Hello and welcome to The Southport Lead.
If you spend much time on social media, you may already have some idea of today’s main story - a tale of greed, delusion, and huge quantities of illicit money which led to a mum being sent to prison.
You haven’t heard the full story though, far from it. For that, I spent two days at Liverpool Crown Court as Megan Carney-Borrowman was sentenced alongside her husband, her mum, and her mum’s business partner for their roles in a counterfeit good and money laundering conspiracy.
Their roles were varied and confusing - one was in jail for drug dealing when it started; two had previously never committed crime but seemingly needed little persuasion to aid and abet huge-scale fraud while not making much money themselves. One, Adam Yaffé, even declared his income from the illegal operation on his tax return.
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Southport briefing
🎱 A sports bar offering pool, darts and golf simulators could soon open in Southport town centre. Under plans from James Rae of Pitch and Pot Limited, the former indoor football pitches off Tulketh Street would be converted into a new attraction which would also include two martial arts studios. Plans for the bar show it offering 10 darts lanes, a darts stage, 16 pool tables, four golf simulators and a large screen viewing area. A planning application states: “The proposal would provide a high-quality, purpose-designed sports-themed leisure destination, centred principally upon the communal viewing of televised sporting events together with a complementary range of indoor recreational and social activities. The proposed venue would incorporate a central feature bar supported by a variety of customer seating and dedicated viewing areas, television screens positioned throughout the premises to provide coverage of live sporting events.” If approved, it is proposed the venue would open 9am-11pm Sunday to Thursday and 9am-12.30am on Fridays and Saturdays and it is forecast it would create six full-time and 14 part-time jobs.
🍂 Sefton Council’s annual leaf fall clearance programme has started earlier than usual this year as a result of the unusually dry summer causing trees to shed their leaves sooner than expected. Throughout the autumn and winter months, the council’s Street Cleansing teams will focus on clearing fallen leaves from adopted roads and footpaths across Sefton to help keep routes clean and safe for residents. Each year, the council collects around 1,000 tonnes of leaves from roads and footpaths across the borough and all leaves collected through the programme are sent for composting and reused to help support planting and landscaping across the borough. Councillor Peter Harvey, Sefton Council’s Cabinet Member for Cleansing and Street Scene, said: “Teams work systematically across Sefton, but the volume of leaves can change significantly throughout the season and is often influenced by weather conditions. This means we cannot provide exact dates for when individual streets will be cleared.”
🎇 More than 13,000 people attended the opening night of this year’s British Musical Fireworks Championship, making it the busiest Saturday on record. A total of 20,000 attended over the weekend, helped in part by a special Merseyrail travel offer which has offered return journeys at £2 for adults and £1 for children during all of this year’s major Southport events. For the first time this year, the event offered a dedicated sensory quiet zone, providing a calm space for visitors who needed time away from the busier areas of the event. Monumental Fireworks, which displayed on the Saturday, was crowned 2026 British Musical Fireworks Champion. Cllr Paulette Lappin, Sefton Council’s Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for Regeneration, Economy and Skills, said: “We love to see record breaking crowds just as much as we love to see those incredible displays and it shows just how much families from across the region value this amazing weekend. The British Musical Fireworks Championships continue to be one of the highlights of our events calendar and it really is nothing short of spectacular. The atmosphere throughout Victoria Park across both evenings was incredible. If you have never been before I wholly encourage you to make sure you’re first in the queue for 2027. Events like this play a vital role in supporting Southport’s visitor economy, generating greater footfall for local businesses and showcasing everything our Borough has to offer.”
💷 A man has been charged after a gold chain, engagement ring and £400 cash were stolen from a Southport home. Police were called on Thursday, September 24 to a report that a man entered a house speaking with the owner of the property outside. He is accused of taking the items from a bedroom before driving away. Following an arrest by an off duty police officer Peter Warren Wright, of Albert Road, was charged with theft from a person and theft from a house yesterday. The 54-year-old was remanded into custody and will appear at Liverpool Crown Court on Thursday 29 October.
🚫 Chemicals which could be used to create deadly poisons will be placed under stricter controls as a direct response to the Southport Inquiry. During searches of the Southport attacker’s home, police found evidence that he had bought castor beans online to make ricin, leading to his conviction under the Biological Weapons Act 1974. In response, the government is proposing to add castor beans containing ricin and rosary peas containing abrin to the list of regulated poisons under UK law. This will make it a criminal offence to sell them to members of the public who do not hold a valid licence. Security Minister, Dan Jarvis said: “Protecting the public is our first duty. While these substances can have legitimate uses, we must stop them from being weaponised by those who want to cause harm. We will close the gaps exposed by the Southport attack and tighten the law to stop these dangerous chemicals falling into the wrong hands.” Ricin and abrin are already strictly controlled under UK law because of their extreme toxicity, but the seeds which can be used to produce these dangerous chemicals can be purchased for use in gardening and decoration.
Pure greed: Downfall of fraudsters’ fake clothes scam that brought in millions
A woman who sold counterfeit goods worth millions of pounds was described as “a stranger to the truth” who was unable to understand her downfall was her own fault as she was jailed.
More than £4m passed through the bank accounts of a Megan Carney-Borrowman over years of selling faking designer clothes and handbags - but it remains unknown what proportion of that sum was earned legitimately and how much illegally.
The 35-year-old sold fake Chanel and Burberry items after building an online following by selling legal weight loss products. When police raided her home, she attempted to hide her phone in the curtains and tried to dissuade police from looking in her baby son’s bedroom - when they did, they found more than £150,000 in cash.
The illegal money had been raked in through a conspiracy which involved her partner Jordan Borrowman, her mum Sandra Carney, and Carney’s business partner Adam Yaffé.
At the same time, with seemingly no limits to the greed, a further £68,000 was claimed in undeserved benefits as Carney-Borrowman failed to disclose that she had huge income, had bought a house, and was living with her husband. That money was paid into her mum’s bank account to avoid detection. Borrowman was also complicit in this crime, repeatedly lying in declarations to the DWP.
On top of that, the two mother and daughter conspired to claim £8,000 for a Rolex watch they claimed had been lost on a night out in Blackpool but was still on her wrist when police arrested her for fraud.
Yaffé, known around Southport for his involvement in the Yaffé Photography business which is now in its third generation of family ownership, helped advise on attempts to avoid the dirty money being investigated and by forging fake invoices and documents. He also allowed an existing company of his to be used by Carney-Borrowman and in messages with Carney spoke about wanting to make the scams into “a huge income for all of us”.
All four have now been sentenced for their role in an operation of which Carney-Borrowman was described as the architect and central figure. While the other three avoided jail, she was sentenced to four years and three months.
Liverpool Crown Court heard the operation involved two Instagram pages and a series of WhatsApp chats used to process orders in which customers were advised to put no more than their postcode as payment reference in one of many efforts made to avoid detection.
Investigation
Investigations into the dodgy goods began in January 2022 when an unhappy customer complained to Chanel about a handbag they had bought from Carney-Borrowman via the dollies_closetx21x Instagram account. Prosecuting, James Rae said: “The author is clearly a dissatisfied customer who was complaining that she had been duped when she bought a Chanel bag from a website that would not let her return it.
