They Fought the Law . . . and the Law Won!

David will use several cases in which he has been personally involved to explain the legal and practical aspects of investigating and tracing assets, often when the perpetrators don’t wish them to be found!

Cases will include:

The Serious Fraud Office appointment of David over the assets of Dr Gerald Martin Smith, a British former physician who later became a businessman and is best known for a series of major fraud convictions. He qualified as a doctor before moving into business activities. Dr Smith plead guilty to multiple counts of theft and false accounting related to software company Izodia plc, involving approximately £34-35 million. He was sentenced to eight years' imprisonment and later disqualified from acting as a company director for 15 years. Furthermore in 2024, he received additional prison sentences relating to COVID-19 loan fraud and contempt of court connected with efforts to conceal assets from recovery proceedings

PPE Medpro (linked to Baroness Michelle Mone and her husband Doug Barrowman) was placed into compulsory liquidation, with David as one of the liquidators, on 18 December 2025 after a court found the company was insolvent and unable to meet substantial debts owed to the UK Government and HMRC. PPE Medpro received UK government PPE contracts during the COVID-19 pandemic, including a contract to supply 25 million surgical gowns. In October 2025, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) won a High Court case against the company, with PPE Medpro being ordered to repay approximately £122 million plus interest, taking the amount claimed to around £148 million. The court found the gowns did not meet contractual requirements.

Chinese authorities alleged that the company operated an illegal public deposit-taking and investment scheme that attracted a very large number of victims. The scheme is reported to have generated substantial proceeds, which were later converted into Bitcoin. The alleged mastermind, Qian Zhimin, is reported to have moved funds into cryptocurrency and later fled to the United Kingdom. UK authorities seized more than 60,000 Bitcoin connected to the proceeds of the fraud investigation. The seizure became one of the largest cryptocurrency-related asset recovery actions in UK history. Court proceedings in London have focused on how the seized Bitcoin should be distributed and whether victims of the original scheme can recover losses from the recovered assets. 

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