Son cons his adopted mum out of Hastings fortune

1:12pm Sunday 6th January 2008

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A carpet-fitter funded a lavish lifestyle by fleecing the mother who adopted him as a baby for £1.8 million.

Mark Hodson, 39, bought a Porsche, powerboat, hot tub and a £600,000 mansion with his mother Ruby Hodson's money after persuading the elderly and mentally frail woman to give him power of attorney over her fortune.

He embarked on a two-and-a-half year spending spree before being caught out when his wife - and partner-in-crime - went to the police after he cheated on her.

He has now been jailed for 30 months for charges of theft, concealing property in bankruptcy and obtaining a money transfer by deception.

After he was jailed his brother, Paul Hodson, launched a withering attack on him.

He said: "In prison he'll have plenty of time to reflect on his conduct and realise he is a failed son, a failed brother, a failed husband, a failed father and for someone who liked to think of himself as a businessman, a failure and a bankrupt."

Mark Hodson was brought up at the family's home near Hastings and lived a comfortable life funded by his father, John Claude Hodson, who was head of taxation worldwide for HSBC bank.

He failed his A-levels and took a job as a carpet-fitter at B&Q in Hastings before his father gave him a loan and he ran away to live in a caravan in Somerset, where he met his future wife, Kim Dermody.

The pair married in 1994 and Hodson set up a courier business which his father had to intervene to save when it ran into financial problems.

He continued to drive an Alfa Romeo with a personalised number plate and sent his two sons to a public school.

When his father died in 2001 he left everything to his widow, who Hodson soon began to exploit.

He coerced her to leave the family home and jointly buy a £600,000 country house with him and his wife in Taunton.

It was originally in the joint names of his wife and his mother but within a year Ruby Hodson's name had been removed from the ownership documents.

In the following years Hodson got his mother to sign cheques or forged her signature to splash out on luxuries including a £195,000 Gobi powerboat, a £65,000 Porsche 911 Carrera and a £10,000 hot tub.

His lavish lifestyle begun to unravel on boxing day 2004 when he walked out on his wife for a mistress and she told police he had illegally drawn personal cheques on her bank accounts.

NatWest had already begun to probe an extraordinary level of spending from Ruby Hodson's account and the two investigations soon came together.

Hodson was finally found out when he was declared bankrupt as his finances continued to fail and control of his mother's money passed to Paul, her natural son.

Paul Hodson found out how much money had gone missing and sued his crooked brother and sister-in-law to try to retrieve the money. He recovered £900,000 but had to spend £500,000 on the two-day case. Ruby Hodson died in 2006.

As Mark Hodson was jailed his wife, 35, was ordered to do 120 hours unpaid community work after she admitted obtaining a money transfer by deception to help with a £150,000 mortgage.

Paul Hodson said: "Mum was never able to forgive or forget. She was very angry and it was very destructive. Unfortunately she was deprived of the chance to see justice done.

"My brother was nothing but a coward who has been completely incapable of accepting any responsibility for what he did."