Search results for: richard sage

In recent months there’s been quite a bit of interest in Britain’s bentest undertaker, Richard Sage. A glance at the search terms people use to find my website tell me that, since June ’10, 330 have been hunting ‘Richard Sage’ and another 110 ‘Richard Sage Funeral Director’. That makes him almost as popular as coffins.

Run out of Manchester in October 2009, Mr Sage resurfaced in nearby Burnley where he set up as J Kendal and Sons. All the while, his online cut-price undertaking service, Direct Funeral Services, continued to trade from an address at which another online cut-price funeral director, Nationwide Funerals, was also registered.

At the time of his departure from Manchester, Mr Sage had this to say to the Manchester Evening News: “In regards to my past, yes I have been convicted and served my sentence. Now I have rehabilitated myself back into society and that is what I now call my past – a past that I have learnt from and have moved forward, being a better person.”

This was not the impression formed by the GFG’s North of England Correspondent. He has kept me well-informed of nefarious goings-on. And in his most recent report he informs me that Mr Sage has upped sticks and done (another) runner. He says: “Just been to see his garage where he kept all the hearses and such, its completely empty and the signs off the windows and on the front are all gone, he still has the sign on the side door, which says J. Kendal and Sons Funeral directors and such, but i been keeping close eye on that place … I also been up to the funeral home and it is bare empty and up for sale the signs are still on but its up for sale.”

Whither has he flown this time? Chances are he’s battening down the hatches in his pad on the Costa del Sol. We shall see. But I think he may have learned a lesson, this time, about the power of the internet to disseminate information, enabling people to keep tabs on him. If that’s the case. I am pleased to think the GFG may have played a part.

If it has, then I’d like to say a big thank you on behalf of all of us to the GFG’s North of England Correspondent. I can’t name him, obviously. But I raise my glass to you, sir.

For more background on Richard Sage simply google ‘Richard Sage funeral director’.

There are bad people who can be made better (the majority) and there are bad people who can’t.

Britain’s most infamous undertaker Richard Sage is awaiting trial at Blackfriars Crown Court on 28 April on a charge of fraud by false representation. He stands accused, among other things, of having posted a series of bogus adverts looking for young people to work with him. It is alleged the adverts asked for a £400 administration fee, but the promise of a job was a lie.

A little piece of Sage’s previous has been brought to our attention. This goes back to the days when Sage was operating a private ambulance service alongside his undertaking business. The story features Nigel Gardner, who runs a private ambulance service called Ambukare.

Whilst working as a driver for an undertaker’s, Sage decided to set up his own private ambulance firm. He did it convincingly too, embracing the much-revered work-sharing ethic. He would take jobs from hospitals, demand payment up front, and pass the jobs on to other companies. One of the companies was Ambukare. Gardner received a call from an unfamiliar company, Inter County, but obliged the request all the same. He then had a lengthy period of chasing payment.

The undertaker’s firm hadn’t seen Sage for some time. Nor had any of his clients. Eventually, Gardner decided to ring the police, who it turns out were looking for him too. He was wanted for various acts of fraud. Gardner’s account added another to the list.

The CID tracked him down in Spain.

“A lot of people were angry as Sage hadn’t paid a single client,” said Gardner. “I knew I wouldn’t get my money back. I was just waiting to see what the courts would do to him.”

The courts were firm, giving him several years, “which I suppose is only fair”, Gardner laughs, “as we soon found out he’d been ferrying people around in hearses!” (Source)

Incredible as it may seem, Sage is still trading as an undertaker from three branches in Essex while his business is being wound up by the Redfern Partnership in Stratford-upon-Avon.

While we hope that the judge at Blackfriars Crown Court will bring his activities to an end soon, we have to wonder if more couldn’t have been done to stop him.

Richard Sage is up before the beak in Blackfriars Crown Court today. We can’t find what the charge is.  Updates to follow, and all info welcome. 

Everyone deserves a second chance, and if we believe what we read on the testimonials page of the Mary Mayer Funeral Home in Southend-on-Sea, then Mark Kerby, better known to readers of this blog as former jailbird and serial fraudster Richard Sage (everyone deserves a second name) is a reformed character. 

As if. ‘Mark’ has racked up no fewer than 8 county court judgements against him in the course of his reincarnation. He’s not been paying his bills. See here: Mayer Report1 (1) 

In his days of mischief-making, Mr Sage/Kerby enjoyed a little foray running an air ambulance. He’s had another crack at this, but seems to have come unstuck. According to the Insolvency Service on 30 April 2013:

European Medical Assistance (EMA), a company which passed itself off as a worldwide emergency medical assistance provider but had no ability to provide these services, has been wound up in the public interest by the High Court in London, following an investigation by The Insolvency Service.

The company and its appointed director, Mark Kerbey, failed to co-operate with the investigation and failed to produce any documents and information in support of the company’s claimed trading activities. 

Commenting on the case, David Hill, an Investigation Supervisor with The Insolvency Service said: 

“This company claimed it would help people in their direst need, when they required urgent medical attention. In fact it intended to do nothing of the sort but took people’s money in exchange for a sense of reassurance that was utterly unfounded. 

“Furthermore, the company cynically took advantage of young people who were keen to gain experience of helping others. In winding up this company, the Court is sending a strong message that there is no place in the business arena for organisations like this. 

“The Insolvency Service will investigate abuses and close down companies if they are found to be acting against the public interest.” 

See the full report here. Find out more about Richard Sage, his life, times and countless misadventures, here. 

There’s a leaflet circulating in Southend-on-Sea and environs advising the populace to have nothing to do with the Mary Mayer Funeral Home.

What, you ask, has Ms Mary Mayer done to deserve this? She would seem to be both blameless and admirable — an idealist, even:  

Our founder Mary Mayer, a nurse of long standing, felt that the funeral service profession had become an impersonal big business; large groups had formed buying up the traditional family funeral directors known for their personal care and trust by generations of families and turning them into large, money making giants concerned on profits and not families.

Go Mary!

We found this short biog at Duedil:

Mary Mayer is British and was born in 1954. Her first directorship was in 2012 with Mayer Funeral Home Ltd – she was 57 years old at the time. Mayer Funeral Home Ltd is her most recent non-secretarial directorship where she holds the position of “Nurse”. The company was established 2012.

Well, it seems that no one has ever seen Mary. What they have seen instead is the not inconsiderable bulk of a scamp called Richard Sage, a man who, an investigative journalist once observed to us, “would rather make a bent 99p than an honest pound.” The blog has covered some of Richard’s mischiefmaking here. 

When he did a runner from Burnley we put the Dispatches TV people onto his trail. They set an ex-News of the World hound to track him down but the old bugger had vanished. It’s a trick he’s picked up. 

We heard he’d resurfaced under this Mayer moniker shortly after he opened his doors, promising that this time he really had learned his lesson. He even gave himself a new name: Mark Kerbey. We set the ITV undercover people onto him, warning them that if he got a whiff of who they really were he’d be off into the ether like that. They rocked up at Ms Mayer’s establishment with hidden cameras and air of innocence — but Richard had whiffed them. They came empty away. 

We’d reckoned that exposure on prime time TV would be the most effective way of getting rid of him once and for all — more effective than writing about him on this blog. It was not to be. So we rang the local paper and urged them to get onto the story in the public interest. We chatted to influential people in the area and agreed to keep quiet for the time being while steps were taken. 

Well, the cat’s out of the bag now. Whoever is putting that leaflet about is doing good work. 

Postscript: Ben Anderson, the man behind the ITV exposé of malpractice at Gillman’s, is on Panorama on Thursday reporting from Helmand. 

Members of the Official Richard Sage Fan Club will be interested to learn that our unwearied superdork has resurfaced. Richard Who? Click on the Category at the end of this post to trigger a cascade of ordure.

I can’t say exactly where he is — I must protect my source. But he is still in the UK and once more back in the private ambulance business. It was in his guise as a private ambulance operator that Sage swindled the NHS, his staff and his customers of hundreds of thousands of pounds some years ago, an irregularity of which M’lud took such a disapproving view that he banged him up for seven years.

I can today announce that I am in a position to effect the restoration of a sum of money to one of those who has been swindled by the much misunderstood Sage. Don’t ask how, it’s a long story, and it’s all devilishly above board.

If you have an outstanding CCJ against Mr Sage, please contact me. I’ll do what I can for you.

charles@goodfuneralguide.co.uk  /  07946 714 063

Sorry to be so cloak and dagger about this. It’s the only way the sting can succeed.