Original subtitles

[Claire] The harbor's a place my aunt would come often

right up until shortly before she died.

My aunt put her funeral arrangements in order.

It was a way of feeling control over her situation,

her terminal diagnosis of pancreatic cancer.

She paid cash. £2,500.

When my aunt found out she'd been conned by the funeral director,

I think it took from her every last shred of dignity.

That's something I can never forgive him for.

[Beatrice] Barry was very amenable. A very caring man.

The perfect undertaker.

He was winning awards.

He said he was a qualified registered nurse.

It was quickly a pattern when pulling that folder out

that something wasn't quite right.

[Ross] All it was going to take was one person

come and say, "Look, here's my letter.

It's time for me to organize a funeral."

When I called,

I was told that the funeral plans didn't exist.

That Barry Stevenson had defrauded them.

[Debbie] The one family with the four policies.

It was Granny and Grandpa and Mum and Dad.

£10,000.

[Ross] And when they find out that that plan doesn't exist...

It was heart breaking.

That sent me into an absolute rage.

I was determined that I would find him and I would track him down.

[Ross] He's rumbled. His house of cards has come tumbling down.

[Debbie] This was personal. This was someone we knew.

He knew about my family, my children, our history.

That's what makes me angry.

-[producer] How are you doing? -Not too bad.

-[producer] Looking forward to this? -[chuckles]

Not really. [laughs]

[producer] First, well, if you could just introduce yourself

and tell me what you do.

So, my name's Sarah Yorke,

and I work as a funeral manager

in Tayside and Fife.

I was one of those strange children you would probably see

who was fascinated by hearses and coffins and funerals

and what that all entailed.

[mouse clicks]

[Sarah] The average family arranges 1.4 funerals in their life,

so to be involved in that

and to basically be a guiding hand from start to finish

is the most rewarding thing ever.

When you're looking after a member of somebody's family,

it is very difficult for them to entrust their loved one with you.

So it's so important that every single person

is treated with dignity and respect.

Without that you've got nothing. Integrity's huge.

You really have to be respected in the position.

You have to be an ambassador for what this family's looking for.

[Sarah] Barry came across really charming, a well-dressed businessman.

He really did come across well.

Very caring. Very professional.

I worked for quite a large company in Fife,

and had been approached on more than one occasion by Barry

to come into Stevenson's and run it on his behalf.

First couple of times, I didn't really take him on.

But sometimes, you can get an offer that's too good to refuse

and I ended up joining him in February 2019.

[producer] Thank you for agreeing to tell your story today.

Please introduce yourself and tell me what you do for a living.

My name's Claire Beaton,

and I'm a staff nurse with NHS Tayside.

I had a close relationship

with both my grandmother and my aunt.

I stayed with my grandmother, Betsy MacRae,

and my aunt, Betsy Douglas, in Kirkcaldy

from being a toddler until 9 years old

when I was sent to school in Edinburgh.

In 2016, my aunt and grandmother were 95 and late 70s.

I think, at that age,

they were thinking it was time to look at funeral arrangements.

So, independent of me, they went to secure themselves some funeral plans.

My aunt and grandmother just said that he'd advertised locally,

that he had a number of branches.

I think they probably would have chosen a local business

because the newspaper that they would read would be a local one.

They paid Stevenson's Funeral Parlor £2,500 each for the two policies.

So, I had been aware that they'd purchased them,

the only thing that she said was I have all the documentation,

all you need to do is buy a flower.

My grandmother seemed to be quite pleased

that we didn't have to think about the arrangements or the cost

when the time came for them both.

[Claire] My aunt had been given a terminal cancer diagnosis in the July,

and my grandmother had unhelpfully broken her hip in the September.

Up until that point, the two of them were fairly self-sufficient.

But at that point, we realized that they would need to be closer to us.

[producer] How are you both feeling today?

-Good, thank you. -Good.

[Beatrice] I work for Fife council as a cleaner.

I knew nobody in the area. Shelter was my lifeline.

I got to meet a lot of people, made some good friends.

[Debbie] During the time that we volunteered in Shelter shop,

we came to meet Barry,

who was the owner of Stevenson Funeral Homes.

Which was next door but one.

We used to conglomerate at the back of the Shelter shop

with the ciggy zone.

And we went out to have a cigarette and a cup of coffee on a break.

And if he was at the shop or out and about,

he would generally wander over and chat.

-He was very amenable. -Yeah, he was.

Barry was very amenable.

[Beatrice] A very caring man.

Serious about his job,

serious about helping the families that were involved.

And he never came across as anything other than a nice guy.

The perfect undertaker.

Serious when he needed it. Very empathetic.

Not a bad bone in his body, I would have said.

Barry Stevenson's company,

Stevenson Funeral Directors is a really well-known company.

He had a huge presence in Fife.

He had four funeral parlors, he was winning awards,

and he was a really well-trusted, well-liked businessman.

And he had a huge bank of customers.

In 2019,

they had a fantastic night at the Scottish Funeral Awards.

They really were the benchmark for how to run funerals,

and how to operate as an undertaker for very much the rest of Scotland.

[Debbie] He was always beautifully turned out. He was well-spoken.

He said he was a qualified registered nurse.

He fostered troubled teenagers.

You know, there was so much that he said he did

that made you think like, "Wow!"

"You know, this is a decent guy for the community."

I'd been saying for ages to Deborah,

"I must see a better funeral policy.

I resent paying a lot of money,

I'd rather have a black bag on the pavement.

But we've gotta do something."

So Deborah came to me one day and said,

"Mum, I've been talking to Barry and he says they do funeral policies."

And you know, Barry had said to tell Mum

if she was interested to pop in and see him.

[Sarah] A funeral plan is something that somebody takes out

as piece of mind to prevent their children or their siblings

or whoever maybe left getting into debt or poverty

over a potential funeral later on down the line.

It's piece of mind for the person who's taking it out

that they're not putting that financial burden onto their family.

[Ross] Part of the Barry Stevenson-Hamilton business

was selling prepaid funeral plans.

That means that you pay the money for the funeral up front.

The way that these plans operate

is that the funeral parlor, in this case, Stevenson's, they take the money,

and the money is sent to a bigger company, a national trust.

In this case, it was a firm called Avalon.

And that's in case the local funeral parlor,

in case they get into financial difficulties or close,

or in case the customer changes their mind,

their money is safe, their money is secure,

and there's nothing for them to worry about.

So, some time went by and I went in to see him in the shop,

and he showed me through what they have, what they do, and all the considerations.

He put me at ease and he said,

"Do you want this kind of music?"

You know, the general questions.

And I said, "Yes, I think I'll do this."

So I went over there, and worked my way through the paperwork with him.

We know that Barry was already a well-liked

and well-established member of his community.

He already had a number of branches.

Four that were open and some of which had won awards.

So there's really no reason for the people around him,

the general public, to doubt him.

On the surface, he seemed credible.

He was empathetic.

Sounds good. Sounds like he cares.

It's what you would want if you were dealing with that kind of situation.

And he never struck me as anything else but that

until this story came out.

Then he changed.

[Sarah] Working for Barry initially was a real culture shock

from where I had initially come from.

So there was no restrictions in time.

I was the funeral manager,

I could come and go when I pleased.

It was a very relaxed environment.

Barry liked to splash the cash

and he was always very generous when it came to his friends.

That's how Barry, I eventually found out, got his friends.

It was by lavishing them with gifts.

He thought nothing of spending a lavish amount of money

on what you and I would perhaps consider ridiculous.

So on one occasion, we had been up to Dunfermline

and we were going out somewhere.

And I wanted to buy a top

and met up with him in the shopping center,

and he says "Oh, what did you get?"

I said, "I've just picked up a top. I think it was about £24."

He said, "I've just spent £600 on a jacket."

And I remember being like, "Wow. That's a mortgage payment."

There was no way I would just nip up to town on a Wednesday evening

and spend £600 on a jacket.

[Dr. Sohom] Barry led a lavish lifestyle.

But on top of spending money on himself,

he was also quite generous.

He would buy other people these lavish gifts.

So it feels to me that there might be some insecurity.

He knows that his natural persona and personality is not enough.

He's literally trying to buy friendships.

[Sheila] Living in Fife is good.

It's a good area. There's plenty to do.

You're within easy reach of Edinburgh,

Glasgow, north as well.

Been married 54 years.

We came up here after my husband came out the Air Force in 1968.

And we've got a son called Kevin and a daughter called Karen.

We took out the funeral plans

just so everything was in place for when we're no longer here

and that it's just there for them.

So they don't have to do anything.

We decided on Stevenson's 'cause I thought,

"Well, we'll just go somewhere local."

We made an appointment and just went down and spoke to them.

And they just explained, gave us a booklet to look at.

For the amount of money that we spent on the plan for the two of us,

it came to £6,900, which is a lot of money for us

and which we had saved for to get these done.

When Barry gave me the final figure,

it was around about £3,000. £3,000 something mark.

I went and got my handbag and gave him my bank card.

And he said, "Oh, my machine's not working today."

I said, "What's wrong with it?"

He said, "I don't know, it's just not working."

I said, okay, I want to get this finished with now that we're this far.

Deborah took me up to the bank,

I drew cash and we went back to pay him.

We got back there and he said £2,500.

-I think that was the number. -Mm-hmm.

And I said, "Why is it different?"

And that's when he said, "We've worked alongside each other for a long time."

He gave me an £800 discount

and that was what I handed him over.

It was £2,500 in cash.

That was basically my entire savings.

And he didn't even blush when he took the money.

When somebody comes into the office and purchases a funeral plan,

there's a form that's filled in that is carbon copied.

There's three copies.

And the top copy is sent directly to the funeral plan provider,

in this case, Avalon.

The second copy is then given to the client to take away,

and the third copy is retained in the office.

So there's a copy with everybody.

The first instance of me thinking that something wasn't quite right

was a morning I had went into the Rosyth office.

And the girl who was in there had said that there had been a family member

repeatedly coming in and looking for their plan certificate.

It'd been several weeks since they had paid their deposit or paid their money

and still hadn't received it.

And she was getting a wee bit concerned

that maybe they hadn't purchased a plan or that it wasn't with Avalon.

So she pulled out the funeral plan folder,

and it was quickly a pattern when pulling that folder out

that something wasn't quite right

because every single top copy was still in the folder.

That should have been sent away to Avalon, the funeral plan provider,

but yet we had the copies.

I just initially just took out the first one,

they were all in alphabetical order,

but it wasn't an Avalon certificate,

it was a certificate that had just been made up

on our office cream-parchment paper

with Stevenson Funeral Directors' logo on it.

Instantly I thought that it's not right,

definitely something's wrong here.

[mouse clicks]

[Sarah] Once I discovered there was something

not quite right with the plans in the plan folder,

I had to get my own clarity, so I just contacted Avalon and said,

"Look, I'm just looking to check some details on this person's plan."

And it's quite an easy thing to do.

Quote somebody's name, their postcode and their date of birth.

And after the first one came back, she says,

"Well, I don't have a plan number for that person."

And I went, "Okay, I'll just move on to the next one."

And I think after the third one, I had to stop and say,

"Oh, I think they might be with another plan provider. My apologies."

'Cause I didn't want to alert anybody down there

until I knew for certain what the circumstances surrounding it was.

At the point of discovering all that,

there was probably an array of emotions between shock and worry.

"How many other folders could there be?

How many other families are affected?"

Yeah, it was a difficult time.

[Sarah] The second I went through the folder,

and after confirmation from Avalon for the first two or three,

it was for sure there was something not quite right.

With the way he was spending money right, left, and center

on buying Jeeps for his partner

and boxer dogs at just over £2,500.

Occasionally just taking cash out the safe.

I was confirmed that he was doing something

that he really shouldn't have been doing.

I got pretty panicked very quickly,

it's not something you're gonna shout from the rooftops

and you keep that thing pretty quiet.

[Sarah typing]

I then had to hatch a plan as to what to do now.

Barry could be quite a slippery character

if he didn't want to be found and also had a tendency to appear in office

at a moment's notice or just walk in.

And because I knew he would remove any evidence,

I then had to set about gathering the evidence over a period of weeks

through the different offices and ensured that I got as much information as possible.

Without that information, if I had just turned up at the police station and said,

"I think this funeral director's committing fraud,"

and he had taken all the folders,

how on Earth do you possibly prove that?

I confronted him on a morning once I knew all the evidence was safely tucked away,

and I asked him about the funeral plans provided by Avalon,

and I pulled out the folder and I showed him, I says,

"Look, this form should have went to Avalon.

Why has it not went to Avalon?

And why have you provided them with a certificate?

It's not your place to do that.

These are not Stevensons' funeral plans.

As a funeral director, you cannot provide that plan."

And because he just is a very difficult character,

he just shut down...

and he never responded.

And he closed the file and took the folder in hand

and then walked out the office.

And that was it.

Time is up. I couldn't work there anymore.

I had as much evidence as I could possibly have gathered,

and it was time to report it.

So I left the office.

Frock coat, top hat, cane, certificates in hand, and contacted Police Scotland.

Reporting Barry to the police,

I should have felt like there was a big weight lifted off my shoulders

but I didn't.

I felt frustrated.

Nobody really understood the severity of the situation.

I was left with, at that point, no job.

Reporting it to the police, and nothing. It was just, "Somebody would be in touch."

The police then have taken things very seriously.

They waited until Barry Stevenson-Hamilton was on holiday,

and they've raided his office.

My aunt handed me the card, and said, "Please, we've had this through the door.

Can you please call?"

When I called the number on the calling card,

I was told that the funeral plans

didn't exist.

That Barry Stevenson of Stevensons Funeral Directors,

where they had bought the plans, had defrauded them.

I think for my aunt it was particularly hard

because that is something that she had had planned.

That she had paid for.

That she had helped sort for us as a family.

£5,000 was gone.

How would she be able to afford that again?

And for her to find out when she was dying, it was heartbreaking.

I was feeling frustrated because I hadn't been there to be able to protect them.

I looked for Barry Stevenson, researched him online,

I saw that all of his branches of Stevensons Funeral Directors were still trading.

That concerned me

because he was still in a position to be able to defraud others.

My first thought was, "I need to try and get the word out,

have people understand who he is and what he's done."

Deborah phoned me one day and she said,

"Mum, have you heard what's happened with Scoonie?"

I said, "No, what's happened with Scoonie?"

Who is the window cleaner in the area,

-and basically the lifeline to everybody in the area. -Yeah.

And she said, "Scoonie's mum has died,

and he went into Barry's shop to do her funeral

and there's nothing there.

There is no funeral, there's no record.

Apparently there's some sort of scam been going on."

[Sheila] When the police came,

it was a Friday, 9:00 at night,

and they just asked me if I had a funeral plan with Stevensons.

And I said, "Yes, I do."

They said, "Can you get your policies to show me?"

Which I did, and he looked at them and he says they're useless.

He says, "We've just discovered

that he's been defrauding people of their money

and giving out fake policies."

I felt sick.

The amount of money came to £6,900,

which is a lot of money for us,

which we had saved for to get these done.

[Debbie] So I took Mum's paperwork,

and I called the people who he said the policy was with

only to find that there was no policy.

So then we knew he'd lied.

I tried phoning him on the number that he called me on,

and it was unavailable.

I tried texting him on the same number he'd text me on,

it was two different numbers,

and also no response from that.

[Debbie] Once we were sure that this was definitely happening,

-I called the number for the fraud squad... -Fraud squad.

...in Dunfermline and spoke to them.

They then sent out a policeman to have a look at the paperwork.

[Beatrice] Barry assured us that people were coming out of the cracks in the walls.

Yeah, he said to me in text messages.

"You don't need to worry, this is a mistake."

So you hang on to that

because the thought that somebody had just taken all of the savings you had

and someone who we thought we knew

and were friendly with, and he's just done that.

[Beatrice] £2,500 in cash.

Who would do that? What kind of person would do that?

So you're constantly reassuring yourself that this hasn't happened.

This is a mistake here.

But, yeah, it did happen.

I think my way of coping with finding out he'd stolen the money

from my grandmother and aunt was just being determined to bring him down.

Any review place I could leave a review, I would leave it.

Any funeral aggregator site that had his details on it,

I would be emailing them, telling them, "This is what he's done.

Can you please remove it?"

I put zero star reviews where I could,

I contacted lots of local groups

and various different funeral directors.

I contacted church groups, community groups.

I contacted the press.

There were a lot of people either ignored it or said thank you,

but many were just reluctant to cover it

because it was a part of an active police investigation at that point.

My first contact with Sarah Yorke

was her reaching out to me on Facebook.

I think she'd probably seen a number of my online reviews

and she private messaged me on Facebook,

explained she'd been the whistleblower,

that she was sorry she couldn't have prevented

my grandmother and my aunt from losing their money.

Once I'd gotten in contact with Sarah,

we realized that there might be the need

for some sort of communal safe space

where victims of the fraud or their families,

because of the age of the victims,

could share information and get some support.

We set up a Facebook support group

for the victims of Stevensons Funeral services.

[Sarah] Claire was an inspiration,

and went out of her way

to make sure the public knew very quickly

what Barry had done.

So I was invited to that group,

and have been a member of that group since its establishment.

For Claire, setting up this Facebook group,

I think it would have been beneficial

in a number of ways.

Firstly, it can feel quite cathartic to share the same experience.

It's almost like a form of informal therapy.

As well as that there's a strength in numbers,

and it's easier to expose a scam when you know the scope

of how many different people have been hoodwinked.

[Claire] For others, I think it was just a really good psychological support.

I think it was a really important space to set up.

[Dr. Sohom] It could also be quite disheartening for Claire

when she actually realizes how many other people have been duped,

and the scope of this fraud.

[Debbie] You start scrolling down,

and it's the one family with four policies.

It was Granny and Grandpa and Mum and Dad,

and they'd all taken a policy and it was just over or just under £10,000.

And as I'm scrolling, I'm sitting, crying, reading these stories

that they took everything they had and they gave it to him

because he was such a schmooze.

Because he was so relatable.

I suppose that's what a con man is all about.

I thought initially that there would probably be

about 60 families that I had counted and handed in

to the CID of Police Scotland.

I was shocked later to find out that there was over a hundred.

[Debbie] It was just incredible how many people there were

because it was Cardenden, Rosyth, and Us.

I just found it inconceivable that somebody like that could still be on the streets,

potentially defrauding others.

After initially reporting it to the police,

there were several months before they gathered their investigations together

and then went into the offices to clear out as much paperwork as possible.

It was later on, I then discovered from the police,

that they had actually had a court date set for Barry.

[Ross] Barry Stevenson is charged with running a fraudulent scheme.

He then appeared at Kirkcaldy Sheriff Court on petition.

That means it's behind closed doors,

it's a private hearing, and at this stage,

the accused doesn't make a plea and he's granted bail.

That sent me into an absolute rage

and I was determined that I would find him and I would track him down.

Barry was the kind of person that thought he was clever,

but left a massive trail of destruction in his path.

And by this time, I'd begun to know some of these victims

and got quite close to them,

and there was absolutely no way I was gonna let them away with it.

So I was going after him.

[mouse clicks]

At the point of discovering that Barry had skipped court,

I then went, effectively, on a manhunt.

His partner at the time, his parents stay in Edinburgh.

And knowing that story had went right through Fife,

there was no way he was gonna stay in Fife.

So from Fife, over to Edinburgh,

it's just a hop, skip, and a jump across the water.

So I thought he's got to be in Edinburgh somewhere.

I was determined to find Barry so I looked on my WhatsApp,

and his profile picture had changed to him dressed in a full nurse's uniform

with clearly a nursing home in the background.

So from then on in,

I just googled nursing homes in the local city where he was staying.

Whilst my friend then found him on Facebook.

So, on his Facebook profile was public information

that he worked for a particular agency

that supplied local nursing homes in Edinburgh city

with nurses and bank staff and caring staff.

So I then became Miss Marple and became detective and thought,

"Well, it can't be that difficult to find."

He was working then under and assumed name of Barry Fisher,

which was his partner's surname.

And I lifted the phone to a couple of them

and said, "I was looking to speak to your employee, Barry Fisher."

And, yeah, the phone was, "I'm sorry, he doesn't work for this company."

"Apologies, wrong number." Hang up.

So on my third or fourth phone call, where they said,

"Oh, I'm really sorry, he doesn't start until 8:00 on Friday night.

He's on the night shift."

And at that point, I just lifted the phone

to Police Scotland fraud department

and advised them I knew where he worked.

I was utterly elated that I had tracked him down and so quickly, too.

Barry's biggest downfall was always going to be

somebody who was more experienced than he was.

And he thought he was clever, and to think that I had one-up on him was just fantastic.

Barry's career as a carer comes to a very abrupt end.

He's arrested, he appears at court,

and there he admits that he falsely tried to pass himself off

as being a registered carer.

[Dr. Sohom] The fact that Barry could pretend to be a qualified nurse

really speaks to his criminal versatility.

He's able to swap roles easily

to commit any kind of scam he does.

Almost like a chameleon.

[Sarah] It doesn't surprise me at all that... That Barry is a Walter Mitty,

decided to go into another avenue

where he could socialize with elderly and vulnerable people.

Whether it be nursing or he had a certificate on the wall in the office

to say that he had studied in Birmingham University and he was a qualified PHD,

and it was all just bravado and fake.

Barry Stevenson appears in court, at Kirkcaldy Sheriff Court.

There's probably about a dozen of the complainers who are in the public benches

waiting to see what happens.

I'd never seen that many victims in court.

There were some mutterings beforehand that a plea had been agreed

and that Barry Stevenson-Hamilton

was going to be pleading guilty to some sum of money that day.

Nobody really knew that much and then at that point,

Barry Stevenson-Hamilton pleads guilty to running a fraudulent scheme.

We hear that he has pled guilty to selling

just over £130,000 worth of fraudulent plans.

[Sarah] The whole courtroom erupted.

People cheered and clapped and celebrated

as he was literally handcuffed and led away.

And at that point, I literally breathed a sigh of relief.

This was something that had been sitting on my shoulders

for over three years, and it was at that moment

it was like the world had just been lifted off my shoulders.

Barry Stevenson and the complainers who were present are all in court.

At this point, Sheriff McFarlane has a decision to make.

She can't sentence him straightaway because she requires background reports

to be written up first, so she defers sentence,

the decision that she does have to make is whether

she allows Barry Stevenson-Hamilton to be granted bail

and to have his liberty for these reports to be written up.

Her answer was very decisive.

It was "No."

There is rapturous applause within Kirkcaldy Sheriff Court

from the complainers who are in the public gallery.

That was a great success for them. A great victory.

[Claire] There was lots of jubilation

when he was unexpectedly led away in handcuffs.

I was at the court for his guilty hearing and he just sat there.

He never moved, he never changed his facial expressions.

And it was very frustrating.

We were hoping that he was gonna get five years.

But he got 33 months, which is nothing.

The reaction to this from the complainers wasn't particularly positive.

They were quite upset with what appears to be,

certainly in their view, a sentence that was too short.

Because he's pled, that was a fact with first opportunity.

He's legally entitled to a discount.

That brings the maximum sentence down to 40 months.

For the victims to actually be in court

and see the perpetrator receiving justice,

it can give them a sense of closure and validation

for all this anger and frustration that they've been feeling,

and all this tension that's been building up for several months.

Having said all that, sometimes for the victim,

they don't feel this sense of justice.

Potentially because they don't think that the sentence was long enough,

so the whole process can also be quite deflating.

They feel that they've left court with this kind of emptiness.

I was doggedly determined to have him outed.

I think that's possibly what bonded me with Sarah Yorke.

I think we're very similar characters.

I think we just couldn't rest until this man was served justice.

[Debbie] This was personal. This was someone we knew.

He knew about my family, my children, our history.

And...

And he took that and used it because we were comfortable with him.

That's what makes me angry.

Looking at Barry's motivation,

his opportunity, and his rationalization,

I think there's a few things that we can extract.

It doesn't seem to be just greed,

it also seems to be about his own narcissism.

He spoke about the expensive clothes that he would buy,

he liked to show off pictures on social media

about all these holidays that he went to.

And then in terms of the opportunity,

this is interesting to me

because he clearly was a successful funeral director.

You know, he won awards in the past, so at some point, something changed.

At some point he probably realized

that he could extract all this money and not have to do any of the work.

Rationalization is the process

of somebody justifying their incorrect actions in their minds.

So in terms of Barry's justification,

he only really thought about the short term.

He thought about the fact that it seems, superficially at least,

that people are getting a service for him.

He's taking their money, and he's giving them something in return.

But it doesn't really take into account long-term planning

and what's gonna happen in the future.

I try not to think about it.

But, I mean, you can't help it when you're watching the TV

and there's things come up for funeral plans and...

It just hurts too much just to think about it.

[Sarah] I'm exceptionally proud of standing out within the crowd

and speaking up for these people.

You have to imagine it happen to your own family,

and that's exactly what I did. I couldn't sleep.

To put my head on the pillow and carry that on my conscience,

it just was never gonna happen.

At the sentencing hearing, Barry's solicitor said that he was embarrassed,

he was ashamed, and that he was remorseful.

I don't think his victims will believe any of that.

I'm not sure that I do either.

When people have gone through this experience, being defrauded,

then obviously it might affect the way that they trust people in the future.

They might be generally quite suspicious.

But as well as that, it can actually affect your outlook on life.

It can make you more pessimistic,

more anxious and nervous, maybe you need a high level of reassurance.

And it can affect your self-esteem

and your self-confidence in general.

Sometimes they have to try and distract themselves.

Either through pleasurable activities or through work.

And sometimes when it's actually crossed the threshold into mental illness,

they might need formal help, like talking therapy.

It's one of the sickest scams that you could think of.

You know, a funeral director is dealing with your last wishes.

He's just taking your money and you're getting nothing at the end of it.

What's particularly concerning is that these types of individuals

will probably just keep on doing what they've been doing

in another area, some other way.

Makes people a little more aware of him in particular, but...

I mean, there's so many scammers out there nowadays and it happens all the time.

Hopefully this makes sure that Barry doesn't get to do it again.