Original subtitles

A close friend of my dad said that

he's got this win-win deal,

that it's 100% guaranteed.

There was no reason, really, not to trust him.

He looked very like he knew what he was doing.

I thought it was a fast, safe buck.

That's when he told us that he'd lost everything.

My heart completely just dropped.

He had stolen that money.

They've lost £108,000,

and the police can't really do anything about it.

It's absolutely gut-wrenching.

Jeff Arundell has lied to us and he's misled us.

He manipulated everything to his favour.

He planned it all, and we were just his puppets.

Is this nightmare ever going to end?

The historic city of Bath

is home to the hard-working

and close-knit McAlinden family.

The eldest daughter, Kerry,

works overseas, as a chef.

I love cheffing. I'm a feeder.

To put a plate of food in front of someone

and them enjoy it is just the best.

I wouldn't want to do anything else.

But for homebird Kerry,

working abroad can be tough.

It's very hard work.

It is on your feet

from dusk till dawn.

I had this dream, constant dream

of setting up a cafe

and being closer to family.

It got me through the day, like, the really long days,

just dreaming of my exit.

So every little bit of savings was to better my life.

While Kerry moved abroad, the rest of her family has remained in Bath.

I'm one of five, so I've got a sister, then two younger brothers

and a younger sister. My dad's very much like the head of the family.

I was born in Bristol and I'm quite happy living in this vicinity,

and all I've done is move closer to Bath. I like living here because

there's an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty just up the road.

It's really, really pretty.

The work ethic of the siblings

has been greatly influenced by their father.

I've always worked hard. I left school and did an apprenticeship

at Rolls-Royce, and finished it, but didn't like it.

I didn't like being told what to do.

So I've been self-employed since I was 21.

I've gone from engineer to vehicles to property developing

and holiday lets in Bristol and Bath.

Anything I wanted, I worked for it.

I never got given anything.

He's a grafter. He's a very business-minded man.

He's come from not a lot to starting his own businesses,

so he always throws us in with him

or, like, wants to get us involved.

And he's the most generous bloke

as well. He will always help.

Out of all my children, Joseph's got a similar personality to me.

He was actually born on my birthday, the same day.

Any trouble we've got,

the first person any of us would ring would be him.

My dad is definitely a family man.

He's the sort of glue that holds us together.

Christian's very, very methodical

and honest.

Kerry, again, works very, very hard.

I've always encouraged them to do what they like doing.

If you enjoy what you do,

then you go to work happy every day.

We always go to him for advice with everything.

We all get on really well.

We're a big family, but like a tight family as well.

I love all my kids. I'm really proud of them.

In late November 2016,

Kerry receives a call from dad James

about a proposition from family friend Jeff Arundell

that could help with her business aspirations.

Jeff approached my dad and said that he's got this win-win deal

that is an investment, it's 100% guaranteed.

James also invites his other children

to listen to Jeff's proposal.

Dad suggested we pop into Bath

to get lunch and meet up with Jeff.

Dad obviously spoke to us because

he wants us to benefit from anything that he benefits from.

Well, I thought if they got the money that he was offering

and it's going to help them out,

I thought it would be a nice little

extra bit of money for them.

James trusts Jeff, who he knows makes money on the stock market.

And Jeff's spotted a guaranteed winner.

He said a very promising pharmaceutical company

was about to announce a cure for cancer,

and that their shares would rocket.

And he said he'd only ever had that once in his life before,

and he earned a lot of money.

He said, "So if you want to put some money in,

"you can join me with that."

Probably about 15 years ago,

I met Jeff and we started talking.

He's quite sociable,

quite funny and a likeable chap.

We did become quite close and we had similar interests.

He was just one of those wealthy people, I guess.

He carried himself well, he dressed well.

He drove a Bentley and, like, lived in a nice house

near the centre of Bath.

He always gave off the allure of having a lot of money.

A bit of a Champagne Charlie, always had the champagne going.

He was very friendly, very charismatic.

He was very confident. He knew everyone.

He had a very good reputation

with people that Dad knew as well.

He was a good friend of all of us.

Before Jeff's meeting with the McAlinden children,

their father, James, has already decided to invest

£50,000 in his friend's business proposition.

The whole deal was, if you put the 50,000 down initially,

within two or three weeks,

you'd get a 75% return.

So I would put 50 in and get nearly 90 grand back out,

after about three weeks.

Jeff said he's putting in quite a substantial amount himself

and he'll get 25% for looking after us.

He has only ever had this once before

and he earned, like, half a million from it.

It was a sure thing, according to Jeff.

Yeah, I thought it was a fast, safe buck.

When a friend presents a proposition like this,

you go on trust. You will

take their word for it, and in this instance,

Jeffrey's putting this in a way to James that

it's privileged information.

James trusted Jeffrey, in the sense that

Jeffrey was in this game already.

But with a deal that Jeff says could earn the McAlindens

huge sums of money, Kerry begins to feel wary.

I just had a little bit of an inkling of a doubt,

and I said, "Well, what happens if it all falls through?"

And he was very snidey and just said,

"Oh, you're a smart one, you are."

Almost like belittled me and sort of put me down.

But he was not pushy.

He's been so reassuring that everything is, like,

such a good investment.

We knew it was an actual company.

It was definitely a legit investment.

You're helping out a company that's, like, cancer research,

and also, hopefully, gaining something from it as well.

I've no reason to mistrust him.

The biggest thing he said was that if it failed,

he would guarantee it with his own money.

With that reassurance, you obviously think it IS a win-win.

If it doesn't go the way we think it is, we'll get our money back.

Which obviously sounds great.

I was only 21 at the time, and I was seeing a girl

and we wanted to go travelling,

and this investment came,

I thought, at the perfect time.

Losing all our money was completely out of the question.

I didn't even see that as a possibility.

Kerry also sees this deal as a golden opportunity

to realise her dreams.

It's hard to save money.

The investment would have taken me a lot closer

to my dream of opening up my own place.

And it means that I can move back home,

I can be closer to my family. I was just so excited.

The McAlindens believe in Jeff's investment scheme.

He was quite well trusted throughout the Bath community.

That's the impression he gave off.

So, from the outside, looking at his life,

he looked like he knew what he was doing.

I had no reason to mistrust him.

There was no bad reputations going about about him.

On top of James'

initial investment of £50,000,

Kerry and the rest of her family

agree to invest their life savings.

They all sent six grand, 20 grand,

four grand, whatever they had.

He gave us his bank details and we transferred it

straight into Jeff's bank.

To see your savings transfer out of your account into someone else's,

like, it is, like, it's horrible.

That's, like, all my hard work.

It was all done on trust,

and the fact that he said he'd give the money back.

You just don't expect someone that is a friend of the family

to take all your savings and just...just ruin your life.

In late 2016,

Jeff Arundell convinces his friends,

the McAlinden family, to invest thousands of pounds

on shares that he believes will increase in value

in just a few weeks.

Jeff said, from the initial meeting,

that we would get our money back,

at the very least, and he'd guarantee that.

He was going to earn money on that investment and then pay us back

a return of 75%.

Everybody's going to benefit, especially my kids,

in about two or three weeks' time.

After sending the money,

I've gone back to work,

and it's quite a lot of excitement because you just think,

I'm getting closer to my dream.

We were tracking it every day.

I was excited about the deal. Really excited, to be honest.

I set up my own company, doing fencing.

We were just starting to get a bit of a flow, where I could take on

some more employees to kind of alleviate

the labour side of things, so that I could focus

more on the sales side of it.

The investment coming off would have been just the perfect

time of my life, really, to have that extra

injection of cash into the business to help grow it.

Jeff is so positive about the success of

this stock that the McAlindens

decide to invest even more money.

We started off with a smaller amount.

The more we spoke about it with him and between us,

it did sound too good to not put more money in.

So we scraped together even more money

and just kept on putting as much money as we could in.

I even put the next £2,000 of my investment on a credit card.

We were all elated. We were so excited, to the point where

I was just like, "Oh, I wonder if I can sort of

"invest something from my credit card."

We all felt so reassured that putting it on

a credit card didn't seem like much of a deal,

because there was a specific date when

we'd be getting our money back anyway, so it wouldn't have even

accrued any interest on the credit card.

These additional payments increase the sum that

the family has invested to a total of £108,000.

Jeff said, "Just wait a couple of weeks and everything will be fine

"and you'll get your money back."

Obviously, then, we were counting the days down.

That date came and went and nothing happened.

He said, "Don't worry, don't worry.

"It's still going to happen, it's still going to happen."

So we waited again and waited again.

The more it dragged it on, the more apprehensive we were getting,

cos we're like, when is it actually going to start rising?

The McAlindens monitor the share price closely,

but it shows no signs of increasing,

and they start to feel more concerned.

At this stage, going into Christmas, I really needed that money.

It just completely skinted me out.

And then we rang him and he said, "Be patient.

"It's going to take a couple more days and I'll get it sorted out."

Jeff reassures the family that they will receive their money when

the company makes its announcement.

But with the investment past its due date, Kerry gets cold feet.

After sending the money, I just...

Yeah, I don't feel good about it.

So, I was at home,

visiting my family on holiday.

I found out that the investment was not going to plan,

and I begged Jeff to take it out,

because I didn't want to lose that money.

I just said, "I don't want to do it any more.

"Please take my money out." And he said, "No, it's too late."

He's like, "Don't panic, it's all going to turn out OK."

But he kept fobbing us off a little bit

and then stopped answering our calls.

This is when it got a bit scary, yeah.

That was when it started to...

Just something wasn't right.

In January 2017, a few weeks past the deadline,

Jeff finally agrees to a meeting to provide an update.

He said he'd come up to the house,

and it was just me and my dad.

Jeff is normally quite flamboyant,

driving a Bentley or driving a nice car.

And then he arrives...not that well dressed,

looking very ashen, in a P-reg Volkswagen Polo.

So as soon as we see him in this vehicle that's not worth

a lot of money, alarm bells start ringing

and I'm not expecting good news from him.

That's when he told us that he'd lost everything.

Wow! We couldn't believe it.

I was... I think I went white.

I just looked at my dad, I was like, "Well, what are you going to say?"

Joe said, "How did you manage that?"

And that's when he explained that he essentially

gambled the money, rather than invested the money.

Jeff admits rather than investing the family's money into this

guaranteed stock, he used a technique called spread betting -

a hugely risky undertaking, with the potential for big gains,

but also, the risk of big losses.

Spread betting's when you don't actually own, physically, the share

itself, but you're betting on how well it's going to perform.

None of this was explained.

From my point of view,

he was just investing in a stock, like you normally do,

and that stock was going to go up,

but that wasn't the case.

And then he said that he didn't have any money,

that he'd invested everything himself as well,

so he didn't have anything to pay us back.

I mean, he carried himself like he had lots of money,

so the fact that he didn't have any money himself

was actually quite a shock.

He came across quite genuine that he had lost our money,

he'd made a mistake and was really sorry about it.

He said, "But don't worry, I'm going to pay you back, as I promised."

So we're like, "How are you going to do that?"

He's like, "I'll borrow it to pay it back."

The McAlindens have no choice but to wait for Jeff to return their money.

I'd invested everything that I'd got,

which was really stupid, really.

I had to sort of live off the credit card, until I got paid.

But after a month, Jeff still hasn't paid them back,

so the family meets him again

to find out what's happening.

I was feeling nervous going into that meeting,

just because I didn't want to know the outcome if it wasn't that

we were going to get the money back. So, nervous, scared.

I thought Jeff would turn up with, you know,

lots of paperwork, bank statements,

giving us a trail of where the money's been, gone,

and he turned up with nothing.

I just thought, in my head,

what about if I just record this?

I just wanted to get something on him,

so I opened the Voice Memos app on my phone, hit record,

put it face-down on the table, and it was all there to be heard.

He said that he couldn't find

anyone else to borrow off that he could pay back.

My heart completely just dropped.

The whole atmosphere in the room, you could cut it with a knife.

Everyone's gone silent. What do you say?

We're still trying to take it in, you know?

I just burst into tears. It was just...

Yeah, it's just not very nice to see that

everything you've worked hard for and your dream, and...

..is just gone, just like that.

Just thinking about the fact I'm not going to be able to go

travelling now. We'd booked all of our travelling, we'd planned

our route and where we're going to go, erm, booked flights.

So when we found out that the money had gone,

that kind of put it all in jeopardy.

The minute he told me he didn't have it to pay back,

I said, "Sell your car, then. I want my money back."

We asked him where his Bentley was, he said that was gone months ago.

And then I tell him to sell his wife's jewellery. Anything.

I am raving mad.

"Sell anything you've got.

"You told me you're going to give

"the money back. I want it back."

I'm thinking, how, like, have you not got your house?

He almost has this, like,

assumption that Dad's got loads of money

and it's no skin off of his nose to pay all of us back, basically.

So that's probably why he was a target to begin with.

Jeffrey is not taking any responsibility for what's happened.

You know, "This has got nothing to do with me any more."

Again, another tactic to shamelessly deflect.

He really does come across as arrogant and self-assured.

I kind of look to my dad like, "How's this happened?"

I didn't blame him. It was my money, it was my investment.

But I kind of like, "How did you get this so wrong?"

I think I've let my children down as well.

Especially the fact that I'd encouraged all my family

and children to get involved with somebody I trusted them on,

then that made me feel devastated, really, that

I'd trusted someone who didn't give a monkey's.

So he didn't even have answers. He just said it had gone,

and that was it, and very blase about the whole situation.

He just changed as a person.

Like, stone-cold, and just wasn't

this loving, jovial person that we'd seen previously.

You just lose just all faith, and it's just like,

it's absolutely gut-wrenching.

This is a huge blow for the McAlindens.

You know, Jeffrey had promised them the funds back.

That's the true hallmark of a good friend.

He's then manipulated them through the assurances that he's given them,

and he's kept himself safe.

There's no documentation, there's no written consent, nothing like that.

Suspecting they may have been part of a con,

the McAlindens report Jeff to the police.

We come across all different types of fraud

where somebody makes a representation,

says something to someone

and they do so dishonestly,

with a view to either making a gain for themselves

or exposing someone else to a risk

of loss, or causing a loss to someone else.

The McAlindens invested a total of £108,000 between them,

which is a huge amount of money for anyone.

But at the point that they placed the bet,

they believed they were investing in shares. It wasn't until later

that they found out that it was spread betting.

On a criminal level, if Jeffrey said that he's been buying shares

with the money and he hasn't, this is deemed as a fraud.

So at this point, we're trying to figure out whether there are any

representations that are made

by Jeff that we can prove as being

a fraud, and namely, the fact that

he'd promised them their stake money.

It really depends on what he told them at the time that they made

their investment and whether he was dishonest in that,

because in any fraud, you need dishonesty.

Although the McAlindens believe they have been scammed by Jeff,

they have no way of proving it.

Effectively, it's Jeffrey's word

against the McAlindens

about what he's told them

he's spending their money on.

This isn't a business deal, there's no contract.

This is a deal that's basically been done on

a gentleman's handshake, and it's all based on friendship and trust.

And without any paperwork,

and without any signed documents,

it's really difficult for the police

to prove what's been promised.

So, obviously, the McAlindens were quite upset at this point.

We don't seem to be getting anywhere with the investigation.

The investigation's stalled,

the McAlindens still haven't got

their £108,000, and the police

don't seem to be able to do anything about it.

It's just gone, just like that.

Yeah, it's a terrible, terrible, terrible feeling.

I wouldn't wish it upon anyone.

It's been months since the McAlinden family have been duped

into handing over £108,000

to family friend Jeff Arundell...

..but a lack of evidence has stalled the case

and left the family struggling financially.

I really needed that money. It was everything that I had.

I needed that to get by and to keep running the business

the way that we had been.

Without it, it just put so much

pressure on everything. Er,

my circumstances, my living,

my relationships.

I had a tax bill coming up that had to be paid.

I ended up having to put the tax onto a credit card,

which just...it crippled me, again.

Everybody's feeling the pinch.

Everybody's feeling the pinch by then.

I felt sick about it all.

He introduced us to Jeff

and just felt terrible that we'd lost so much money.

I felt so bad, I decided to take a loan out

in my own name to pay my children back.

I've just got myself in deeper on something

which shouldn't have happened in the first place,

and I'm devastated myself.

He didn't have stacks of money himself,

but that just goes to show what type of person my dad is.

One year on since their investment,

the McAlindens' money

appears to be lost forever,

until new information about Jeff comes to light.

Jeff's no longer in contact with me at all.

He just thinks I'm going to go away.

In Bath, people gossip, and as

I'd spoken to some people about him, they said that

he's got a lot of money now.

His Bentley suddenly arrived back again,

so he's driving around in that.

They couldn't wait to tell me,

cos everybody in Bath knew what he'd done.

As it becomes clear that Jeff hasn't lost all his money,

James discovers something even more shocking.

He bought this house for £2 million and renamed it Kite Lodge,

as a homage to the pharmaceutical company Kite Pharma,

which made me feel totally sick.

And he's having big parties at his house, and gave his wife

an expensive bracelet and stuff. It all got back to me.

We're all in shock that this has happened,

and how has he not paid us back when he can afford a mansion?

Jeff's still driving around in a Bentley,

living the same life he lived before,

and I'm back in the rain, in the mud, digging fence post holes out.

We had to go back to square one,

build all this money back up,

all because of him.

Trying to come up with ways to go travelling,

the one thing I looked at that had any value in my life was my car,

so I sold it to go travelling.

And I knew, when I came back, I had no car.

It just seemed not right that he could be in this situation,

and we were left in THIS situation.

I just hated him, because he was

just a liar, wasn't he, in the end?

It kept on getting more and more

suspicious, like this was just a con all along.

It's almost like Jeffrey's rubbing his wealth in their face.

There's no concern or empathy

with what they've experienced, and the loss

that they've had, as a result of his tactics.

Suspicious that Jeff's sudden wealth

may be connected to the McAlindens' investment,

detectives bring him in for questioning.

Detectives come to learn

that Jeff had won £4.5 million

from spread betting.

The police were aware that he had won a substantial amount of money

in August 2017,

but as far as we were concerned,

it was completely separate to the McAlindens.

This was an entirely separate pot.

Jeffrey feels that he's the victim,

he feels he's been wronged.

He is unable to see how

he's breached the friendship

and the trust of the McAlindens

through the actions that

he's undertaken, and that just shows

how deluded he is at this point.

Despite the fact that he has won £4.5 million,

he's unwilling to give them a small proportion of that,

which he promised them at the outset.

At this point, there's nothing legally binding at all

to say that he has to refund them the money.

What I don't understand is, erm,

why would he earn all that money

and still not pay me back my initial sum?

That just goes to show how cocky he is and just how brazen he is.

He could have made his life so much easier

by just giving us back what we'd put in.

Why doesn't he give back at least

the stake to the McAlindens?

I think it says a lot about his character that he refuses to.

With no solid evidence of fraud,

the police cannot put any charges to Jeff.

Two-and-a-half years into the case,

DC Shallcross cannot shake her suspicions

that Jeff Arundell has defrauded the McAlindens.

I felt that there was something there, particularly looking at

the money that he had won in 2017, and not knowing

where that had come from, because he was a guy

who was telling us that he had no money whatsoever

and, yet, had managed to win £4.5 million.

So you've got to question where he got the money

to place those bets, so I was suspicious.

I wanted to follow the money

and see what had happened with the bets,

so I obtained the spreadsheets from the IG index

and spent a considerable amount of time following each of the bets

and all the trades that Jeff Arundell had placed.

Adele focuses her attention on the McAlindens' pot of money

that was transferred to Jeff in December 2016

by using specific codes

from the IG spreadsheets.

When you look at the trade that he places with the McAlindens' money -

and that will be a series of letters and numbers,

it will have a code, effectively -

I can then see that he placed

all £108,000 of the McAlindens' money on nine different trades,

all of different values, different stake monies.

Most of them lost, but there were two particular trades

and those went on themselves to make a profit of £108,000.

This is a significant discovery,

as it would mean Jeff DID profit

from the McAlindens' money.

So now we've got to investigate further and see what else

he's lied to us about, and follow that money even further.

I'm looking at the spreadsheets

and I'm now starting to realise

that their money formed part of the bigger picture.

Police finds out that Jeffrey, using that profit,

made further trades,

and that ended up being part of

that substantial windfall of

£4.5 million back in August 2017.

Following this money trail,

it's clear that the millions that Jeff has made

have stemmed from the initial pot

that the McAlindens gave to him.

I was really happy. You know, this was the piece of evidence

that we had missed.

Up until that time, we'd had probably two, two-and-a-half years

of thinking that he had completely lost the McAlindens' money.

A, Jeff told us that, and B, the evidence, until that point,

had pointed us in that direction.

So now I've got the proof that some of the McAlindens' money

has gone into the bet that has made money,

and that Jeff Arundell

has lied to us and he's misled us.

Literally, just like, it just rips

out your heart. He's a vile human.

So I'm really keen to speak to him,

see what he's got to say about it,

and to see whether it is sufficient now

to get Jeff Arundell charged with fraud.

Police have discovered that

Jeff Arundell didn't lose all of the McAlindens' money

but, instead, used part of it

to make millions of pounds.

Now, they want answers.

I called him in for an interview,

and my colleague and I interviewed him at length.

He was still brazen and cocky

about their money and about what he'd done with it.

At this point, the police are able

to prove that Jeffrey was lying.

And he's been backed into a corner, and he becomes very defensive

and argumentative, and he knows that

the police are closing in on him.

With the police onto him,

Jeff changes his original statement.

At this point, he admits that he had

won with the McAlindens' money,

but said that that once they gave the money to him,

that became HIS money, it was HIS trades,

and the deal that he had had with them had finished in December 2016.

Jeffrey presents with

narcissistic traits.

He believes he's superior to other people,

and has a sense of entitlement,

and doesn't take responsibility

for his own actions. He believes

that people have slighted him,

and he is vindictive in the way that he's dealt with the McAlindens.

Police once again raise the critical detail

that the McAlindens gave Jeff money

on the understanding that he would pay it back, no matter the outcome.

If Jeff had no money in his account at the time of making the promise,

this would be considered deception.

If police can prove that this is a lie and that Jeffrey

didn't have the money to pay him back,

technically, he has made a false representation,

and that could be a criminal offence.

When police check Jeff's bank accounts from the time of

the deal in 2016, they find that he lacked the necessary funds

to fulfil his promise to the McAlindens.

But then Jeff claims that

he DID have the money, in cash,

which was an inheritance from his mother's estate.

If true, there would be no case for fraud.

DC Shallcross is keen to find out.

I obtained bank accounts back from early 2016,

and I also obtained the probate documents,

and I obtained the will as well.

What she had in assets back then was about £300,000,

which came from the sale of her house.

But DC Shallcross can't find any evidence of money being given

to Jeff through accounts, or in cash, after his mother's death.

I found out who the other beneficiaries were

and whether or not any money had gone to them.

I was able to contact

one of the beneficiaries and find out what had happened to that money,

because I certainly couldn't see any money having gone to Jeff.

A little more digging soon reveals

the McAlindens aren't the first people Jeff has taken advantage of.

He had obtained a power of attorney over

his late mother's affairs back in 2013.

This means Jeff was able to make

financial decisions on his mother's behalf

years before she passed, and had access to all her accounts.

But Jeff was lying.

I was able to determine that there was no money left

in the estate at the point of death,

because that had already been taken by Jeffrey Arundell

whilst he had access to it

as a power of attorney.

As soon as he got a hold of her accounts back in 2013,

he withdrew the money for himself...

..spending a large amount of money on a Bentley,

and spending others on the IG index and spread betting with it.

It's mind-boggling.

That's the disgusting type of person he is, to steal off his own

dying mother and own family. Like, who does that?

He had a complete disregard for his mum.

That money was there for her to live on for the rest of her life.

He had no clue, at that stage, how long she would live for.

She was living in a care home and that was for her.

He is meant to safeguard that money

and not use it for his own benefit

and buy a car or spread bet with it,

and that IS an offence.

Knowing he's been caught, Jeff makes a last-ditch effort

to get back into the police's good books by rectifying

the damage to the McAlindens.

He tells us again that it was a genuine investment,

that he had genuinely invested their money.

Erm, and at this stage,

he did want to offer them their stake money back,

along with a tiny bit of the profits

from that first deal.

That's done because he's got

nowhere to turn at this point.

So it's not out of goodwill,

it's out of his own self-interest.

Jeffrey tried to stick with the lies for as long as he could.

However, it's not enough to save him.

Jeff is charged with multiple fraud offences.

We gathered so much momentum and got so much evidence.

Jeff continues to plead his innocence,

and so, the case goes to trial.

I honestly didn't think that the day

would come that we'd be in court

and see Jeff in the stand.

Dad, sister and I went to the Crown Court in Bristol,

and when Dad was waiting to go in,

and Jeff walked past him and just said,

"Good afternoon, Jim," as if he was going to get away with it.

Like nothing has happened,

and the detective I sat next to said, "What is he on?"

She seriously couldn't believe

he was so cocky, even then.

The evidence suggests that it WAS

the McAlindens' money, and they'd given him the money

to invest in a certain way.

The recording that I made

on a split decision actually

went some way in incriminating Jeff,

because he admits some things he did wrong on that recording,

which would have been very hard to prove without it.

Well, the jury had heard Christian's recordings,

and all the other things about the family money,

so he had a pretty black picture painted of himself, really.

As the prosecution nears its conclusion,

the McAlindens deliver their final statements to the court.

It was just like reliving

that whole, like, losing your money

and then having to stand up in front of everyone.

It was like... Yeah, not...

Yeah, I don't ever want to have to do that again.

Yeah, it was horrible.

Kerry was crying at the courts.

It was a big, traumatic thing for her, and it was terrible.

I did feel for her.

The case closed and there was summing up,

and the jury went out, retired

to consider their verdict.

And the jury came back with a unanimous verdict.

They convicted him of fraud by false representation.

Jeff is also convicted for fraud

by abuse of position, in relation to his mother's finances.

Had he not offered that information as a defence,

in saying that he had the money from his late mother's estate,

we would never have looked into it.

On the 31st of October 2023,

Jeffrey Arundell is sentenced

for a total of six-and-a-half years in prison.

I was shocked by how long he got.

It obviously proves that, you know, he's a con man,

and it's for everyone to see.

He manipulated everything to his favour.

He's just a selfish man

that only had one objective in mind,

and that was to make him wealthy.

I'd love to have seen his face when they told him, like,

that he's going to prison, because I truly believe

up until the last minute, he thought he'd got away with it.

I think he deserves everything he got.

I can't believe what a deceitful,

greedy man he was, really,

and I completely misread him.

With Jeff Arundell behind bars,

the McAlinden family try to move forward with their lives,

even with their losses.

As much as he's been convicted, I still have the high-interest loan

on the money I paid my children back.

Because the police have impounded all his bank accounts and his house

and they need to carry on with their investigations of how,

where and when the money went, I still haven't received

my money, after seven years.

I do hope it all gets resolved as soon as possible.

When you think that someone's going to give you...

Well, just enable you to sort of,

like, live your dream life, I mean, he just played on

all of our emotions, I think.

The whole thing was upsetting, and it has been a big strain

and stress on the family.

But through it all, we have stuck together.

After coming back from travelling,

I didn't have my car any more, I didn't have anywhere to live,

and I didn't have my job. Luckily, my brother

took me on. I could start working again.

I focused all my attention onto building my base back up,

saving enough to diversify into property.

So I gave the fencing company over to my brother,

which he now still runs.

It's so lucky that we're just such a strong family, because

I think it would have torn

a lot of weaker families apart.

I totally regret the whole event.

But my character is, I'm a fighter

and I don't give up easy.

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