Norman Howitt - A Crooked Borders Accountant strikes against my family

Norman James Howitt, Chartered Accountant, JRW Group, Hawick & Galashiels at http://www.jrwca.com/

I don't know where to start really - this guy was, & is, just sooooooooo bad, so crooked .. but I will try to make this as simple, honest, and short as I can ... the problem is, it's complicated - so , bear with me, and prepare for a long read - all supported by documents which either got leaked or I found buried away in files to prevent anyone finding them ....

On every deceased's estate in a will, there is an Executor, or two, and usually, a lawyer will be appointed to deal with the legal affairs ..retrieving the dead persons assets, holding them, dealing with banks, producing death certificates, engathering their estate, and eventually, paying out to the beneficiaries of the will, according to it's terms.

Sounds simple enough ? sure .. it should be .. but add to the equation, a crooked accountant as the Executor, and a crooked lawyer, then ... the sums go right out the window, and it's a free for all ... all that is, except those who were supposed to get it ... and remember while you read the following - this same thing has happened to many, and will happen to many more ...

You have already read on this blog about the actions of Andrew P Penman - the lawyer who was appointed to deal with the affairs of my dead father ... and you have seen some references to a "Norman Howitt" - an accountant, who was the Executor of my late father's estate....

Well, Norman Howitt, was actually my late father's accountant, and was appointed to the position of Executor in my dad's will, and it is in his position as Executor, which made him one of the Chief Architects of the rip off of my late father's will ..... read on ...

There were some initial complications to my father's will, as a lawyer who had previously been in the service of my dad, had remained in the will as an Executor - despite withdrawing from representing my father prior to his death ... this particular lawyer in Jedburgh - one William C. Anderson, had a pretty bad history of maligning clients, had even been locked up in the local mental home for his alcoholic exploits & threats to clients .. etc .. but had wanted to remain as the other Executor ... and had publicly declared it was his intention to ruin the estate so no one got a penny ...

Too bad for Mr Anderson though, myself & my mother, despite having to endure threats from him, fought to have him removed from the Will, which happened sometime in March - 3 months after my father's death in 1990.

Mr Norman Howitt, then appointed Andrew P Penman to be the legal agent to the Estate, and remained as sole Executor - PLEASE NOTE - in your will , NEVER EVER appoint only one Executor. It may sound a simple thing to do - but it causes a big screw up, as you have seen in this blog ...

Anyway, Mr Norman Howitt, while putting on a face to me that he was going to speed things along and make sure my father's affairs were sorted out quickly .. was actually hell bent on making sure I got nothing - and that any money that was left from the Estate fell under his control .. and he did this is a most sinister way indeed .... using the cover of paying a settlement to my mother, as his excuse to ruin the Estate of as much money as possible ...

While Mr Penman was fiddling the Estate out of as much money & interest payments to the Bank his firm deals with most (Howitt claimed he knew none of this ... but well ....), Norman Howitt got sunk into my mum's funds which she was due from the estate of my father .. and he really got to work, organising a deal via a relative of my mother, to take all her money into a secret trust which my mum wasn't allowed to have witnessed or looked at by anyone else, and which he (Norman Howitt) alone would control, and would be paid a handsome fee for operating of course, and the reward for doing this to my mum's relative ? was a 'gift' of £15,000 cash !!!!!, which my mum was forced to make in a 'typed' ! letter she was forced to write, almost at gunpoint & in an hysterical bullying scene by her niece who was to receive the payment (Mrs Susan Begley) ... why was this all done ? to make sure that the assets my dad had were sold at such a low level to ensure that there wouldn't be any left for me or anyone else .... pretty dirty tricks, huh ? but there is a lot more ....

Mr Howitt, NOT CONTENT with ripping off the moveable assets of my father's estate ... also moved against my mum's pension book !!!! and demanded it be kept in his custody !!!! and the Benefits Agency - now renamed the Dept of Work & Pensions were SO CORRUPT that they gave the book to Norman Howitt, and didn't even bother to check if my mum was actually getting her pension - which it seems, she wasn't !
Mr Howitt then went on to demolish the affairs & assets of my dad as much as possible - including an old vintage car my dad had .. the sale of which had been secured to a car enthusiast, but which had been secretly sold by Norman Howitt to a good friend of his, Mr Felix Sears of Melrose .. .(Howitt denied even knowing Sears ... but his family even had a business relationship with the guy .. !)

When the secret sale of the car by Howitt to his friend was discovered by me, and I complained about it, Howitt & his firm - Welch's Accountants, sent the Police to me & alleged I was harrassing them ... but the cops quickly concluded that it was a bogus tip by Howitt and his colleagues, to throw me off the scent .. and you know what ? ... when the Police intervened .. we discovered that Howitt had actually kept the money for the sale of the car for himself, and stuffed it in his company's business accounts !

So, after this, the true extent of Howitt's perverse double dealings with my dead father's money started to come out .. and after Penman was discovered, of course, he blamed Howitt, and Howitt of course, blamed Penman .... so while I put in the complaint against Penman to the Law Society of Scotland, I also made a complaint against Norman Howitt to his own professional organisation - I.C.A.S (the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland) .. and if I thought that the Law Society of Scotland was a bunch of crooks, the gang at ICAS were going to surpass them ... BIG STYLE !

Here is the actual complaint I made to ICAS, along with their report, my eventual appeal .. and then .. nothing ...

They found him blameworthy but did nothing - but more importantly, they were determined to make sure that any description of professional negligence was removed from the complaint - and continually ranted that Mr Howitt was acting in a personal capacity as Executor in my father's affairs - not as an "Accountant" ... .this of course, while he was being paid for his services as an accoutant from the funds of my dead father, while he stuffed money from the sale of my dad's assets into his company accounts .... while he used his offices to ransack my mum's own funds .. etc .... not something i would call a "personal capacity" ... but ICAS's motives were to make sure I couldn't get any compensation at all for Howitt's actions .. because if he didn't act as an "Accountant" .. they weren't liable ... and as you can see .. that was ... just a bit crooked ! ...

In the end of course, Howitt got off the hook completely, well .. actually, it got worse, ICAS had another report done on him to completely exhonerate him of any blame at all - and blamed me instead - so that Norman Howitt could get some promotions onto some ICAS Committees, and some other influential posts in the Scottish Borders - where he is now a Director of Eildon Housing Association, a Member of the Board of the Borders College, Secretary of the Scottish Builders Federation (Borders Branch) .. and much more .... so, as you can see .. crooks rise through the ranks when they are either lawyers or accountants

But one thing ... Howitt and ICAS don't like me publicising this info ... in fact - they hate my guts just as much as, or maybe even more than, the twisted Law Society of Scotland .... so, here's the info .. for everyone to see & learn from - to make sure, it doesn't happen to anyone else, if I can help it.

Something which may bother you from reading all this, is, how could Norman Howitt, my dead dad's Accountant & Executor, act for my mum ?

Well .. that bothered the me too .. because that is one HUGE CONFLICT OF INTEREST - and shouldn't have been allowed to happen. Well, as you can see, I complained about that to ICAS, the Accounting regulatory body, and surprise - they did nothing - and the Law Society of Scotland did nothing when I complained that Andrew Penman should have refused to act for Howitt in both positions - as would be normal practice .. but the crooked lawyer allowed this to go on - making sure it was all kept secret from me.

If your wondering about my mum's niece who got the money - well, Susan Begley, who used to be married to David Black in Jedburgh, ran off with James Begley, a married much older, father of two. They started a business called J & S Transport, based at Crailing, near Jedburgh, with one truck, bought a new house, a BMW, a white Merc .. and much more .. then got themselves into debt ..

Susan had little or no contact with my mum for most of my life, as Susan's own mother, May Young, had committed suicide due to the failure of her marriage to Susan's father & the death of her young son, Bertie, of meningitis.

I suppose, when someone loses a child, and is UNLOVED by their materialistic hearless immediate family, they feel down, go into a spiral of depression, and in a corner, to the point that they would commit suicide, as May eventually did. May's death was hard on my own mum, who had to identify her body .. and ever since that time, Susan never came near us, decrying my mum's side of the family .. until of course, as i said .. she found out my mum was to get some money .... which of course, Susan had her own eye on .... and moneygrabbers change their tune when it suits them .... change their tune to the tune of £15,000 ++

Susan always denied who her mum was & wanted nothing to do with the family (she actually hated my mum's side of the family, and was insanely jealous of me) but when she heard my mum was to get money of course, she was there - to grab as much as possible - as you can see from the papers ... and you know what ? that wasn't enough ... because she was also depleting a Bank account of my mum by hundreds of pounds every week to fund her own lavish lifestyle of posh houses, posh cars, etc .. all this, happening UNDER THE SUPERVISION OF NORMAN HOWITT.

What was the money for ? and why was it paid directly into Susan Begley's buisness bank account ?

Well - Susan Begley & her husband were about to be thrown out of their posh new house at Crailing, near Jedburgh, and made bankrupt by Barclays Bank at Kelso. The money was to prevent that, but, her business & lifestyle debts were so great, they had to leave the house anyway, and got stuck in a small rotten cottage just a mile away, with the house being reposessed.

Begley, of course, is back into another posh house somewhere near St Boswells in the Scottish Borders, and has a reputation for being involved in Pyramid selling schemes, where many people in Jedburgh & the Scottish Borders were also ripped off by her, no doubt to fund her posh lifestyle again .... and try this on for size ...do you know who bought her house after the Bank reposessed it ? ... Mr David Sturrock, the senior lawyer of the parent firm of Stormonth Darling solicitors ! - where Andrew Penman works.

How did I eventually find out about the involvement of my mum's niece ? .. well, one day, my mum came crying to me, telling me what was going on - and that was it of course .. I put a stop to the lot .. and you can find a good section of papers at my groups.msn site on this story in adobe pdf format - just make sure you are signed into msn, go to http://groups.msn.com/petercherbi , join the group, and follow the link to this :
http://www.msnusers.com/PeterCherbi/Documents/Documents%20%26amp;%20Evidence/Secret%20Trusts,%20a%20bent%20accountant,%20a%20plundered%20bank%20book%20%26%20stealing%20from%20an%20old%20woman.pdf

and have a good read .... and you will see the full sordid story of what happened, with extra documents.

When there's money involved .. there are a LOT of people who want to steal it and incidentally .. immediately after Susan got her hands on the money - she dumped my mum and had nothing to do with her again ... my mum realising she had been used & robbed by Howitt, her niece, Penman, and walked into a bent scheme by her own lawyer in Hawick - Nigel Hall of Haddon & Turnbull .. another crooked Scottish Borders lawyer who joined the feeding frenzy on my dad's estate.

Finally, here's my leaflet on Howitt - just to make sure people know about what he gets up to .....