Birmingham charity collector pocketed £350,000
Aug 11 2009 by Nick McCarthy, Birmingham Mail
A BOGUS charity collector who pocketed nearly £350,000 from street collections which he said were for disadvantaged children has been jailed for four and a half years.
Mark Tennant, aged 44, took the cash from well-wishers who thought they were donating to a charity that helped severely disadvantaged, terminally ill and disabled children. Tennant, of Jiggins Lane, Bartley Green, who was described in court as “deeply religious”, admitted five charges of obtaining money by deception, two of fraud and one count of concealing criminal property.
Judge Philip Parker QC told the disgraced dad-of-one that his life had been “a fraud” after Birmingham Crown Court heard that he collected £112,000 in 2003 but only handed over £3,674 to good causes. A year later his own accounts show that he collected £128,000 but only handed over £8,364.
Tennant collected cash in buckets without a licence from shopping and town centres across the West Midlands.
He also employed ‘volunteers’ and supplied them with fake identification badges, T-shirts, leaflets, and even used a fake charity number for the Child’s Wish organisation.
He was finally caught in January 2008 when a genuine director of the Child’s Wish charity saw and confronted one of Tennant’s collectors at The Lanes Shopping Centre, in Wylde Green, Sutton Coldfield.
