As a video entitled “Tim & Claire Highlights” shows, British fraudster Timothy Schools liked nothing better than to ‘play the big man’ with the tens of millions of pounds that he swindled from investors in Axiom Legal Financing Fund from 2009 to 2012.
Taken on March 19, 2011, the video shows Schools entertaining his family, friends, and associates to champagne and fine-dining at a luxury ski hotel in the French Alps that he owned – all bought and paid for by Axiom’s cheated investors, of course.
The occasion doubled as Schools’ 50th birthday party and his ‘surprise wedding’ to long-time girlfriend Claire Schools, who co-owned companies and at least one personal bank account into which investors’ misappropriated funds were funneled.
Several people who worked for companies that profited handsomely from the Axiom scheme were in attendance, wining and dining at the expense of pensioners and other investors who were collectively defrauded of more than £100 million.
Apart from Tim and Claire Schools, there’s his step-daughter, Sara Stephenson (49 seconds in, wearing a red dress); his daughter, Lisa Schools (51 sec., drinking champagne); attorney Alan Hutson (1 min. 23 sec., gray-hair, leaning against a pillar and again at 5 min. 8 sec. on far right); attorney Richard Emmett (1 min. 46 sec., on right in gray suit with hands above his head clapping); Tim Schools’ brother, Kevan Schools (3 min. 13 sec., making a speech); and his step-son, Dale Stephenson (4 min. 25 sec.). At Axiom, nepotism was the order of the day. Two of Tim Schools’ nephews were also on the payroll, as was his step-son’s fiancee, Rebecca Cowle, according to a source.
When watching and listening to Dale Stephenson’s particularly obnoxious and immature comments from 4 min. 25 sec. to 4 min. 42 sec., bear in mind that he held a senior position within the Axiom scheme and, 15 months after this junket in France, he was caught discussing and laughing about the Axiom fraud in a telephone conversation with two accomplices – an audio recording of which is in OffshoreAlert’s possession.
The highly-proficient wedding singer who can be heard singing Etta James’ Grammy Award-winning song “At Last” at the beginning of the video and makes her first visual appearance at 1 min. 19 sec. was flown in from Canada especially for the extravaganza. After all, when you’re spending other people’s money, who cares about the cost?
At 1 min. 41 sec. into the video, Tim Schools announces to his guests (who thought they were attending only a birthday party) that “I’ve got a big surprise for you.” No, the surprise wasn’t “I’ve decided to go straight” but that “We’re about to get married.” However, even this might have been another of his many lies. According to a source, he and Claire Schools actually tied the knot in the grim surroundings of a register office in the north of England two days earlier.
The lavish wedding ceremony in France – in both English and French, no less – appears to have been a charade. Much like Axiom itself.
Should we expect a similar outcome to axiom ?