A disgraced company director has been jailed after scamming £300,000 of Covid support loans and using the money on family holidays, private school fees and lingerie for his wife.

Steven Brookes, 40, was banned as a company director in 2010 and used his wife Ria Brookes' name to apply for six loans without her knowledge from May to October 2020.

He used the cash for luxury family holidays to Disneyland and Tenerife and paid £7,000 in fees for his daughter to attend an independent school in Devon.

Brookes also blew money at the florists, bought paint to decorate his rental property and splashed out on a new Audi for his wife.

He also bought items from Boux Avenue, a website with a special section for 'sexy lingerie.'

'There is not much room for mercy', Judge Nathaniel Rudolf said while sentencing Brookes to three years in prison. He added: 'It was thoroughly dishonest on your part.' 

The Insolvency Service say that less than £7,500 of the £300,000 fraudulent Covid support loans - known as bounce back loans - has been repaid.

Nick Bonehill, prosecuting, said: 'This defendant applied for six bounce back loans for five separate companies.

'It is the Crown's case that the loan applications were fraudulent and it is the Crown's case that this defendant dishonestly and falsely reported the turnover of the companies.'

Mr Bonehill said that there was no evidence that any of the companies had done any real trading.

'They were developed purely as a means for the fraud to take place', he said.

'The defendant falsely reported that loan applications were made by his wife, Ria Brookes.

'This fraud was fraudulent from its very inception, from the very beginning of the application process.'

Mr Bonehill told the court that in 2003 Steven Brookes was convicted by a youth court of obtaining money transfers by deception.

Six years later in 2009 he was convicted of ten counts of theft after he stole mobile phones from his employer, and was handed his 11-year ban on working as a company director on this conviction, Mr Bonehill said.

Mitigating, Brookes' barrister Sam Parham said that Brookes suffers from a number of mental health conditions, including unstable personality disorder, PTSD and ADHD.

'The court can easily form the view that those disorders are directly linked to his offending', said Mr Parham.

'Due to his unstable personality disorder, he has personality traits, in particular impulsivity and a compulsion to please others, which formed part of the rationale for his offending in this case.'

'He is highly motivated to continue to seek help in the community or in the prison estate.'

'He feels embarrassed and humiliated by the person he was, and he has deep regrets.'

Sentencing Brookes, Judge Rudolf said: 'As is well known in 2019 and 2020 the United Kingdom was in the throes of the Covid pandemic.

'This unusual event led to a number of measures designed to assist public businesses.

'One was a finance assistance scheme called the Coronavirus Bounce Back Loan Scheme. It relied on the honesty of those applying.

'At a time of national crisis, you decided to defraud the scheme and therefore the taxpayers of the UK.'

The judge said that he needed to consider the issue of deterrence when passing sentence.

'There is not much room for mercy', he said, adding, 'It was thoroughly dishonest on your part.'

However, Judge Rudolf accepted that Brookes' offending was partly connected to his mental health.

'It did impact your ability to make rational choices. That is not an excuse and it is limited. You made an entirely deliberate choice to continue with private education and to buy number plates and so on.'

Brookes was given a three-year prison sentence, half of which he will serve in custody, and he was banned from working as a company director for ten years.

Brookes also inflated or fabricated the turnover figures used to support the applications and made a second loan application for the same company when he was only entitled to one.

He made six bounce-back loan applications across five companies between May and October 2020.

In each case, he made the application in his wife's name without her knowledge due to his disqualification as a company director after stealing from his ex-boss.

His first application was for a £50,000 loan for Blind Pig Media Limited. Brookes declared the company's turnover as £218,865 to obtain the maximum amount when its actual turnover was £119,215.

Funds from the loan were used for personal spending, including the Disneyland trip and school fees.

Just weeks later, Brookes applied for a second £50,000 loan for the same company.

Businesses were only entitled to one bounce back loan each but Brookes falsely declared this was his first application.

Money from this loan was spent at a florist, at lingerie retailer Boux Avenue, and transferred into the couple's joint expenses account.

Brookes' third fraudulent application in September 2020 was for another £50,000 loan, this time for BPG Management Limited.

In the application, Brookes declared a turnover of £450,000. The company had never traded and had no accounts.

The full £50,000 was transferred to Blind Pig Media Limited, where it was used for personal spending, including a £7,800 Audi bought for his wife, personalised number plates costing over £4,700.

He also splashed out on £1,200 for paint to decorate his rental property and a further £1,000 transferred to the couple's joint expenses account.

Later that month, Brookes secured a £50,000 loan for Brookes Consultancy Limited, declaring a turnover of £350,000.

Again, the company had never traded and had no accounts. The full loan was transferred to Blind Pig Media Limited.

Brookes made a fifth application for The Pig Box Limited, declaring a turnover of £750,000 despite the company again never having traded.

The full £50,000 was transferred to Blind Pig Media Limited and used for personal spending, including £640 at luxury retailer Jo Malone and £1,000 paid to his wife's business.

Brookes' final fraudulent application came in October 2020. He obtained a £50,000 loan for The Blind Pig Group Limited, this time declaring a turnover of £800,000.

In a repeat of some of his previous applications, the company had never traded and the full loan amount was transferred to Blind Pig Media Limited.

Money was again used for personal spending, including £5,000 paid to a Tenerife holiday rental company and £3,439 on a home energy bill.

Just £7,494 has been repaid of the £300,000 Brookes stole from the scheme - just 2.5 per cent of the total figure.

Brookes, of Victoria Road, Bude, Cornwall, earlier admitted eleven charges of fraud and acting as a director while disqualified.

David Snasdell, Chief Investigator at the Insolvency Service, said: 'Steven Brookes shamelessly stole from the public purse during a national emergency and spent the money on holidays, school fees and luxury treats for his family.

'Bounce back loans were a lifeline for small businesses struggling through the pandemic. Brookes exploited the scheme in almost every way imaginable, hiding behind his wife's identity to do so and deliberately ignoring his director ban to make matters worse.

'This case shows that we will track down those who abused Covid support funds, no matter how long it takes.'

The Insolvency Service is seeking to recover the fraudulently obtained funds under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002.