In February this year, part-time gamekeeper Timothy Hall, 48, and his son Lewis Hall, 23, were sentenced after they’d pleaded guilty to the illegal laundering of wild peregrines that had been stolen from nest sites across southern Scotland and were sold on to falconers in the Middle East (see here).
Despite their offences passing the threshold for a custodial sentence, Timothy Hall was only ordered to complete 220 hours of unpaid work and Lewis Hall was only ordered to complete 150 hours. These sentences were considered to be staggeringly inadequate given the extent of the Halls’ offending (see here).
However, the Crown Office reported at the time that Lewis Hall would also be subject to action under the Proceeds of Crime Act, where profits from criminal activity can be confiscated.
At a court hearing in June, it was revealed that prosecutors were seeking to recover £164,028.80 from Hall (here) and the Sheriff allowed Hall additional time to provide evidence from a forensic accountant to challenge this amount.
Following a hearing at Selkirk Sheriff Court today (10 Oct 2024), Lewis Hall accepted that he benefitted from “general criminal conduct” by £110,000.
The court ordered he repay £27,182 (based on an amount the court deemed was available) and he is likely to have to pay this within six months.
That leaves £82,981 unrecovered. However, the Crown has the power to apply to the court to extend the order to seize money and any assets Hall acquires in the future to pay back the full amount he made from his crimes. I hope the Crown pursues this.
Police Officer Suzanne Hall, who was cleared of involvement in the peregrine laundering crimes, is reportedly facing a separate charge of alleged fraud relating to almost £10,000, to which she has pleaded not guilty. Her trial is due to begin on 19th November 2024 (see here).
Please note – as Suzanne Hall’s case is still active, no blog comments about it will be posted on this blog until proceedings finish. However, as Lewis Hall’s case has now concluded, comments about his case are now accepted. [UPDATE 12 October 2024: I’ve received an unconfirmed report that the case against WPC Suzanne Hall has been dropped. I’m seeking confirmation of this and will report in due course. Comments about her case remain switched off until confirmation is received from the prosecuting authorities].
This is a significant and relatively rare result for a wildlife crime case in the UK. It doesn’t excuse the pathetically inadequate sentences handed down in February to Timothy and Lewis Hall for the serial offending they committed over a long period of time, but it does provide gratification that they haven’t escaped justice entirely. It should also act as a meaningful deterrent to others. I also hope it provides some satisfaction to the investigatory team behind Operation Tantallon who put in several years of painstaking work to get these criminals in to court.
The Crown Office has released the following statement about Lewis Hall’s case:
Man convicted of illegally selling peregrine falcon chicks agrees to repay £27,000
A man convicted of possessing and selling wild peregrine falcon chicks for large sums of money has agreed to pay back more than £27,000 in a Proceeds of Crime confiscation action.
Lewis Hall, 24, was ordered to carry out 150 hours of unpaid work over 15 months and banned from possessing or having under his control any bird of prey for five years after being sentenced in February at Jedburgh Sheriff Court.
He had earlier pled guilty at Selkirk Sheriff Court to acquiring for commercial purposes, keeping for sale, and selling the chicks between 2020 and 2021.
Hall, of Berwick-Upon-Tweed, has now agreed to repay £27,182 under Proceeds of Crime legislation following a hearing at Selkirk Sheriff Court. The figure is based on an amount which the court deems as being available.
Court records show that Hall accepted he benefited from “general criminal conduct” by £110,000.
The Crown has the power to apply to the court to extend the order to seize money and any assets Hall acquires in the future to pay back the full amount he made from his crimes.
Sineidin Corrins, Deputy Procurator Fiscal for specialist casework at the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS), said: “The sale of peregrine falcons has become an extremely lucrative business.
“Lewis Hall took advantage of that for his own financial gain and to the detriment of the wild peregrine falcon population in the South of Scotland.
“However, even after a conviction was secured in this matter, the Crown commenced Proceeds of Crime action to ensure the funds Hall obtained illegally were pursued.
“Prosecution of those involved in financial crime does not stop at criminal conviction and sentencing.
“The funds recovered from Lewis Hall will be added to those already gathered from Proceeds of Crime, to be re-invested in the community by Scottish Ministers through the CashBack for Communities programme.”
The court heard how in April 2021 a member of the Lothian and Borders Raptor Study Group alerted police to suspicious failures of peregrine falcon nests in the Berwickshire area which had previously been productive.
Officers later investigated two nesting sites and discovered they had been disturbed and a number of eggs were missing from both locations.
A police search of Lewis Hall’s father’s home in Berwick-Upon-Tweed subsequently found a total of seven peregrine falcon chicks as well as a number of other birds of prey.
Further enquiries concluded that none of the chicks were captive-born and had been taken from the wild.
Under legislation, selling captive-bred peregrine falcons is legal but possessing or selling wild birds is unlawful.
ENDS
Raptor Persecution UK 
Looking at the sentence the profit made and the pitiful amount repaid this is hard to see as a deterent to others it shows crime DOES pay in scotland most clearly
Ridiculous sentence of community orders in the 1st place for two greedy nest thieving scumbags so inadequate beyond belief.Double kick in the nuts just take £27,000 off xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx although proven he made over £100,000 .He’s 24 yrs old he he has years left to repay the rest he should be made to do so .Piss take if that’s all he pays after all the time and effort put into the case by the investigation team .
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That pic of him is really annoying me. He doesn’t care and will do it again, its clearly worth the risk as the losses are around just 20%. He’s literally stealing my country’s assets and gets a wee bit more than a slap on the wrist. Scots folk should be up in arms.
It’s good to see that the system is at least making some effort to hold these individuals to account. But I would like to see people higher up the food chain brought to account as well in cases like this. There must be at least one or more middle-men involved before those birds were eventually put onto a plane (and whose? / which? airline I wonder!) And then what of the end customer? The wealthy falconer/ falcon owner who is probably still proudly flying them or breeding from them to this day. Let’s see some investigation done into them – or does nobody dare open that can of worms? As was explainined in an earlier blog, the DNA of these birds is known so therefore they could in theory be tracked down and tested.
i work in aviation and have had falcons shipped out many dozens of times. It’s unlikely the airlines or legitimate freght forwarders were knowingly acting illegally. We are usually loading 20-24 birds per pallet at a time (captive bred from a breeder) and often lanner/gyrfalcon hybrids. So individual birds would be flagging up to me as unusual. But yes there will be a couple of shady middlemen involved in this too.
I agree with you, as you are referencing the legitimate transport of birds and livestock, etc done in the correct way. But my personal opinion is that there is a whole other world out there, and that operators at that level of the trade do not need to trouble themselves with too much procedure or the correct paperwork. Some inconceivably wealthy and powerful falconers in the part of the world in question own not only their own jets but their own fleets of jets and even their own airlines. The private jets of extremely rich and “important” people that whizz around the globe as well as foreign state diplomatic / military / royal / VIP flights are not subjected to the same routines of scrutiny as an average joe EasyJet or FedEx cargo flight undergoes. I’m not a conspiracy theorist, just someone who has had slight first-hand experience, and has also been told reliably second-hand, of just how casually and easily the super-rich can get things done if they want them doing.
UPDATE 12th October 2024: I’ve received an unconfirmed report that the case against WPC Suzanne Hall (for alleged fraud) has been dropped. I’m seeking confirmation of this and will report in due course. Comments about her case remain switched off until confirmation is received from the prosecuting authorities.
“Despite their offences passing the threshold for a custodial sentence, Timothy Hall was only ordered to complete 220 hours of unpaid work and Lewis Hall was only ordered to complete 150 hours.”
and
“Following a hearing at Selkirk Sheriff Court today (10 Oct 2024), Lewis Hall accepted that he benefitted from “general criminal conduct” by £110,000.
The court ordered he repay £27,182 (based on an amount the court deemed was available)”
Why isn’t there a campaign for a Scottish Unduly Lenient Sentencing appeal scheme?
See https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/unduly-lenient-sentences#:~:text=The%20Unduly%20Lenient%20Sentence%20(ULS,the%20sentence%20is%20too%20lenient.
and
https://www.gov.uk/ask-crown-court-sentence-review