A Stretford businesswoman driven to the brink of suicide by debt was blackmailed by a mother of two who sent abusive text messages in a bid to make her repay more than £100,000 interest on a secret loan, a court heard today.
Maria Turner, 49, considered driving her car off a bridge or taking a drug overdose after she borrowed £50,000 in a bid to ease her financial problems – only to them be landed with demands for repayment totalling £165,000, the court was told.
Over a seven year period Mrs Turner, who ran a sandwich shop and other businesses, was ‘mithered to death’ by childhood friend Dawn Lowe who threatened to reveal the loan to her family if she did not pay up, the jury heard
Lowe, a 50-year-old foster carer, allegedly sent her a text message that read: “You better get the fucking money in or I will tell your son.
”I will come to the shop and will take it out of your till. Don’t think you can get away with missing this week. I need my money.”
It was claimed other texts from Lowe included: “Please let’s not be playing catch up, don’t think you know how pissed off I am, I need my money ASAP, if you don’t pay I will tell.”
A third read: “Sorry for the text but you bring it on. I want £575 in my bank so start putting it in now. Can’t believe after how I’ve been. I’m sick of playing catch up. I’m being as fair as I can.
“I don’t want it split in drips and drabs, my patience is running really thin. I’m struggling because of you, friend or not.
Mrs Turner handed over £125,000 before Lowe was arrested during an investigation into her unlicensed money-lending operation. She had been due to pay a further £40,000.
Mrs Turner, from Stretford, Manchester, sobbed as she told the city’s Crown Court: ”I was waking up to it and going to bed with it. I can’t even open my eyes and it starts.
”A bank wouldn’t do that if you owed them money. I was mithered to death. It was just too much. It’s awful, terrible, disgusting.
”It makes your body shake, all you want to do is pay it but you can’t. You can’t focus, your mind is in a spin. You want to rob a bank to pay for it.”
Earlier Mrs Turner told the jury she had been a ‘proud woman’ who had run a sandwich shop, a chip shop, an ironing business and nine buy-to-let properties.
But she turned to her friend Lowe whom she treated as a ‘sister’ when she fell short on her monthly mortgage payments of £1,200.
The court heard Lowe ran an unlicensed cash loan business for friends and they set up a plan in which Mrs Turner agreed to pay back money at £300-£400 a week.
In 2008 Mrs Turner borrowed a further £10,000 loan towards her sandwich business, Quality Sandwich Fillings. The repayments were added to the set payment plan but Mrs Turner’s home was repossessed in 2009 and she moved in with Lowe in Hulme, Manchester.
She also borrowed a further £3,000 after a tax demand and to help her keep up with monthly finance repayments of £500 on an Audi car. The day after her house was repossessed Mrs Turner said signed a paper saying she still owed her £50,000.
Mrs Turner said: “I feel an absolute idiot and I’m not a fool. I can’t understand it in the slightest. I always thought it was my borrowing on borrowing on borrowing. You just pay it and pay it. I didn’t know it was that much.
“I asked her if she had the money and she had it. I kept it between me and her, I didn’t tell anyone. I’m a very proud person. I didn’t want anyone to know.
“It was getting impossible to make the weekly payments to Dawn, nothing was written down. She said, ‘things are falling apart with you and you have to sign this so I can cover my back’. It was already written that I agreed to pay her the money.
“It was not easy at all. She was my friend and I wanted to meet her. After my house went I became a bit mad, crazy mad.
”My head wasn’t in a good place, I would have signed anything. She helped me move all my possessions. I didn’t know whether I was coming or going. I had lost everything I had worked for in my life, I’d slogged for, grafted.
”I contemplated taking tablets, I wanted to kill myself. I wanted to drive of Barton Bridge. I wanted to commit suicide.”
The court heard that in one nine month period she paid Lowe £9,565. In 2012 Miss Turner received a letter from Lowe telling her that her outstanding debt was of £40,000 and would only end in two and a half years if no payments were missed.
The letter read: “This is just to give you a reference, good to know where you are up up.”
Mrs Turner added: “It was colossal money. It sent me to another place, I thought I would never do it, that I will be paying it until I’m 70. Several of my businesses had gone and I only had the sandwich shop. I didn’t know how I was going to make payments.”
She added: “I just feel like an idiot for not getting a grip on things and the money. I didn’t log anything.”
She added that Lowe had told Mrs Turner’s sister of the debt in order to “embarrass” her. “I was devastated at the time,” said Mrs Turner. ”I said she was disloyal to tell my family. I kept them out of the loop.
“It would still be happening now if this (arrest) didn’t happen. I just used to pay it. I didn’t ask in the early days but later on I did. I’d ask how much do I have left how much do I owe. I never got anything in writing until she wrote to me.”
She added that she was never told the interest rate but that if she missed a payment it would be plus the interest. Mrs Turner estimated that Lowe made the mortgage payments on between six to ten occasions.
The prosecution also allege that Ms Lowe ran an unlicensed catalogue business, supplying friends with goods she had ordered from firms such as Kays and Argos at a profit.
Lowe denies eight counts of unlawfully engaging in the activities of a consumer credit business without a licence and one count of blackmail.
The hearing continues.
Picture courtesy of Images of Money, with thanks.
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