A race night organiser kept hundreds of thousands of pounds for himself - cheating charities out of the funds. Nicholas Hughes, 38, misled pub landlords into thinking the money raised at his events was being donated to well-known national charities.
His business held thousands of events across the country and brought in more than £1.4m. However, less than £20,000 of that was actually passed on to charities.
Hughes was eventually caught when a vigilant pub landlord raised concerns about him. Trading Standards Investigators raided his business premises in Barbauld Street, Warrington, where extensive business records were seized reports the Manchester Evening News.
Working together with six national cancer charities and one Alzheimer’s charity, investigators worked out that only £17,469 was donated to the charities. The records showed Hughes' business had raised more than £1.4m from at least 4,380 ‘race nights’ he arranged in pubs across England and Wales between 2015 and 2019.
Investigators discovered a pattern of him moving on to the next charity once questions were raised by the last. Some of the donations only happened after Hughes realised trading standards were onto him.
In some cases, he continued to fraudulently raise funds in a charity’s name despite fundraising agreements being terminated and warnings being issued for him to stop. Hughes used posters, fundraising certificates and race cards to convince pub landlords to host the charity race nights but failed to fully disclose just how much of the funds raised he retained to run his business and how little he passed on to the charities.
On the second day of a four-week trial at Liverpool Crown Court, Hughes - who used a variety of trading names - pleaded guilty to one offence of running a fraudulent business contrary to the Fraud Act 2006. It was accepted that after ‘reasonable costs of the business are deducted’ he caused a loss in the region of £350,000 to the charities.
Sentencing Hughes to five years in prison, His Hon Judge Byrne described his actions as a ‘wicked and sustained course of dishonesty’, adding that ‘it was a sophisticated and well-planned operation’ where ‘the public were deceived and charities’ reputations damaged’.
Hughes was also banned from being involved in the running of a company or acting as a director for eight years. The judge told Hughes his actions had ‘undermined legitimate fundraising’.
