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An incredulous judge asked a prostitute to justify to him how she could charge a client £20,000 pounds a week – even though he was a company director. Judge Stephen John berated the call-girl over her charges for the sexual services she provided to a director of children’s favourite firm Toys R Us.
Dawn Dunbar told the judge that although she realised her fees were 10-times the usual going rate, they were for services rendered to disgraced Paul Hopes.
Judge John calculated the weekly average she had received and questioned her, saying: “The amount is not £500 pounds a week. It is not £1,000 pounds, or even £2,000 pounds a week. It is £20,000 pounds a week. How do you manage to evaluate your services – sex – at £20,000 pounds a week. How do you justify that?”
Miss Dunbar replied: “It wasn’t me that was putting the worth on that. It was Mr Hopes paying what he thought it was worth.”
Prosecutors trying to reclaim £3.7 million pounds 59-year-old jailed Hopes stole from his employers, argued successfully that most of the money was given to Miss Dunbar and not earned by her, and could therefore by confiscated.
The judge ruled that receivers appointed to chase the remaining cash and any assets bought with them should also reclaim a £25,000 pounds Lexus GS300 Miss Dunbar bought for the prostitutes’ father Frank, a £30,000 pounds Toyota Landcruiser she bought for her husband Martin Iheanacho (corr), and her own £42,000 Lexus RS400h 4×4 car.
The enforcement team will also go after properties she bought, both in the UK and a £60,000 pounds plot of land in her husband’s native Nigeria, and nearly £400,000 pounds in bank accounts which were frozen by the High Court.
A £132,000 pounds Bentley Continental which disgraced Hopes bought for her after she reportedly told him: “Every girl wants a Bentley”, has already been confiscated.
Prosecutors estimate that Miss Dunbar has already spent a massive £750,000 pounds on houses, cars and holidays, and so they may only get back £800,000 pounds of her share of the money. Amazingly, while supporting Miss Dunbar and four other prostitutes – processing stolen money through an account in the name of Dunbar Associates – Hopes was not spending any of the money on himself or his wife Gillian. She has since divorced him and been awarded the family home, in Woodley, Berks., by the courts.
Dunbar said that at the time she had met Hopes she had been separated from her husband and was living in Feltham, Middx., with their two children. After a job at a bookmakers, earning barely £10,000 per year, she turned to offering “escort service” through Gemini, a massage parlour in Reading, Berks., where she met Hopes on her first day, in January 2005.
Their arrangement began with an agreed weekly fee of £500 pounds for her services, before he requested that she leave the business and see him exclusively, for a weekly fee of £1,000 pounds. That continued with him also giving her additional payments and making extravagant gestures.
“Everything I received was a payment for my escort services and for him to see me exclusively,” said the working girl in the witness box at Reading Crown Court. She added: “He said I was his mistress, which I was, but in a specific meaning; He would call me his mistress if he wanted me to beat him and whip him and treat him quite badly.”
Hopes was only caught when a neighbour grew suspicious of Miss Dunbar’s extravagant lifestyle and reported her to the police. She insisted that while she knew Hopes worked in finance for Toys R Us, she believed his story that he was very rich and that the money was from stocks and shares.
“I have been very honest,” she said. “From the beginning I have been asked where the money came from and I told the truth. I was up front with the police.”
Judge John replied: “The fact that you have been up front with the police does not mean you get to keep the money.”
Mr Iheanacho was warned by the judge about possibly incriminating himself as he admitted he knew about his wife’s occupation. It is a criminal offence to make a financial gain from prostitution.
He also refused to tell the court how he had been earning at the time and said he never questioned his wife over the money she had, even though she was suddenly buying property, driving a Bentley and giving him a £30,000 pound car. “I didn’t ask nothing,” he told the judge.
Martin Evans, prosecuting, said: “On her own best estimate, she (Dunbar) was entitled to perhaps £200,000 pounds during this period. She in fact received in excess of £1,750,000 pounds. She received 10 times more than the valuation she put on the service that was provided. Miss Dunbar has, putting it bluntly, already spent and no doubt enjoyed vastly more than the value of the consideration (the service) provided.”
When Mr Dunbar spoke up in support of his daughter, the judge told him: “She has done very well out of this, whichever way you look at this.” He added in his ruling: “She can have no possible complaint if enforcement now follows, which it will, in respect of the assets which remain.”
Hopes, of Colemansmoor Road, Woodley, Berks., worked for Toys R Us in Maidenhead, Berks., for 23 years and was a purchase ledger manager. He admitted 14 counts of theft and four counts of money laundering, involving £3,683,592.67 pounds.
At a hearing in December 2009 he was jailed for seven years and ordered to repay the money. A decision to add a further 10 years onto his sentence in the event the money is not repaid has been stayed until the end of the confiscation proceedings.
Another enforcement hearing concerning a further £600,000 pounds given by Hopes to another prostitute, Tanya Wieck, was due to take place in the coming weeks.
