Clare Evans secures not guilty of blackmail after 5 week trial

After nearly 5 weeks at Guildford Crown Court, instructed by Alan Walker of Walker Law, Clare Evans' client was found not guilty of blackmail. He and his 3 co-defendants were alleged to have demanded money with menaces from a previously bankrupt property developer who had reneged on a loan taken out for his benefit by one of the defendants. The complainant reported the matter to police who then made him a 'tasked witness', giving him a phone upon which to make calls to the group and to record their interactions. 

The complainant's credibility was significantly called into question when disclosure revealed he had voluntarily attended a police station just 2 months before the alleged blackmail occurred and confessed to having committed £20 million pounds worth of mortgage fraud over the past 15 years. Further disclosure revealed he had sent a text message threatening to shoot a client who had issued a statutory demand for monies the complainant legitimately owed him. 

A forensic dismantling of the complainant's credibility, honesty and integrity meant the jury was left with no option, despite the 7 covert recordings taken by the complainant of his interactions with the defendants, but to find them all not guilty.