Rick Beardsell, the winner of Dragons Den, has been sentenced after being found guilty of using Covid loans to finance the purchase of a £1.3 million home in a sought-after village in Cheshire.
A Dragons’ Den winner has been sentenced after pocketing Covid loans to buy a £1.3 million mansion. Rick Beardsell, who had previously received a £75,000 investment from TV Dragons Tej Lalvani and Deborah Meaden in 2015 for his successful protein shake bottle business, ShakeSphere, was sentenced to 18 months in prison, suspended for two years, after prosecutors told a judge he had since paid all the money back.
The 46-year-old father of two was only permitted to apply for one Bounce Back loan, which would be up to £50, 000, but he knowingly applied for two before exaggerating his annual turnover by up to 23 times.
In order to help pay for the purchase of a five-bedroom property in Prestbury, Cheshire, which is home to a number of celebrities, Beardsell illegally used two Covid business loans worth £100,000 to help finance the purchase of a five-bed property. He has also won a total of seven gold medals for GB in the World Masters Athletics Championships.
The dad-of-two was supposed to use the taxpayer’s cash to help his other firm, which sells sportswear, but none of the money he was given went to the company, reports the Mirror’s sister title, the Manchester Evening News.
Instead, he used the Covid loan funds to pay off his mortgage and transfer cash to family members in order to purchase a £1.3 million house in Prestbury.
After admitting two counts of fraud, Beardsell, who held the fastest record for a 36-year-old in a 400-meter sprint at the 2015 WMA and who held the fastest record for a 36-year-old in another court, was sentenced to three years in prison. He was, however, given an 18-month, two-year prison sentence.
For his protein shake bottle business, Beardsell had previously made wise investments from TV Dragons Tej Lalvani and Deborah Meaden, which helped him achieve worldwide sales of more than a million shakers over the course of two years.
In connection with his other business, Sports Creative Ltd., according to Geoff Whealan, prosecutor for the Insolvency Service, Beardsell submitted phony applications for Bounce Back Loans to HSBC in December 2020 and then to NatWest in January 2021.
The defendant claimed on the HSBC form that Sports Creative’s turnover was £485,000, while NatWest’s claimed it was £320,000, despite unaudited financial statements that revealed a £20, 622 turnover for the year ending February 2020. He continued, ” “
The turnover was obviously exaggerated in order to obtain the maximum bounce-back loan, and subsequent transactions demonstrated that Sports Creative’s funds were not being being used for economic gain or business purposes at the time. ‘
According to Mr. Whelan, “The bounce back loan funds had actually been used for this purchase,” and it can be inferred from the defendant’s behavior that at the time he applied for them. However, the defendant has repaid the bounce-back loans to each bank in terms of repayment.
The loss of a man who has dedicated his life to his family, his professional endeavors, and also his sporting endeavors is of some significance, according to Beardsell’s attorney Nichola Cafferkey.
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Source: Mirror
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