Where did Fiona Cottrell get all that money?

[Kingdomofsleep]

I've been a bit fascinated by this latest news about Farage and all the money.

The latest detail is that Fiona Cottrell, the mother of Posh George the crypto fraudster guy, gave Reform donations of £1m and £500k over the past few years.

However! She is a retired stylist who lives in a cottage worth between 500k and 1m, and inherited just £1.5m from her husband when he died. So, comfortably off, but not with millions to spare.

I mean, my house is worth around that (mortgaged), and my dh would raise eyebrows if I donated so much as £500 to a political party. Let alone £1.5m!

She seemingly hasn't earnt it or inherited it. So it seems like someone has given it to her to give to Reform. That someone didn't want to give it to Reform in his own name. If this is true, it's fraud apparently. Who is it? This could be so big.

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/police-investigate-reform-donations-by-mother-of-fraudster-who-bankrolled-farage-3kd826j7h

That’s why her son went to prison. Money laundering, so she’s clearly getting it from elsewhere. Reform are in deep shit if found guilty. That’s why they are so fond of crypto. Criminals use it because it’s supposedly untraceable.

For God’s sake, I keep forgetting I can’t mention the C word and can’t be bothered to type the whole post out again 🤣

So that's why my thread got hidden till mnhq could look at it!

Yes I think you're right that it's laundered money but who from ultimately, and why Reform?

I mean there are some Reform policy ideas i could have got on board with (not all) but this is just so dodgy. They just can't be trusted to do anything in the public interest if they're in the pay of some anonymous money-lords.

Why is Farage so rattled at the moment? It's not the media criticism, he's long used to that, he used to thrive on it. Is it that his secret boss is giving him a hard time to shut down this scrutiny asap?

I thought maybe the money was just a gift from her son that she then decided to donate but there's no way you'd donate over a million pounds to anyone if your own house was worth less than that. A cottage worth about 750k is just so ordinary, you'd want to upgrade it if you had that kind of money. So she clearly doesn't have true control/ownership of the money or she'd have spent some of it on herself.

Interesting. I didn't know much about her and just assumed she was properly rich.

But what you say doesn't sound like she's in the right league to have £1.5 million sloshing around to give away because she just fancied it.

But who knows? More info needed.. and doubtless to come.

Her son.

George has been a friend and supporter of Farage for a decade.

i don't get why this is such a story.

But why is her son giving her money for Farage rather than just donating himself?

Yes exactly.

The only (rich) people that want Reform to win are those that would benefit from their policies. So either a millionaire that wants new legislation (or removal/relaxing of current legislation) tax breaks, government contract, etc. Or it could be a hostile foreign nation that wants to destabilise the West. Farage would happily take money from both.

The money has probably changed hands multiple times before making it to Farage.

I don’t find those things in themselves suspicious. She may have tonnes of her own/family money tucked away and prefer a smallish home if she lives alone. I know someone who lives in a small cottage and has had a huge trust fund all her life.

Obviously there’s plenty else about the case that is suspicious and it’s hardly unheard of for crooks to do things in their family’s names if it makes sense to them (il)legally,

Your own mum, a retired stylist lives in a little humble cottage and you have multiple millions of pounds spare.

"Here mum, take this. Only you can't spend any of it on yourself, you've got to give it all to my friend Nigel".

Yeah right. The ratios are all off. It's just not plausible

That's because he's not a UK resident, the article explains that. But it's still not enough of an explanation. If he is so wealthy that he has millions spare, then he's a nearly-billionaire. But his Mum's lifestyle doesn't match that at all. They're clearly not no-contact.

Conclusion- that money comes from someone else, a third person, that both the Cottrells are answering to.

I'm not going to read it but he did write a book called How to Launder Money. I suspect the answers are there in plain sight.

Funnily, I put the book title into Google to check that was right and the Gemini answer told me it couldn't tell me that 😄

Your friend with a huge trust fund would give £1.5m to a political party? £1.5m. Not £1,500. To a political party, not their former school or local hospice or even Macmillan cancer nurses.

There's huge and there's huge. I also know people with "huge" trust funds who live relatively frugally so it lasts. They're not giving millions away to the likes of Nigel Farage.

No, this is not like that.

Does anyone have a share token for the article?

No, but here’s a non paywall link

Edit: doesn’t seem to work!

Well to be fair we don't know yet.

But it certainly looks, um, of interest. Worth investigating.

Try this

https://www.bypasspaywallreader.com/search.html?url=https%3A%2F%2Fremovepaywalls.com%2Fhttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.thetimes.com%2Fuk%2Fpolitics%2Farticle%2Fpolice-investigate-reform-donations-by-mother-of-fraudster-who-bankrolled-farage-3kd826j7h

Thanks!

Montenegro.

No one has worked it out yet.

George was dating Georgia Toffolo throughout this time. Another unexamined link.

the papers don't have it yet

George and Fiona Cottrell have been interviewed under caution. Is the house of cards starting to wobble?
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/jul/10/george-and-fiona-cottrell-understood-to-have-been-interviewed-under-caution-by-met-police

Sorry, @Notmycircusnotmyotter , please could you explain the significance of Georgia Toffolo?

I've looked her up but am none the wiser.

I'm glad to hear it. You can't just suddenly acquire millions of pounds out of nowhere and then give it to a political party.

When dh and I put a deposit on our first flat, our parents each gave us a few £k to contribute to the deposit. My mum lives abroad and isn't a UK resident or UK citizen, so she was sending me the money from abroad. Gosh, both our mortgage provider and our conveyancer insisted on seeing all sorts of proof of where she'd got that money (easily proven from her payslips etc) but that was tiny small change compared to this.

The people vs the establishment indeed. They're people alright, not my kind of people thanks.

If "the establishment" means law-abiding transparency, I'll take the establishment any day.