From the frontlines of Cardiff’s police force to tracking down octogenarian loan sharks
Instead of spending his retirement relaxing, or taking up a niche hobby, Nigel currently spends part of his day tracking down pensioners.
The former police officer was just 49 when he retired. Feeling like he was “too young to do nothing”, he went to work as a loan shark investigator.
But he could never have imagined his new job would include hunting down illegal money lenders in their eighties.
He is a member of Stop Loan Sharks Wales (SLSW), a small unit that targets illicit money lenders.
And while most loan sharks are dogged in their harassment and intimidation of anyone who owes them money, not everyone fits the ‘Phil Mitchell’ stereotype.
In one recent case, an elderly woman in her 80s, was given a police caution after she was found to be making illegal loans.
She had used her son – who was in his 40s and had previously been to prison – to help threaten people into paying up.
“But because of her age and the amount involved, she was only issued a caution,” says Ryan, a client liaison officer with the unit. The money involved totalled several thousand pounds.
“As far as we could prove she was only lending to one individual,” Ryan adds, calling it “vicious, opportunistic targeting”.
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Loan sharks subject victims to ‘hideous’ things
Another woman in her 80s, currently under investigation by the unit, began making personal loans but quickly became threatening when people couldn’t pay her back.
“She was scaring [victims] with ‘I know where you are, I know where you live’,” Nigel says.
Her case is ongoing and has not yet reached the courts, so few details can be given by SLSW.
‘A tsunami is coming’
Loan sharks, of all ages, are nothing new but there are fears they are profiteering from the misery brought about by the ongoing economic crisis.
But a backlog at the courts, worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic, and a time lag with investigations means the full effects of the cost of living crisis have yet to be seen.
“There might be a bit of a tsunami coming,” Nigel warns.
Ryan says it is “fairly uncommon” to see illegal lenders in their eighties. “Most people are of working age, but it is about a 50-50 split between male and female,” he adds.
Sky News has previously witnessed the arrest of Illegal money lenders
Who are loan sharks?
Often they hide in plain sight and are well-known in their local communities.
Nigel and Ryan have spoken to Sky News on condition of anonymity, in part because of the threats the team faces doing their job.
They never work in the same area where they live but after one of his colleagues was accidentally spotted by a loan shark, their car was smashed and protection had to be put in place.
New research commissioned by their unit alongside the Welsh government, confirms fears that current financial hardships could drive more people in Wales to borrow from illegal money lenders.
Some 38% say they are more likely to need to borrow money or credit this year to cover everyday costs, and 50% of those borrowing are doing so to fund everyday living expenses – from food and bills to school uniforms.
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Established 15 years ago, SLSW is a government-funded agency that works alongside – but is entirely separate from – the police, local authorities, charities, and other agencies.
Most of the unit’s employees are former police officers.
‘Grooming’ their victims
Illegal money lenders, Nigel says, often build up a friendly rapport and lure people in by letting them off the first repayment.
But then, says Nigel, it often gets to the stage where they can’t pay it back.
The relationship is “pretty much grooming”, adds Ryan, who works closely with victims in his role, drawing comparisons to drug dealers or domestic abuse: “People are always stepping on eggshells, they get trained to act in a certain way.”
He says: “You also find people pay different amounts. If you’re not easy to intimidate they’ll still lend to you, just on more favourable terms.
“But the more vulnerable you are, the worse the penalties.”
Read more:
‘I was suicidal’: Loan sharks pose as friends to trap victims in cost of living crisis
Individual investigations into the illicit world of illegal money lending can take anywhere from a month to several years.
“We might not even have a victim in the first instance, we might only have the intelligence,” Nigel says.
The Wales unit has 11 live cases currently, with the oldest going back to February 2020. In some years, they might close as many as eight investigations.
And these loan sharks aren’t hidden in the depths of the dark web – these are people well-known in their local communities.
Living off £5 a week
In one case, a loan shark in North Wales would pick up his victims up just before midnight and drive them to a cash point just as their benefits were deposited in their account.
They would take the money, giving their victim mere pocket money to live off – in one case, as little as £5 a week – and keep the rest of the money, including the bank card.
In another, a cooker, fridge, and microwave were taken from a victim’s house when they fell behind with payments.
The maximum sentence
The maximum prison sentence for a loan shark, if successfully convicted, is two years. According to Nigel, investigators will often look to increase that by adding associated crimes to the charge sheet such as actual bodily harm, and sexual assaults.
The highest sentence that Nigel’s unit has achieved is three-and-a-half years, which was handed down to Robert Sparey, 60, of Caerphilly, in 2017. Sparey, who had not worked since 1990, targeted vulnerable people for more than 20 years and used a disabled family member as a “front” for his operation.
He threatened to burn a woman’s house down with her children inside if she did not pay, and told another he would find “heavy-handed” people to enforce the debts.
Similarly, the unit was active in the prosecution of Chris Harvey, a father of 21 children, for three years and four months in 2015. Harvey, who was also from Caerphilly, charged his own family up to 400,000% interest on illegal loans.
Loan sharks prey on vulnerable people in deprived areas of towns like Caerphilly in South Wales
£40k in unexplained cash
Among the unit’s more recent successes include the arrest of Clayton Rumbelow from Llanelli who was jailed for 10 months for illegal money lending in October 2022.
Despite being on benefits and with no other legitimate source of income, Rumbelow spent tens of thousands of pounds on holidays over two years. He bought expensive cars and even decorated his house with intimidating animal statues.
“When I went through his bank accounts, I found £40,000 worth of unexplained cash deposits,” says Nigel.
Clayton Rumbelow was given a jail sentence in October. Pic: SLSW
Some people don’t realise they are being exploited or even feel grateful to the lender for helping them out.
One victim told Nigel: “I don’t know what I would have done without him. I couldn’t get money from anywhere else and I couldn’t feed my kids”.
Rumbelow decorated his house with expensive and intimidating animal statues. Pic: SLSW
People are also often led to believe that their loan shark debts are lawfully enforceable. In Porthcawl, a doorman moonlighting as a loan shark wrote up contracts for his clients.
“When you actually looked at the contracts themselves, it looked like they came from somewhere legally enforceable,” says Nigel.
“People signed these contracts to buy groceries and believed he was a lawful money lender. But he wasn’t, and these people were desperate and would agree to anything.”
UK
Heidi Alexander says ‘fairness’ will be government’s ‘guiding principle’ when it comes to taxes at next budget
Another hint that tax rises are coming in this autumn’s budget has been given by a senior minister.
Speaking to Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips, Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander was asked if Sir Keir Starmer and the rest of the cabinet had discussed hiking taxes in the wake of the government’s failed welfare reforms, which were shot down by their own MPs.
Trevor Phillips asked specifically if tax rises were discussed among the cabinet last week – including on an away day on Friday.
Politics Hub: Catch up on the latest
Tax increases were not discussed “directly”, Ms Alexander said, but ministers were “cognisant” of the challenges facing them.
Asked what this means, Ms Alexander added: “I think your viewers would be surprised if we didn’t recognise that at the budget, the chancellor will need to look at the OBR forecast that is given to her and will make decisions in line with the fiscal rules that she has set out.
“We made a commitment in our manifesto not to be putting up taxes on people on modest incomes, working people. We have stuck to that.”
Ms Alexander said she wouldn’t comment directly on taxes and the budget at this point, adding: “So, the chancellor will set her budget. I’m not going to sit in a TV studio today and speculate on what the contents of that budget might be.
“When it comes to taxation, fairness is going to be our guiding principle.”
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Afterwards, shadow home secretary Chris Philp told Phillips: “That sounds to me like a barely disguised reference to tax rises coming in the autumn.”
He then went on to repeat the Conservative attack lines that Labour are “crashing the economy”.
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Chris Philp also criticsed the government’s migration deal with France
Mr Philp then attacked the prime minister as “weak” for being unable to get his welfare reforms through the Commons.
Discussions about potential tax rises have come to the fore after the government had to gut its welfare reforms.
Sir Keir had wanted to change Personal Independence Payments (PIP), but a large Labour rebellion forced him to axe the changes.
With the savings from these proposed changes – around £5bn – already worked into the government’s sums, they will now need to find the money somewhere else.
The general belief is that this will take the form of tax rises, rather than spending cuts, with more money needed for military spending commitments, as well as other areas of priority for the government, such as the NHS.
UK
Justice system ‘frustrating’, Met Police chief says – as he admits London’s ‘shameful’ racism challenge
It is “shameful” that black boys growing up in London are “far more likely” to die than white boys, Metropolitan Police chief Sir Mark Rowley has told Sky News.
In a wide-ranging interview with Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips, the commissioner said that relations with minority communities are “difficult for us”, while also speaking about the state of the justice system and the size of the police force.
Sir Mark, who came out of retirement to become head of the UK’s largest police force in 2022, said: “We can’t pretend otherwise that we’ve got a history between policing and black communities where policing has got a lot wrong.
“And we get a lot more right today, but we do still make mistakes. That’s not in doubt. I’m being as relentless in that as it can be.”
He said the “vast majority” of the force are “good people”.
However, he added: “But that legacy, combined with the tragedy that some of this crime falls most heavily in black communities, that creates a real problem because the legacy creates concern.”
Sir Mark, who also leads the UK’s counter-terrorism policing, said black boys growing up in London “are far more likely to be dead by the time they’re 18” than white boys.
“That’s, I think, shameful for the city,” he admitted.
“The challenge for us is, as we reach in to tackle those issues, that confrontation that comes from that reaching in, whether it’s stop and search on the streets or the sort of operations you seek.
“The danger is that’s landing in an environment with less trust.
“And that makes it even harder. But the people who win out of that [are] all of the criminals.”
Met Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley
The commissioner added: “I’m so determined to find a way to get past this because if policing in black communities can find a way to confront these issues, together we can give black boys growing up in London equal life chances to white boys, which is not what we’re seeing at the moment.
“And it’s not simply about policing, is it?”
Sir Mark said: “I think black boys are several times more likely to be excluded from school, for example, than white boys.
“And there are multiple issues layered on top of each other that feed into disproportionality.”
‘We’re stretched, but there’s hope and determination’
Sir Mark said the Met is a “stretched service” but people who call 999 can expect an officer to attend.
“If you are in the middle of a crisis and something awful is happening and you dial 999, officers will get there really quickly,” Sir Mark said.
“I don’t pretend we’re not a stretched service.
“We are smaller than I think we ought to be, but I don’t want to give a sort of message of a lack of hope or a lack of determination.”
“I’ve seen the mayor and the home secretary fighting hard for police resourcing,” he added.
“It’s not what I’d want it to be, but it’s better than it might be without their efforts.”
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How police tracked and chased suspected phone thief
‘Close to broken’ justice system facing ‘awful’ delays
Sir Mark said the criminal justice system was “close to broken” and can be “frustrating” for police officers.
“The thing that is frustrating is that the system – and no system can be perfect – but when the system hasn’t managed to turn that person’s life around and get them on the straight and narrow, and it just becomes a revolving door,” he said.
“When that happens, of course that’s frustrating for officers.
“So the more successful prisons and probation can be in terms of getting people onto a law-abiding life from the path they’re on, the better.
“But that is a real challenge. I mean, we’re talking just after Sir Brian Leveson put his report out about the close-to-broken criminal justice system.
“And it’s absolutely vital that those repairs and reforms that he’s talking about happen really quickly, because the system is now so stressed.”
Giving an example, the police commissioner went on: “We’ve got Snaresbrook [Crown Court] in London – it’s now got more than 100 cases listed for 2029.”
Sir Mark asked Trevor Phillips to imagine he had been the victim of a crime, saying: “We’ve caught the person, we’ve charged him, ‘great news, Mr Phillips, we’ve got him charged, they’re going to court’.
“And then a few weeks later, I see the trial’s listed for 2029. That doesn’t feel great, does it?”
Asked about the fact that suspects could still be on the streets for years before going to trial, Sir Mark conceded it’s “pretty awful”.
He added: “If it’s someone on bail, who might have stolen your phone or whatever, and they’re going in for a criminal court trial, that could be four years away. And that’s pretty unacceptable, isn’t it?”
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Leveson explains plans to fix justice system
Challenge to reform the Met
The Met chief’s comments come two years after an official report found the force is institutionally racist, misogynistic and homophobic.
Baroness Casey was commissioned in 2021 to look into the Met Police after serving police officer Wayne Couzens abducted, raped and murdered Sarah Everard.
She pinned the primary blame for the Met’s culture on its past leadership and found stop and search and the use of force against black people was excessive.
At the time, Sir Mark, who had been commissioner for six months when the report was published, said he would not use the labels of institutionally racist, institutionally misogynistic and institutionally homophobic, which Baroness Casey insisted the Met deserved.
However, London Mayor Sadiq Khan, who helped hire Sir Mark – and could fire him – made it clear the commissioner agreed with Baroness Casey’s verdict.
A few months after the report, Sir Mark launched a two-year £366m plan to overhaul the Met, including increased emphasis on neighbourhood policing to rebuild public trust and plans to recruit 500 more community support officers and an extra 565 people to work with teams investigating domestic violence, sexual offences and child sexual abuse and exploitation.
A leading NHS hospital has warned measles is on the rise among children in the UK, after treating 17 cases since June.
Alder Hey Children’s Hospital in Liverpool said it is “concerned” about the increasing number of children and young people who are contracting the highly contagious virus.
It said the cases it has treated since June were for effects and complications of the disease, which, in rare cases, can be fatal if left untreated.
“We are concerned about the increasing number of children and young people who are contracting measles. Measles is a highly contagious viral illness which can cause children to be seriously unwell, requiring hospital treatment, and in rare cases, death,” the hospital said in a statement to Sky News.
In a separate open letter to parents and carers in Merseyside earlier this month, Alder Hey, along with the UK Health and Security Agency (UKHSA) and directors of Public Health for Liverpool, Sefton and Knowsley, warned the increase in measles in the region could be down to fewer people getting vaccinated.
The letter read: “We are seeing more cases of measles in our children and young people because fewer people are having the MMR vaccine, which protects against measles and two other viruses called mumps and rubella.
“Children in hospital, who are very poorly for another reason, are at higher risk of catching the virus.”
The skin of a patient after three days of measles infection
It comes after a Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH) report released earlier this month determined that uptake of vaccines in the UK has stalled over the last decade and is, in many cases, declining.
It said none of the routine childhood vaccinations have met the 95% coverage target since 2021, putting youngsters at risk of measles, meningitis and whooping cough.
The MMR vaccine has been available through the NHS for years. Two doses gives lifelong protection against measles, mumps and rubella.
Two doses of the MMR vaccine give lifelong protection against measles, mumps and rubella. Pic: iStock
According to the latest NHS data, Liverpool was one of the cities outside London with the lowest uptake of the MMR vaccination in 2023-2024.
By the time children were five years old, 86.5% had been give one dose, decreasing to 73.4% for a second dose.
The RCPCH report put the nationwide decline down to fears over vaccinations, as well as families having trouble booking appointments and a lack of continuous care in the NHS, with many seeing a different GP on each visit.
Read more from Sky News:
Met Police chief on London’s ‘shameful’ racism challenge
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In the US, measles cases are at their highest in more than three decades.
Cases reached 1,288 on Wednesday this week, according to the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, with 14 states battling active outbreaks.
The largest outbreak started five months ago in communities in West Texas, where vaccination uptake is low. Since then, three people have died – including two children in Texas and an adult in New Mexico – with dozens more in hospital.
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