Ironically, the streets did turn out to be paved with gold, as their begging activities had evidently been sufficiently successful to enable them to blow £50 on lottery tickets, one of which won a £4m prize.
Happy day! The CCTV video shows them capering about in celebration.
Unfortunately, there was a snag. The card they'd used to buy the tickets didn't actually belong to either of them ...
It then went from bad to worse, as the Plod got involved, discovered the card had been stolen, and they have both ended up in chokey - https://news.sky.com/story/two-men-jail ... d-12498443
So far so what? An everyday story of thick thugs.
But the reason it's been flagged up in legal circles is that said scrotes sued Camelot for the £4m in the High Court, and the report of the hearing was published recently. Camelot applied for `summary judgment' - a procedure whereby a party applies to the court to strike out a claim / defence on the basis that it's got no chance of success and that it should be disposed of without incurring the cost of a trial.
Needless to say, said scrotes opposed the application. However, it must be admitted that the opening paragraphs of the judgment, in which they explain in their witness statements why they were using someone else's card, do raise a little doubt ...
The Claimants accept that neither of them were the cardholder on the debit card but claim that the cardholder had authorised them to use the debit card. Mr Goodram explains the circumstances of this in Goodram 1 at paragraphs 2- 3 and 10 [13/1-3] as follows:
"2. On the 22.04.2020 [sic] Jon-Ross Watson ("JRW") gave me £25 towards the purchase of 5 scratch cards at £10 each; it being agreed with JRW and myself that we would buy 5 scratch cards together and share jointly any winnings; I agreed with JRW that I would purchase the 5 tickets using the card details that someone I met at a Soho brothel gave me when I came to his rescue, since he was trying to pay his bill with a card and that particular establishment only took cash. I paid cash to cover his bill and he gave me the card details in return, thanking me for coming to his rescue and saying to me that I should use the card details to reimburse myself what I had given him in cash to pay his bill at the Soho brothel; I accept that this is a little bit out of the ordinary but this is what happened.
3. On the 22.04.19 in line with the authorisation I had received from the man the Soho brothel to use his card up to the value of (if I recall correctly) hundred pounds (though it might have been £80, though I can't recall exactly now with all that has happened which one of those sums it was) I jointly purchased (jointly with JRW) 5 scratch cards from Waitrose in Clapham High Street. Out of those 5 scratch cards 2 of them won, the first won £10 and the other winning scratch card won £4m.
10. I am asked by my lawyer why I overrode the Chip and Pin device at Waitrose so that the transaction was a "cardholder not present" transaction; the answer to this is that after I left the brothel I tried to use the card details at a few local shops, however each of the shops said the cardholder would need to be present (I did not appreciate when the man in the brothel gave me his card details to use to recover my monies from helping him out that I would have this difficulty as I do not have a bank account do not properly understand how they work), it was only when I was in Clapham and told my mate of the situation that he said you can just key into the pad cardholder not present in the keypad and then punch in the details. I fully accept that I knew it was likely that Waitrose would also require the cardholder to be present (from what I was told the earlier shops), and thinking that I had been done over by the guy in the brothel who gave me his card details knowing that I would not be able to use them, I decided that I would try and secretly key in the card details as a 'cardholder not present' transaction so as to get my money back from the cardholder. I appreciate that this looks bad but I can only reiterate that I have the cardholder's full authorisation to use the card details for the purchase."
This was not a promising start, and it will come as no surprise that their claim was thrown out with an order that they pay Camelot's costs of £32,400 (good luck collecting that!)
One might reasonably ask why on earth would any lawyer take on such a hopeless case. However, the answer became clear when I looked at the top of the law report for the name of the solicitor / barrister involved. I saw that they had dispensed with solicitors and used the Direct Access scheme to instruct a barrister directly, said barrister being one Henry Hendron.
Mr Hendron has had what might be called a `colourful' career - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Hendron and https://www.legalcheek.com/2021/06/henr ... ent-again/
As Camelot had refunded the retailer the good Mr H sent Camelot a cheque for £50 for the tickets, and when they cashed it he tried to claim that this retrospectively validated the contract. It's frankly unbelievable that any barrister would even try such a manoeuvre, and needless to say it did not impress the judge.
So perhaps not his best day in court, but it was very good of him to supply us with some much-needed distraction in these trying times!
The full judgment can be read here - https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/QB/2021/2499.html