A conwoman who is refusing to pay back any of the £250,000 she defrauded from two dead people’s estates ranted that the judge is a ‘wicked racist’ as she vowed to have him arrested.
Georgia Forteath, 41, and her husband Harvil Connally, 49, were both previously jailed for swindling the money by claiming they were legitimate beneficiaries.
They have refused to pay back the money to the families of Frederick Lewis and Doreen Kimber and blame racist courts for their convictions.
Forteath’s representative, Caul Grant, spent over an hour claiming Judge Simon Davis was prejudiced against black people.
Forteath then shouted from the dock: ‘The next time I come here it will be for a citizen’s arrest!’
Georgia Forteath (pictured left), 41, and her husband Harvil Connally (right), 49, were both jailed for swindling the money by claiming they were legitimate beneficiaries
Judge Davis replied: ‘Are you personally threatening me, Ms Forteath? I will stop you here.’
Forteath said: ‘The public want to know the truth! How long can this blackmail go on, how long?’
She was planning to fund a property empire in Jamaica with the help of Connally and targeted the estates of the two families.
She was convicted of a string of charges including obtaining leave to remain in the UK by deception, 15 counts of fraud, perjury and making a false representation on oath after a trial at Inner London Crown Court in 2011.
Forteath was jailed for eight years and nine months while Connally was sentenced to three years for fraud and acquiring criminal property.
Her Lewisham property, bought for just £240,000 originally, is now subject to a restraint order, but she is yet to sell it to compensate the families a decade later.
She claims she cannot pay anything back during ongoing confiscation proceedings because she only earns £300 per month.
Forteath insists her children bought her the house and it should not be taken away from her.
The couple also face civil proceedings from the family of the victims.
Judge Davis, who sentenced Forteath in 2011, tried to conduct proceedings despite repeated interruptions from Forteath and her supporters.
Forteath (pictured left) was jailed for eight years and nine months while Connally (right) was sentenced to three years for fraud and acquiring criminal property
Mr Grant is an activist for legal group Campaign for Truth and Justice.
He said: ‘Article 6 of the Human Rights Act 1998 grants the right to be heard in a court of law. The level of wickedness that you have all perpetrated is in total disregard for the rule of law.
‘You all thought, “They’re only a couple of black people”. This is just making an absolute mockery of what justice is intended to be.’
After listening to him for an hour Judge Davis finally said: ‘I’m going to guillotine you and stop you from making any more oral submissions.’
Mark Paltenghi, prosecuting, said: ‘Nothing I have heard from Mr Grant compels me to submit anything in response, as I would be repeating myself.’
Mr Grant said: ‘We consider that an insult. This system is damn corrupt and it is an insult to all those who sacrificed their lives in the pursuit of justice.
‘I wish I could say that it is only because we are black, but it seems that your corruption knows no bounds.
‘All you care about is money, they had money in their accounts, Forteath’s children, but you took it. For some the truth is an offence and I know the truth is in our submissions.’
Forteath alleges her prosecution was ‘unlawful’ and ‘in bad faith’. She claims she had a ‘valid probate and will’ certified by the High Court for the deceased pensioners she was convicted of defrauding.
Forteath and Connally, pictured above. Forteath’s Lewisham property, bought for £240,000 originally, is subject to a restraint order, but she is yet to sell it to compensate the families
Forteath was a South Bank University nursing student when she bought her home in Lewisham, where she still lives with her husband and adult children.
The property is now thought to be worth £600,000 but the mother mother-of-two cannot be evicted until March 2021 due to Covid-19 regulations.
Forteath claimed she was a friend and carer of the deceased pensioners at her arrest. In 2011, Judge Davis said the student nurse told ‘lie upon lie upon lie’ to the jury.
‘The lies tripped off her tongue as easily as I’ve heard in 35 years of sitting in a court in criminal cases,’ he said.
Jurors had heard Forteath drained £233,952 from Mr Lewis’ two Santander bank accounts then transferred £180,000 to a joint account she held with her husband.
During the police investigation into the Lewis estate, officers contacted the Land Registry about Ms Kimber, who they discovered was a retired secretary who died on December 27 in 2008, aged 78.
The pensioner had not made a will, telling her few friends she wanted to leave her £250,000 estate ‘to the animals’.
This helped Forteath who used a faked will to take over the property in Malvern Road, also Thornton Heath, in July 2010.
The couple then attempted to transfer the title deeds to Forteath.
Forteath took £13,900 from Ms Kimber’s account and went on a shopping spree with her bank card.
She posed as Ms Kimber to ordered a washing machine, a fridge freezer, a laptop and a tumble dryer from Argos.
Connally tried to help her dispose of Ms Kimber’s property, telling an estate agent to sell it for £250,000.
Police had discovered Forteath was illegally living in this country after she travelled from Jamaica in April 2000 on a visitor’s visa, and was later refused a student visa.
She took part in a sham marriage to remain in the UK, paying her landlord, recovering heroin addict Stephen Forteath, to wed her in December 2003.
As a spouse of a British citizen she was granted indefinite leave to remain in 2006.
She later married Connally, enabling him to be gain discretionary leave to remain here until September 2012.
Connally was a stonemason in Jamaica and joined the building trade when he came to this country.
Forteath, of Lewisham, denied obtaining a pecuniary advantage by deception, obtaining leave to remain in the UK by deception, 15 counts of fraud, perjury, making a false representation on oath, removing criminal property from England and Wales, possessing criminal property, acquiring criminal property, two counts of doing an act tending or intended to pervert the course of public justice.
She was cleared of the first charge and found guilty of all the others. Connally was found guilty of fraud and acquiring criminal property.
The confiscation hearing was adjourned until 4 May 2021.