Blight, R. v

For sentencing fraud consisting of a dishonest failure to declare wreck, the financial loss is ordinarily the full value of the items which the owner would have received on a proper declaration. A defendant who acted outside the law cannot reduce that loss by relying on a hypothetical salvage reward or deduction to which he would not have been entitled. Under the Sentencing Council fraud guideline, financial loss is assessed first and wider harm, including serious damage to maritime heritage, may justify upward movement. Where concurrent sentences are passed for a series of like offences, totality may be reflected in the lead sentence, but individual sentences must remain proportionate to the offences charged.

John Blight and Nigel Ingram were convicted at Canterbury Crown Court of fraud by dishonestly failing to disclose wreck to the receiver under Merchant Shipping Act 1995, section 236. Ingram was also convicted of possessing criminal property. The offending involved the recovery and sale of items from historic shipwrecks.

They appealed their sentences. The central issue was whether the value of the recovered property was a proper measure of loss under the Sentencing Council fraud guideline, or whether it should be reduced by hypothetical salvage costs or rewards. A further issue concerned the proper allocation of Ingram’s concurrent sentences while maintaining the overall sentence.

1. The appeals were dismissed, save for a variation of Ingram’s individual concurrent sentences. His total sentence remained four years’ imprisonment.
2. The judge was entitled to find high culpability. The fraud was sustained, sophisticated and planned, and each appellant played a leading role in a joint commercial venture. The accepted conservative estimate of £100,000 properly placed the principal offending at the top of harm category 3 or the bottom of category 2 under the Sentencing Council fraud guideline.
3. The judge was also entitled to treat the wider impact as medium. The repeated removal of items from First World War wrecks caused considerable detriment. Such wrecks were a finite and fragile source of maritime heritage.
4. The owners’ loss was the full value of the undeclared items. Had the appellants complied with section 236 of the Merchant Shipping Act 1995, the owners would have received the items or their proceeds. The appellants had no entitlement to reimbursement or a salvage reward. Their operation was conducted outside the law, and their recovery and disposal of unobstructive wreck without owners’ consent could not be characterised as a useful salvage operation under the International Convention on Salvage 1989.
5. The four-year sentences imposed on Ingram for counts 2 and 4 exceeded the criminality of those individual offences. Applying totality, the court increased his sentence on count 1 from three and a half years to four years and reduced the sentences on counts 2 and 4 to 18 months each, all concurrent. This lawfully preserved the overall four-year sentence under section 11(3) of the Criminal Appeal Act 1968.

• Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) Dismissed the sentence appeals, save that it varied Ingram’s concurrent sentences while maintaining his total sentence of four years’ imprisonment.
• Canterbury Crown Court In June 2018 convicted Blight and Ingram of fraud contrary to sections 1 and 3 of the Fraud Act 2006. It sentenced Blight to three and a half years’ imprisonment and Ingram to four years’ imprisonment.