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FACE THE FACTS
Programme 3. - Private Ambulance Service
Presenter: John Waite
TX: Friday 5th August 2005 1230-1300 BBC RADIO 4
WAITE
This week we're back on the trail of a convicted con man called Richard Sage, whose activities we first exposed 12 years ago when he wasn't too pleased at our attentions.
WAITE Mr Sage, I'm John Waite from Radio 4.
SAGE
Would you like to leave the premises otherwise I'll call the police.
WAITE I'm here to record an interview with Mr Sage - Mr Sage please don't push me. Mr Sage.
SAGE Why don't you have me for assault.
WAITE Mr Sage. I want to talk ...
Back in 1993 when he bounced me and my tape recorder down a flight of stairs we revealed that Mr Sage had been ripping off staff, customers and NHS hospitals to the tune of hundreds of thousands of pounds. Something for which he was later convicted and sent to prison for seven years. But since his release we've discovered he's been causing problems again. High time, we thought, to bring the saga of Mr Sage up to date.
As we reported in that original programme the exploits of Richard Sage are nothing if not colourful and at well over six feet in height and 20 stones in weight Mr Sage himself is a larger than life character, someone who likes to dress the part of whatever part he's playing - be it Scotland Yard detective or ambulance paramedic. And live the high life at other people's expense. It's a story that starts 25 years ago here in Bedfordshire with Mr Sage in funeral garb as his first business venture was running a funeral home.
READING Bedford and District Funeral Services. Director Richard M Sage. Telephone day or night.
And Richard Sage became a common sight str id ing on foot ahead of the funeral cortege resplendent in frock coat and silk top hat, an immaculately furled umbrella beneath his arm. He fitted the role perfectly, according to Peter Adams, a former colleague.
ADAMS
Richard was a very imposing figure, bearing in mind his size and really d id look the part. It was a very dignified and solemn sight, it looked the business.
WAITE
However, far from being the business in 1983 Mr Sage went out of business, declared bankrupt with debts of almost a hundred thousand pounds. Three years later he was appearing at Preston Crown Court on a string of charges involving deception. Mr Sage hired two Rolls Royces from a car rental company and drove them to Spain with the intention of selling them. He tricked a retired man into buying a non-existent business and sold a private clinic in Bournemouth a supposed brand new ambulance for £23,000 which turned out to be a battered old Mercedes. Oh and he popped into a Bureau de Change in London's Oxford Street posing as a Scotland Yard detective and persuaded the woman cashier to hand over £23,000, as real detective Martin Wilson recalled for us.
WILSON
He told the young lady who was alone in the bureau that there was going to be an armed robbery and that he would safeguard her and that she must give him the cash and that he would make sure it was transported safely and she was to leave some five minutes behind him. And to make it look authentic in fact he told her to give him a kiss and I think she obliged him.
WAITE
The court in Lancashire was somewhat less obliging - finding Mr Sage guilty and sentencing him to five years in prison. But once he'd served his time Richard Sage wasn't the type to h id e away shyly and soon he had a new business venture.
READING
Belmont Funeral Homes Limited. Serving the community in their hour of need. A complete 24 hour funeral service. Limousine hire, chapel of rest, monumental masons, floral tributes, ambulances ...
Ambulances?
CASUALTY MUSIC
Yes ambulances. You'll never know when you'll need an ambulance but when you do chances are you'll need it fast. Belmont International Air and Road Ambulance is an independent company dedicated to the safe, speedy and efficient movement of the sick and injured throughout the world.
The nerve centre of Mr Sage's twin companies for the sick and the dead was a set of offices in his home town of Woking. He called it the UK Communications and Operations Centre and insisted on strict dress codes. The funeral staff wore sombre black whilst the ambulance personnel sported colourful jump suits. Mr Sage, himself, wore both, resplendent one moment in frock coat and silk topper, the next emerging in an outsized red jump suit, complete with the insignia of an NHS chief ambulance officer, a paramedics badge and a name flash announcing:
Richard Sage - managing director.
By 1992 TV news programmes were showcasing Mr Sage's new company which promised the country's first privately run 999 service.
NEWS CLIP
It may look like an ordinary emergency but the casualty who gets taken to hospital in this ambulance will have to have pa id £35 for the privilege or £65 for a family subscription. They will have also called a special emergency number and quoted their membership code to an operator at the Surrey headquarters of Belmont International Air and Road Ambulance.
WAITE
With newly created NHS trusts paying the private sector to help reduce costs and increase efficiency Mr Sage sensed there was money to be made. Don Williams is pres id ent of the British Ambulance Association which represents the private s id e of the industry.
WILLIAMS
It was a good time to actually be in the private ambulance sector and respond to the tenders and contracts that were being put out by NHS hospitals across the country. There was an opportunity to move thousands, maybe even millions, of patients worth millions of pounds.
WAITE
And so Belmont International Air and Road Ambulance quickly expanded, winning contracts to prov id e services for a number of London teaching hospitals, which agreed to pay Mr Sage in advance to repatriate patients using his aircraft. That's what University College Hospital d id and though no flights ever happened the money was never seen again. And likewise at St. Thomas's Hospital which handed over nearly £400,000 to Mr Sage, again the patients never materialised and the money was never reimbursed. Vanishing money was a problem too for Mr Sage's staff - his erratic payment system bringing real hardship to loyal workers like Geoff Walsh and his wife.
GEOFF WALSH
We would be pa id either a quarter of our pay or half our pay and then have to wait for the rest of it or we would be pa id a cheque, we'd put that cheque into our account and hopefully it wouldn't bounce but very rare that I ever got a cheque from the company that d id n't bounce.
MRS WALSH
We had to cut back and all of our savings were taken up with just day-to-day living. We even sold the car, the children had to basically do without.
WAITE
While Mr Sage himself lived the highlife on the money he persuaded reputable hospitals to part with. And we discovered, contrary to his glossy advertising, the company d id n't even have a plane - Mr Sage simply hired one when it was required. Mr Sage's funeral business was cutting corners too and in some particularly shabby ways as his boss's chauffeur Adam Sutherland recalled.
SUTHERLAND
It got to the point of going down to the crematorium or the local graveyard and collecting other people's flowers - wreaths and bouquets - off another funeral, which wasn't even to do with our company. Taking them back to the office, re-spraying them with water to make them look fresh. And placing them on the coffins - was our jobs.
WAITE
Well following our programme in November 1993 Richard Sage was arrested by the Fraud Squad and three years later, when the case came to trial, finding him guilty on 11 charges of deception, conspiracy and fraud Judge Geoffrey Rivlin called Mr Sage: "A practised professional conf id ence trickster" and sentenced him to seven years. So it was not until 2003 that he could mount the business stage once more.
I'm standing outs id e a funeral firm in Catford in South East London. Today the business here is in the hands of an established and respected company but up until a year ago what happened here was a familiar tale that involved yet another set of funerals, ambulances, suppliers and employees claiming they're owed hundreds of thousands of pounds. And the man in the m id dle of all that mayhem, he of the silver tongue and sartorial style Mr Richard Mark Sage.
JENNERY
Well you sa id that he was like sort of Toad of Toad Hall - with the big sort of chest and the checked jacket and all the rest of it. But right from the first day that I met him I d id n't really trust him.
WAITE
Lea Jennery was the manager of the funeral centre when Richard Sage arrived in Catford at the beginning of 2003. He'd been introduced to the owners of the parent company - the Fullcover Group Limited - and apparently taken on as a consultant with the aim of expanding the business. And expand it he d id . By August starting up a private ambulance operation whose boasts seem very familiar.
CASUALTY MUSIC
READING We have on call some of the world's leading medical experts in all fields. And have at our disposal a team of highly trained doctors, nurses and paramedics to respond around the world.
An extract from the website of the company - Fullcover Assistance - part of the Fullcover Group Limited. A website that impressed former St John Ambulance member Rick James.
JAMES
It's got pictures of call centre operators and fleets of doctors and nurses around the globe and a leer jet and all these fancy things. And yes I just thought it looks like a great company to be part of.
WAITE
But after seeing the office for the first time Rick James, with his new colleague Graham Pullen, began to wonder if they'd reported to the right place.
JAMES
I was thinking well where is this call centre because we walked into the funeral centre of course and I was thinking oh it must be somewhere upstairs that all this is going on, sort of conning deck type of thing. It wasn't, it was just this typical little scrubby backroom office and ah there's a desk over there, right, and that's him and that's his PA.
PULLEN
It was like being offered a Rolls Royce and ended up with being given the Trotter's three wheeler.
WAITE
But the new recruits were reassured by Mr Sage that employment conditions would be tiptop.
PULLEN
The package itself was full family healthcare. Gym membership for the ambulance crews themselves.
JAMES
A good pension and yeah overtime.
PULLEN
Base pay, everything just summed up the best package that any private ambulance service in London could offer.
WAITE
The sales pitch to customers was no less enticing, featuring a company motto:
CASUALTY MUSIC
READING Because we care for the community we serve.
And that community had a special guarantee - the involvement of senior operations consultant Mr Richard Sage.
READING Mr Sage has carried out evacuations and coordinated evacuations from around the world. With his wealth of knowledge in recent years he's worked as consultant advising companies on medical evacuation.
Strangely there was no mention of Mr Sage's numerous years of incarcerations at Her Majesty's pleasure. As the company began to build up crews and its fleet of ambulances would be strategically placed around London. Dave Monk was part of the road crew, Carl Penny would accompany patients in the jets chartered for air ambulance jobs.
MONK
On the ambulance s id e there was road ambulance work transporting patients primarily for the London Br id ge Hospital. But as time went on we were introduced to other hospitals and were doing work for them. On the air ambulance s id e it was moving patients from the UK back out to their home country or bringing them from their home country back into the UK.
PENNY
We d id some very good jobs out to India, Oman, Lisbon and my last job we repatriated a gentleman from Istanbul who was very, very unwell.
WAITE
As before the business appeared to be doing well, certainly from the often lavish spending of Mr Sage. Staff say he liked to hire top of the range cars like a Jaguar and chauffeur. Will Bellemy, another former member of the ambulance crews.
BELLEMY
When he would entertain his friends he would pick up his friends in a limousine, take them to the West End, take in a show like Phantom of the Opera and then go on to a very expensive restaurant. For a team building night out we went to China town in Soho and we had a meal and Richard walked in, he was just like - I'm a VIP [indistinct words] to the NHS and I need that table in the window. And I felt a bit awkward but you just carried on.
WAITE
Except that it was difficult to carry on when you weren't getting pa id . As had begun happening by Christmas 2003. Graham Pullen again.
PULLEN
We were supposed to get pa id on the 18th of December, right up until Christmas Eve we hadn't got pa id and we only got pa id at lunchtime on Christmas Eve, so we d id n't have a chance to go out and get shopping or anything like that. The k id s' presents had to be bought after Christmas and things like, you know, it really d id make it a hard Christmas.
WAITE
Not surprisingly staff began to leave and losing qualified staff created a problem for a company which boasted:
READING We have on call some of the world's leading medical experts in all fields. We have at our disposal a team of highly trained doctors, nurses and paramedics, available to respond around the world.
MONK
As ambulance staff were starting to leave then obviously there was a shortfall in staff to crew ambulances, so I found from an out of hours point of view it was inevitably myself and Richard going out on the ambulance to basically admit emergency cases to the hospital but it also got to the point where we were having to use funeral staff to man our ambulances because there was no one else. These staff had no medical training, no first a id certificate, no nothing.
WAITE
D id this worry you?
MONK
Yes and again you know when you pushed Richard into a corner over it, it was - Well it's my business, I run it how I choose to run it.
WAITE
But London Br id ge Hospital too, which had a service agreement with Fullcover Assistance was beginning to become concerned that all was not well. And that for some reason it was becoming more difficult to check the training records of the ambulance crews and the vehicles being used. There were problems with the funeral s id e of the business also. We've established that funds for pre-payment funeral plans, pa id to the funeral home when it was being managed by Mr Sage, were not handed on to the relevant company prov id ing the policies. Nor money received for orders always pa id to suppliers, like husband and wife team Tiny and John Spooner - monumental masons who sculpted a memorial stone for a five year old victim of a hit and run acc id ent. The order was made through the funeral centre in Catford, which Mr Sage explained to the Spooners he had taken over. The stone was ready to be placed on the grave, except that the Spooners hadn't yet received their payment. And when Tina Spooner tried to find out why:
SPOONER
I was told that this order had been cancelled, the family no longer wanted it and it was specific sizes, so it wasn't something I could put back in stock. Well because I had the cemetery permit form I was able to contact the customer direct and I sa id to them - You know I understand you've cancelled with the Funeral Centre but I had the memorial here - and they turned round and sa id - No we haven't cancelled with the Funeral Centre, we've asked the Funeral Centre where is this stone for our son and they were told that it was broken transit. They had pa id for it in full, where the money went I don't know but as far as we were concerned if Richard Sage had pa id us £600 that memorial would have been put in the cemetery within a week and those grieving parents could have grieved for their son properly.
WAITE
In the ambulance service meanwhile employees' concerns were switching from lack of staff to lack of equipment. Beverly Hughes, a fully trained intensive care nurse, was despatched at short notice on a trip to Berlin to help bring back a seriously ill patient. A flight that hadn't been properly equipped, she says, so that items to administer drugs had to be almost begged from German hospital staff. And then, more worryingly for Beverly, during the return journey, a battery on a vital piece of medical monitoring equipment failed.
HUGHES
The main point is we wouldn't have known particularly if he would have been deteriorating, we wouldn't have known until basically perhaps maybe he'd stopped breathing, we wouldn't have seen - we wouldn't have had any prior warning. Which in the constraints that we were in and up in the air we would have needed that prior warning but not having the monitoring we perhaps wouldn't have known until the very last minute and really it's not the kind of situation you want to be in when you've got an emergency like that.
WAITE
Last December Fullcover Group Limited went into liqu id ation with cash flow problems id entified as the cause. Around a hundred creditors involved in the funeral operation claim they're owed more than £200,000, including stonemasons the Spooners out of pocket, they say, by £24,000. For the staff and suppliers on the ambulance s id e though things are less clear. Perhaps because there's almost a muddle of companies and company names, all variations on the Fullcover theme, that Mr Sage had bank accounts for. Like the Fullcover Group. A muddle the staff say that's left them owed tens of thousands of pounds, an air charter company more than 30,000, even London Br id ge Hospital was left with unpa id bills.
Mr Sage isn't listed among the directors of the Fullcover Group Limited, but then he'd be breaking company law if he was, as he's been barred from being a director and is an undischarged bankrupt. It's a law which also forb id s such persons from promoting, forming or managing a company. But that's exactly the role that former employees like Carl Penny say Mr Sage was indeed playing, in the confusing array of business names that emerged out of the Catford base.
PENNY
If you dealt with any of those companies you dealt with Mr Richard Sage. He was the man who ran the operation. We felt we worked for Richard Sage or by contracted services to Mr Richard Sage. I have a contract signed by Mr Richard Sage. So Mr Richard Sage ran the business, day-to-day, hired, fired, signed cheques, organised rotas, dealt with customers, he was the man.
WAITE
Indeed a report by the liqu id ator notes that for a time business was conducted through Mr Sage's own trading accounts, like the one we've seen for ourselves with cheques printed RM Sage trading as the Fullcover Group. So what of the official directors listed in the records at Companies House, could they explain Mr Sage's role in the running of the company? We also wanted to know why they were reluctant to invest more money into the company to keep it going and also what they knew about all the problems there. Despite repeated requests they declined to take part in this programme.
Someone who very much d id want to take part however is the chief executive of London Br id ge Hospital, John Reay. His hospital's experience at the hands of Mr Sage and his private ambulance operation has led Mr Reay to demand urgent government action.
REAY
I have a frustration that the private ambulance sector is not regulated in the way that the rest of the healthcare industry is. And that frustration has been greatly heightened by this experience. And I think that the lesson for the healthcare industry is that we must move quickly to bring this whole part of the industry, this whole piece of it, within the law.
WAITE
Well we've good news for Mr Reay, when we put those concerns to the Department of Health this week they told us they now intended to introduce a system of licensing. But what does Mr Sage have to say to the concerns you've heard today? Well a highly offensive expletive would seem to sum it up, so be warned. After the debacle in Catford Mr Sage swapped South East London for North West Scotland earlier this year, where he's currently running a funeral home in the resort of Dunoon on the Firth of Clyde and where when our repeated requests for answers went unheeded we caught up with the burly businessman as he arrived in the car park for work. And, as I say, he wasn't too pleased.
Hello Mr Sage. John Waite from Radio 4.
SAGE
Oh what a surprise.
WAITE
Yes.
SAGE
You can **** off for a start. Get out of my face now. You know the score, you've always tried to wind me up every time you've come to see me.
WAITE
I've sa id good morning to you Mr Sage and you're now pressing me against a car, I think - and you've also sworn at me. I don't think I am the one who's being provocative here.
SAGE
You are.
WAITE
Now if you'd like to just back away a little bit.
SAGE
No I'm not, you're on my premises, get out.
WAITE
These are serious allegations.
SAGE
Of course they are. There has been a full investigation into my dealings with Her Majesty's liqu id ator and there has been no proven anything. So what are you trying to say, what allegations are you making against me now?
WAITE
I'm talking about the staff who say you owe them thousands of pounds in wages.
SAGE
What allegation are you making now Mr Waite? What allegation are you making now?
WAITE
I am talking about the suppliers who say they're owed hundreds of thousands of pounds.
SAGE
That is Allcover Group Limited, that is nothing to do with me.
WAITE
Mr Sage, everyone that we've spoken to says you were the boss.
SAGE
So why has the liqu id ator, why has investigations, why are the police investigations not implied me into anything?
WAITE
Why were you running that company, you know you shouldn't do that, you're ...
SAGE
I'm not running the company.
WAITE
Everyone says - we've seen cheques with your name on it ...
SAGE
This is unfair, you're prostituting sensational journalism. You turn up where I'm working and you harass me.
WAITE
It's in the public interest to question someone ...
SAGE
Can you please tell me what's in the public interest?
WAITE
Well London Br id ge Hospital say they want people like you to be licensed in future - that's in the public interest isn't it?
SAGE
I'm not getting into personal attacks, not bitter staff and incriminations, I'm talking about police allegations - 12 months down the line.
WAITE
This is bitter staff is it?
SAGE
It is very much bitter staff.
WAITE
Disgruntled staff?
SAGE
Correct.
WAITE
How about customers who feel cheated?
SAGE
I don't believe that any customers feel cheated.
WAITE
Well what about the Fords? They ordered a memorial for their five year old son you told them it was broken, it wasn't.
SAGE
I am not getting into those but Mr and Mrs Ford got compensation for the lateness of the stone being put up.
WAITE
And what about the Spooners who made that stone and had it - it wasn't broken at all, it was just you wouldn't pay for it? The Spooners are stonemasons Mr Sage.
SAGE
Never heard of them.
WAITE
Well you owe them £24,000.
SAGE
I don't owe anybody anything and that's it.
WAITE
Are you a reformed character Mr Sage?
SAGE
Yes I am.
WAITE
And so people can do business with conf id ence with you?
SAGE
Not with me, I don't do business anymore I'm not - that's not - this is not what this is about is it, this is about you on a witch hunt against me.
WAITE
How do you explain it then, that so many people feel so damaged having dealt with you?
SAGE
I don't think there are so many people.
WAITE
Well we've heard a good few of them over these programmes.
SAGE
Six?
WAITE
Oh no more than that, I mean dozens in the two programmes we've done.
SAGE
Well I'm not interested.
WAITE
You're not interested?
SAGE
No.
WAITE
You don't care?
SAGE
No not interested at all.
WAITE
So you can just walk away from it, your hands are clean, nothing ever went wrong?
SAGE
I've been investigated, I have been interviewed. Of course things went wrong.
WAITE
So that's it? That's your reply, you're not going to talk anymore? Are you going to say sorry to any of these people we've heard from?
SAGE
Of course I am saddened by the situation that I found myself in. The situation was very difficult. Of course there was cash flow problems - that's public knowledge. There was not enough investment put into the company at the time.
WAITE
What about concerns over safety for some of the patients in those air ambulance trips - we've heard from Beverly Hughes, a professional nurse, who says you just d id n't supply the right equipment?
SAGE
I don't even remember a Beverly Hughes. I mean you discuss a case in Berlin, I'm not even aware of a case in Berlin.
WAITE
The battery monitors failed on the return trip, that when they got to Berlin they were forced to ask medical staff there for equipment that you had told them you had supplied and you should have supplied.
SAGE
Right let's take this scenario. Every medical team that left on air ambulance trips checked their equipment before they left. Each person checked the equipment, they knew exactly what they were going for and they knew what equipment they needed. They had a responsibility to inform the company and also not to do the case if they hadn't got the equipment. I have looked at all the ambulance despatch sheets I cannot find any comments on the ones that I've seen that equipment was faulty ...
WAITE
So they're wrong?
SAGE
They're wrong.
WAITE
And that's the end of the matter?
SAGE
End of the matter. Have a nice trip back.
WAITE
Thank you Mr Sage.
Mr Richard Sage. And we d id receive an e-mail from Mr Sage following our meeting claiming that all the allegations you've heard today are wrong and that includes the pre-payment funeral plan funds which apparently went missing but which Mr Sage insists were properly handed over. Face the Facts was produced by Dan Saladino and it'll be repeated on Sunday evening at 9 o'clock.
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