash, which dropped to a level where it was unsustainable, I didn't have rentals to fall back on, but at least I came out honestly and cleanly.
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