Halifax  

HBos banker behind £245m fraud must repay £130k

Investigators have scoured the globe in an attempt to claw back the cash - but they believe the crooks have salted away fortunes which will be waiting for them in secret investments when they are released. 

The loans scandal came to light after a six-year investigation dubbed Operation Hornet, the biggest in Thames Valley Police's history.

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Southwark Crown Court heard the probe uncovered evidence of "huge rewards" provided by Mills to Scourfield to "effect his corruption".

Sentencing the crooks last year Judge Martin Beddoe had said Scourfield "sold his soul" to Mills in exchange for "sex, luxury trips, bling and swag".

He said: "This was not just about a corrupt bank manager lending money to those he shouldn't have.

"It involved a rapacious and utterly corrupt senior bank manager letting vastly greedy people getting here hands on honest people's money and their tentacles in the businesses of ordinary, decent people.

"They ripped apart these businesses without a thought for the lives they were destroying."

He said Scourfield had done it for "money and the trappings and show of wealth" and "caused the destruction along the way of the livelihood of honest, hardworking people".

He said the effect could be equated in cash terms but not in human terms.

"They have not just lost money but their homes, goer families and their friends," he said.

"They are cheated, defeated and penniless."

The judge said Mills had "bled companies dry" using Bancroft and his "lap dog" Cartwright.

He said Mills then "simply and smugly continued to enjoy the fruits of his wrongdoing".

Turning again to Scourfield he said he did not know how Mills got his "claws" into him for the 'monumental' betrayal.

"He was the devil to who you sold your soul for sex and for luxury trips with or without your wife.

"For bling and swag."

Scourfield was directed by greed and "mesmerised by the luxury in which you let Mr Mills wallow".