Dragons' Den entrepreneur used Covid business loans to buy £1.8m mansion
Rick Beardsell, 46, who is also a world sprinting champion, fraudulently used £100,000 of taxpayers' cash to finance the purchase of a five-bedroom property in Prestbury, Cheshire.
Beardsell, who secured a £75,000 investment from Dragons Tej Lalvani and Deborah Meaden for his protein shake bottle business ShakeSphere in 2017, had applied for the loans for his other business, Sports Creative, which sold sportswear, but put none of the money towards it.
Under the loan rules, Beardsell was only entitled to one Bounce Back loan of a maximum £50,000. However, he fraudulently applied for two and inflated his annual turnover by up to 23 times.
At Chester Crown Court, Beardsell - who won seven gold medals for GB in World Masters Athletics Championships - was sentenced to 18 months in prison, suspended for two years, for two charges of fraud.
Beardsell had appeared on Dragons' Den to get investment for his shaker bottle manufacture firm ShakeSphere. He claimed the support of Meaden and Lalvani subsequently helped him get sales of over 1 million shakers worldwide.
Geoff Whealan, prosecuting, said Beardsell made fraudulent applications for Bounce Back Loans to HSBC in December 2020 and then to the NatWest in January 2021 for Sports Creative.
He said: ''The defendant stated on the HSBC form that the turnover of Sports Creative was £485,000 and on the NatWest form said it was £320,000 - but unaudited financial statements showed turnover for the year end February 2020 was £20,622.
The court heard the HSBC and NatWest money landed in Sports Creative's account in January 2021 but was then transferred to other bank accounts, including Beardsell's personal account.
In September 2021, a sum of £431,160.80, which included the remaining bounce back loan funds, was transferred to a firm of solicitors for the purchase of a house.
Mr Whelan said he had 'in effect' used the loan for the house purchase and added it was Beardsell's 'intention to use the bounce back loans for this purpose at the time he made the application for it'.
Beardsell claimed he was advised the loan could be used for 'the coverage of overhead expenses or outstanding liabilities, as well as the investment in company assets or property' and that the funds transferred to his personal account 'constituted a director's loan'.
His counsel Nichola Cafferkey said that a year prior to his loan application, Beardsell was diagnosed with an aggressive form of testicular cancer and that the offences were 'out of character'.
She added: 'He has taken responsibility and repaid the money back. He knows that it's his own fault. He has brought shame on his family and brought shame on himself.
Beardsell was also ordered to complete 250 hours of unpaid work and paid prosecution costs of £11,142.70. SportsCreative was wound up in 2022 but ShakeSphere which he runs with his wife is still operating successfully.
Sentencing Judge Simon Berkson told him: ''You fraudulently lied and lied again in your applications for these loans.
He said it was not a 'victimless crime', adding: 'People were in lock down, people were dying and people were very ill at the time when people required their public services. You used fraudulently obtained public funds for your own use, depriving honest people of the scheme's funds when the country was in crisis.'
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