Life for a man jailed following a £27million fraud will be somewhat more humble after a judge ordered the confiscation of a fleet of cars, houses and Rolex watches.
Paul Cope, 46, lived the lifestyle of a Premiership footballer at his £1.3m mansion in Stafford, complete with two swimming pools and an alpaca field in 19 acres of Land.
His life of excess came crumbling down when police investigated the finance manager when it emerged he had used leasing and mortgage scams to maintain his spending.
Among his assets were a £305,000 convertible Rolls Royce, a £170,000 Ferrari and a £120,000 Lamborghini which he kept on the gravel drive to his home, Bank Barn Manor.
Despite the house being worth a whoppnig £1.3m, Cope tried to claim it was worth £4.25m when a crooked friend and surveyor, Dr Christopher Jarvis, valued it much higher than the market rate.
He went to Yorkshire Bank and re-mortgaged it for £3million in January 2008 on the back of Jarvis's quote which they had actually concocted the scam together.
Cope also lost a villa in Marbella, four other houses, several business premises and designer jewellery including two Rolex watches worth £30,000 each. He also lost a Range Rover and several Mercedes cars.
On top of that, the father-of-four will have to pay back a further £406,000 from the profits of his crimes. At an earlier hearing he was jailed for five years and four months while co-conspirator, Jarvis was imprisoned for two years.
Cope liked to show of his 'wealth' by parking his expensive cars on his gravel drive for the world to see
Hundreds of thousands of pounds in cars were seized by the courts including this Rolls Royce
Detective Constbale Mark Kelsall, of Staffordshire Police, said: 'Cope surrounded himself with all the trimmings of a luxury lifestyle using the proceeds of his serious crimes.
'Not only has Cope lost his liberty, he has now been stripped of his array of properties, high-performance cars and other items - such as expensive jewellery - that he amassed.
'This latest cash confiscation order is significant but represents only a portion of the property and possessions - worth millions of pounds - that have been taken from Cope as part of our extensive inquiries.'
Cope ran Kingdom Finance which was worth £3million in 2008 and employed 700 people. He told friends that he was richer than a Premiership football team and said he would live an even more excessive life than they do.
He conned lenders into paying for non-existent hospital equipment and issued false invoices to give loans on which he would then charge up to 25 per cent interest.
He bought his house in 2001 for £425,000 then extended it and bought more land before committing the fraud with Jarvis who claimed it was 'one of the best, if not the best in the Stafford area, with a standard of fittings considered to be peerless'.
This £120,000 Lamborghini was on the list of assets to go along with several homes
His £170,000 Ferrari, complete with private registration number, was taken back by the courts
He has been given six months to pay the money he now owes or another three years and nine months will be added to his sentence.
Along with Johnson, two other Stafford men, Andrew Oxlade, 54, and Brian Challiner, 61, were jailed and two were ordered to pay back £300,000.
Oxlade was ordered to serve 64 months behind bars and Challiner was handed three and a half years.
They had provided false invoices with £20million channelled through the former and £5million through the latter in 600 transactions between 2004 and 2008.
Ed Beltrami, Deputy Chief Crown Prosecutor for West Midlands Crown Prosecution Service said: 'The Proceeds of Crime Act is sending out a clear message to criminals that crime will not pay.
'We are determined to use these powers given to us to reduce crime, disrupt criminal enterprises and remove the negative role models from our society.'
A former business associate of Cope said: 'He thought he was some kind of corporate untouchable but what he built was a huge house of straw and now it's all come back to bite him on the backside.
'He always boasted of being flashier than a whole team of footballers and seemed to prove the point by showing off his fleet of motors on the driveway.
'Sometimes his home looked like the Hotel De Paris in Monte Carlo with all his flash cars parked outside but it was more a case of Monte Carlo or Bust with him.
'It was all done through massive loans and I doubt he had much of it paid off. He was the very epitome of the phrase 'all fur coat and no knickers'.'
investigation into an alleged multi-million euro fraud in funds which AIB acquired from Anglo Irish Bank has been started by the Garda Bureau of Fraud Investigation.
