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Crown Currency Exchange victims 'may get some money back'

BBC Radio Cornwall

People still owed money after the collapse of a Cornwall-based foreign currency exchange firm may get some of it back.

Crown Currency Exchange, based in Hayle, went under in October 2010, owing some 12,500 clients a total of £20m.

One of the UK's biggest foreign exchange websites at the time, it allowed individuals and business customers to pre-order foreign exchange at a set price up to a year in advance, with amounts of between £300 and £10,000 available.

It blamed a downturn in the travel market.

But a number of people involved in the company were jailed in 2015 for fraud and accounting offences.

Company founder Susan Benstead, given a two-year suspended jail term in 2015 for money laundering, was ordered to pay more than £850,000 in a proceeds of crime hearing at Southwark Crown Court in 2017.

In an update, Devon and Cornwall Police said it understood from HM Courts & Tribunals Service that Benstead would be "making a significant payment imminently towards settlement of her order following the sale of her former home in France".

Crown Currency Exchange website
BBC