(1) This is a first draft of the Case Opening intended to give the court and defendants an overview of the Crown’s case for the PTPH. It will require amendment and additions as the evidence I have requested is provided.
(2) Rhoad and Iamnoto are involved with a textile bin bank collection operation called Compounding Action (‘CA’). Although Rhoad claimed in police interview to be simply an unpaid adviser (‘data controller’) for CA, his other admissions in interviews, for example, that in 2019 he personally paid damages and costs amounting to about £12,000 awarded against him personally in respect of the operation of CA during 2018, indicate that he is plainly much more than an unpaid adviser. Iamnoto said upon his arrest, made as he was unloading stolen textile banks from a lorry into a compound/yard, that he was the manager of CA.
(3) This indictment involves a ‘turf war’ of sorts in respect of the placement of collection banks. It was a one-sided war in the sense that the other parties were legitimate, well known charities, such as Oxfam and Air Ambulance, whose banks were simply removed, by Iamnoto and others, on the instructions of Rhoad, from the supermarket car parks and other places where they were legitimately positioned. The banks were taken to a yard behind Rhoad’s home where some were disguised by painting and the removal of registration numbers. The charities lost many banks costing many thousands of pounds and the contents of those banks, also worth many thousands of pounds.
(4) Although his police interviews have the feeling about them of the surreal, Rhoad asserted that he was acting within the law because, he said, the banks were illegally placed since the charities did not have written permission from the landholders (supermarkets and Birmingham Council); because he was a shareholder in Sainsbury’s Supermarkets he asserted that he was entitled to remove the banks from Sainsbury car parks! He had invented a ‘Protocol’ by which he claimed to be entitled to go to a clothing bank, attach to it a ‘Notice’ which asserted that the bank was to be ‘compounded’ because of its illegal placement and then to immediately compound the bank (rendering the giving of notice redundant). The ‘Notices’ were headed ‘Compounding Action in conjunction with the Fundraising Regulator and the Charity Commission’, a claim which was utterly false, neither the Regulator nor the Commission having given CA any such authority. The charities to whom the banks belonged, Rhoad asserted, were part of an organised crime group against which he was protesting and acting.
(5) The surreal explanation was a nonsense; CA was simply stealing the banks and their contents; one of Rhoad’s other businesses, ‘PS Hall’, just happened to be involved in recycling textiles and shipping textiles to Pakistan. Even when, on 21st June 2018, Rhoad was ordered by the County Court to return 12 banks he had taken from a company called Recycling Solutions Limited (‘RSL’) and to pay RSL damages and costs, and it must then, at least, have been plain to him that he could not take other company’s collection banks, Rhoad, together with Iamnoto and others, continued to steal such banks.
(6) The Air Ambulance charity [Sirpal p.8-9, Exs. 20, 24 & 36] is reliant for funds upon income generated through textile banks sited at various public access sites. During 2018 and 2019 numerous Air Ambulance banks were stolen from their respective sites around the Midlands. The brazen nature and the persistence of the dishonesty of Rhoad and Iamnoto can be gauged by their actions in July 2018, just the month after the County Court judgment was obtained by RSL, when CA stole an Air Ambulance textile bank.
(7) As part of the charade Rhoad had invented about ‘compounding’ the banks of charities, a letter dated 27th July 2018 (Ex.36) purporting to come from CA was sent to the office of the Air Ambulance charity; it contained nonsense and asserted that CA was intending to use the stolen bank, which the letter said CA had purchased for £1 (the banks are worth anything from about £500 to £1,000) and that CA intended to re-site the bank and, indeed, to use the name of Air Ambulance in order to collect textiles on its own behalf.
(8) The charade was maintained in an e-mail (Ex.24) received by Air Ambulance on 8th January 2019 in which CA asserted it had ‘compounded’ 12 banks belonging to Air Ambulance. The police went to the yard in Rookery Avenue, behind Rhoad’s home, in January 2019 [statements awaited] and there recovered 12 Air Ambulance banks. Three stolen Air Ambulance banks have not been recovered. The loss to Air Ambulance amounts to almost £10,000.
(9) On 22nd January 2019 the police went to the Rookery Avenue yard: stolen clothing banks were believed to be at the yard. Officers there saw numerous banks believed stolen, some had been part painted to change the identity. Rhoad had attended and identified himself as the owner and landlord of the premises. He said it was a civil matter but was arrested on suspicion of the theft of the banks [statements awaited – see, however, the commentary on page 1 of the ROTI of 23/1/19].
(10) SOEX Limited (Haws p.10-11, Harrison p.12-13, Exs. 3-4) is a recycling company which sites its recycling banks in the UK and the rest of the world. SOEX has over 30,000 collection banks throughout the world and is the world’s largest recycler of textiles and shoes.
(11) Michael Harrison, the SOEX supervisor for the Midlands region, was made aware on 22nd December 2018, that a number of SOEX recycling banks had been stolen in the Birmingham area. Amongst those stolen was one sited on Pershore Road, Edgbaston. CCTV footage from a nearby public house showed that the bank had been stolen by 3 males who loaded the bank into a van at 2:30 pm on 22nd December. In total, in December 2018, 16 SOEX banks were stolen.
(12) Letters purporting to be from CA and regarding the banks were sent as part of Rhoad’s invented scheme, to some charities supported by SOEX. The letters said that the banks had been ‘compounded’ and would be returned on receipt of various proofs of particulars. The banks were never returned to SOEX.
(13) On 8th February 2019, however, Harrison received a call from a police officer who was at the yard behind Rhoad’s home. Harrison went to the yard and there identified three stolen SOEX banks, one of which was one of the 16 stolen in the Birmingham area in December 2018 and two were SOEX banks from other areas of the UK.
(14) Rhoad undertook to SOEX that he would compensate SOEX for its losses and have the missing banks manufactured and supplied to SOEX: he later withdrew his undertaking. The loss to SOEX amounts to over £10,000.
(15) RSL [Graley p.7] manages textile banks around the UK on behalf of a number of charities, including the Children’s Air Ambulance. Despite the County Court judgement they obtained against Rhoad in June 2018, over the weekend of 6th July 2019, Rhoad and Iamnoto stole a further 6 banks belonging to RSL and which were sited on behalf of and to raise charitable funds for the Children’s Air Ambulance. CA sent a letter [exhibit awaited] to RSL admitting having taken 4 of the banks, asserting that they had been taken in retaliation for someone having taken some of CA’s banks. The six banks have not been recovered.
(16) Oxfam [Copley p.1-6, Thompson p.30-31, Exs. 1, 2, 30-33] raises and distributes funds to those living in poverty. Oxfam is reliant upon funds generated by it’s textile and clothing banks. Oxfam has a written agreement with Sainsburys allowing Oxfam to place collection banks on the car parks of Sainsburys Supermarkets (Ex.30). Between 4th November and 3rd December 2019, 86 textile and book banks were stolen from Sainsburys car parks all around the Midlands; 69 have been recovered, though their contents have not. The cost to Oxfam of the loss of 17 banks and contents is £32,000.
(17) On 14th November 2019, Jo Thompson of Oxfam received information that some of Oxfam’s banks were behind a building in Upper Villiers Street, Wolverhampton. On the morning of the 15th, Thompson went to the location and there saw many of Oxfam’s stolen banks, their identification numbers still on some banks. The CA ‘compounding notice’ invented by Rhoad was on some of the banks. Thompson alerted the police and the banks were recovered.
(18) Oxfam banks continued, however, to be stolen. As a consequence, Val Copley of Oxfam, on 23rd November attached a GPS tracking device to an Oxfam textile bank on the car park of Sainsburys, Cannock. Three days later, at 2:30pm on 26th November, Copley received an alert that the Bank was on the move; it in fact went to a yard behind Rhoad’s home. Police officers attended the yard [statements awaited] and saw a number of Oxfam banks there.
(19) The banks were not immediately recovered. At 8.30 am the next morning Rhoad got rid of the evidence; he had about 20 bins [statements awaited] transported to Hambles storage yard in Hampshire. The bank stolen on 23rd November from Cannock was amongst the banks taken to Hampshire, the GPS tracker attached to it enabling the stolen banks to be traced.
(20) In a police interview on 4th December 2019 [p.24-25] Rhoad first of all said that his nephew had contacted Hambles to arrange the storage but then conceded that he had in fact done so, but he asserted that CA paid for the storage.
(21) On 29th November, Iamnoto and others were in the process of taking Oxfam banks from Sainsburys, St Marks, Wolverhampton, when PC Gibbons attended and prevented the theft (statement awaited). Iamnoto, however, returned to Sainsburys on 3rd December and stole the bins.
(22) On 30th November, Val Copley had attached a GPS tracker device to an Oxfam textile bank on the car park of Sainsburys, St Marks, Wolverhampton. On 3rd December, the tracker alerted Copley to the movement of the bank. The police were alerted and went again to the yard behind Rhoad’s home where they found Iamnoto and three other males in the process of unloading 4 textile banks form a lorry. There were 16 other banks in the yard. PC Crowe saw that the banks were clearly marked with the Oxfam logo and had identification numbers. PC Crowe observed that some banks had had their identification marks removed and some banks had been painted.
(23) Iamnoto told PC Crowe that he was the manager of the company and that he had authority to remove the banks. Iamnoto was arrested.
(25) 23rd January 2019 – (Rhoad had been first interviewed after the police involvement in January 2019) - Rhoad said that he had been in the textile banks industry for 15 years and it was a ‘cut-throat business between charities and their partners. It was all about getting your bins sited on land, regardless of the permission, just to make money.’
(26) He was employed by a company called PS Hall which owned about 2,000 banks each costing about £500, which were leased to a company called Dusty Rags which sited the banks ‘all over the place’.
(27) Asked why the Air Ambulance banks had been taken he explained that it was part of self-regulating and that a charity must have written permission to site a bank. He was an activist to raise the standards of the industry. Asked how he knew that the charities did not have written permission to site their banks he said that he had written to the Textile Recycling Association enquiring. The TRA had answered that the charities did have permission!
(28) Asked then why he had taken the banks he said that he was legally entitled [he was not] to require details of the arrangements between the charity and the contractor and having received no responses to those enquiries he was entitled to take the banks in order to ‘self-regulate a very toxic industry’. He would have returned the banks once he received responses to his enquiries.
(29) He said, however, that banks might be destroyed to ‘get the bad actors out of the industry’ and he added that he had told the owners of the banks that if they did not give responses the banks would be destroyed. He asserted that this was a civil matter as he had not intended permanently to deprive the owners of their banks [indicating the reason for the activist charade]. Asked who took the decision to destroy the banks if no response was received he said that he did; asked under what authority he could destroy property belonging to charities he said ‘under a civil matter’!
(30) He was asked, if, as had been apparently confirmed to him by the TRA, the charities had permission to site the banks, what were they doing wrong which enabled him to take their banks: he said that he had had his banks sited for years and the charities were getting a company to put charity banks next to his or sometimes to steal his banks. The Air Ambulance banks which had been taken had been put in locations where his banks should be [plainly, this case is about a turf war]. He asserted that he was entitled to take the charity banks under the ‘Tort law…necessity’.
(31) Asked what was the ‘necessity’ he said that the charities required not just permission but written permission. Bizarrely, he then said ‘no one’s got written permission in this industry’ but his own banks could be sited without written permission because his ‘charity’ ‘doesn’t fund raise….we promote the environmental project. So that negates us from having written permission…we can work on verbal permission’.
(32) He said that the TRA was a ‘gang’ which controlled the industry and because the FR and CC had done nothing about the TRA he had taken it upon himself to take action.
(33) CA had removed ‘about 50 banks’ belonging to charities, none of which had been recovered by the owners. The Air Ambulance charity, Rhoad asserted, was part of a conspiracy to steal banks.
(34) He denied knowledge of any banks taken having been damaged or altered and said that although he received no renumeration in respect of the taking of the banks he would cover all the costs of Compounding Action in respect of the taking of the banks.
(35) He was shown photographs (CB/67 – to be exhibited) taken at the Rookery Avenue compound to the rear of his house showing a paint tin and a painted bank but he said he had no knowledge of them. He said that he was aware that some banks were repaired at the compound and then said that some banks were painted there – apple green, which was the colour for Dusty Rags and PS Hall banks.
(36) Asked about the ‘Notices’ which CA attached to bins and under which Government or other lawful authority they were attached he answered ‘private action’. The ‘Notice’ was attached to the bank and the removal was ‘instant’.
(37) It was put to him that there were 56 banks in his yard but he said it was not his business to know what was going on in the compound: he ‘advised Everitt of what he can or cannot do and above all not to break the law.’ He confirmed that if then Everitt damaged any bank, that Rhoad would pay compensation to the owner. He confirmed also that he had gone into bankruptcy.
(38) 4th December 2019 - Rhoad said that he was the unpaid ‘Data Controlling Consultant’ for CA. He had been involved in recycling textiles for 15 years. He said that a lot of banks get stolen so he has set up his ‘own agencies’ to address the problem. Iamnoto and Stephen Everitt are the Directors of CA and it is they who remove the banks from wherever they are sited. He ‘advises’ them that removals are legal so long as they place a ‘civil protocol enforcement notice’ [a document invented by Rhoad] on the bank.
(39) Rhoad said that the banks would be illegally sited if there was not in place a ‘Charities Commission Participation Agreement’ (‘CCPA’) and written permission from the land holder to site a bank [the Fundraising Regulator says that no such thing as a CCPA exists and Valerie Copley of Oxfam understandably makes the point that in all her years working in the charity sector she has never heard of a CCPA]. Rhoad said that CA had asked the Fundraising Regulator for information on the existence of CCPAs and permissions to site banks and the Regulator had replied that the Regulator does not hold such information.
(40) However, Rhoad said, CA/Steve Everitt are shareholders in Sainsburys so, Rhoad asserted, Everitt consequently knows that there were no contracts in place for the siting of the banks! CA had written to the supermarket companies too regarding permissions, though CA had received no enlightenment from that source as CA had received no responses from the supermarkets [understandably, as CA had no right to require or to receive any such information].
(41) Rhoad conceded that those whose banks were ‘compounded’ by CA were required to pay a daily ‘storage fee’ before they could have their banks returned. He said that if it was a ‘red alert’ the bank would be taken away [stolen] immediately the ‘Notice’ was put on the bank. Bizarrely, yet again, he asserted that, because, he claimed, CA was a shareholder in Sainsburys, CA was consequently legally entitled to remove banks from Sainsburys’ premises. Sainsburys were saying that there was an entitlement to place the charity banks on its land Rhoad said ‘because (of) bribery and corruption’.
(42) Asked about Ianmoto stealing the banks from Sainsburys St Marks Wolverhampton on 3rd December after Iamnoto had been prevented by PC Gibbons on 29th November from stealing the banks, Rhoad said that Iamnoto had provided data to the police so it was permissible to remove the banks. He asserted further that he, Rhoad was a shareholder in Sainsburys so HE had an interest in the land! Rhoad said he was aware that Iamnoto was returning to take the banks which he had been prevented on 29th November by the police from taking and knew that Ianmoto was to take them to the Rookery Avenue yard.
(43) Rhoad lied about contacting Hambles regarding the removal of 20 stolen banks to Hampshire but when confronted with the truth admitted that he had arranged the transfer which he said had cost £920.
(44) He then claimed that the owners of the bankls were given ‘Repatriation Invitations’ followed by ‘Abandonment Notices’ following which the banks were weighed in, claiming that the payment from the weighing in would be then given to Oxfam, though ‘Compounding Action hasn’t gone down that road yet.’
(46) 3rd December 2019 – The interview was concerned with Oxfam banks - Iamnoto’s solicitor read a prepared statement which said that Iamnoto was a ‘director of CIA’ [presumably meaning ‘Compounding Action’]; to ‘park a charity skip on a site it needs to be Charity Commission Participation Approved’ [a nonsense and part of the charade invented to explain the thefts]; ‘CIA searches for skips which are not registered [further nonsense]…and we remove them’; ‘The skip owner is advised the skip can be returned if they produce the necessary documentation….if they pay the charge….if they take no action the skip and its contents are disposed of.’
(47) Iamnoto then answered questions ‘no comment’. His solicitor invited the officer to ask Ianmoto how he knew the banks were illegally sited and Ianmoto repeated the nonsense about a CCPA number being required to be displayed on the banks. The CCPA number, Ianmoto said, was issued by the Charity Commission. Ianmoto then answered no comment to questions asked.
(48) 4th December 2019 – Ianmoto was interviewed about banks belonging to other charities – he said ‘CIA’ had ‘compounded’ SOEX banks because they didn’t have a CCPA. He said that SOEX had stolen some of CIA’s banks. Asked how long there would lapse between the taking of the banks and disposal he said ‘no comment’. He said, however, that it was ‘likely’ that SOEX banks stolen in February had been disposed of because ‘they didn’t respond or pay the fee and didn’t produce a CCPA’.
Peter McCartney
26th May 2020