Conman says killed executive Carole Waugh ‘was in on £3m scam’
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One of the men accused of murdering Carole Waugh to plunder her assets claimed that the victim was a willing participant in a mortgage fraud to secure up to £3m, a court heard yesterday.
Rakesh Bhayani, 41, said that he had never harmed anyone, but accepted that he had been involved in more than 20 years of frauds to fund an addiction to gambling. Mr Bhayani said that he had met Ms Waugh, 49, when he responded to her online advert as an escort.
He said that they became friends and lovers and that she had willingly joined his plan to cheat her bank and insurance company out of hundreds of thousands of pounds, the Old Bailey was told.
The former medical rep said that he planned that Ms Waugh should leave the country while he used her documents to re-mortgage her flat – only for her to return and report to police that she had been cheated. Ms Waugh “would then claim the money back”.
But the prosecution claims that Mr Bhayani had planned that Ms Waugh, a wealthy oil executive, should die to secure her wealth after he left jail.
She was stabbed in the neck in the bedroom of her central London flat in April last year as pressure was mounting on Mr Bhayani to repay loans she had given her, the prosecution says. Her remains were found three months later.
Mr Bhayani worked with fellow former prison inmate, Nicholas Kutner, 48, the court heard.
Mr Bhayani, of Wembley, north-west London, and Mr Kutner, of no fixed address, have pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud but deny murder. A third man, Elie Khoury, 40, from Paddington is on trial for conspiracy to defraud.