R v Andrewes: judgment day for CV fraudsters? Case commentary on the Supreme Court decision reported at [2022] UKSC 24

Abstract

Crime pays. Therefore, it is paramount that offenders are not permitted to retain the illicit profits derived from their course of offending. That is the purpose of the criminal law confiscation regime, which applies to a plethora of different offences where the State confiscates the ill-gotten gains the offender has retained after sentencing. This commentary focuses on one of these offences, the colloquially named ‘CV fraud’. A relatively novel phenomenon in English law, CV fraud has come to the fore as a result of R v Andrewes, a recent Supreme Court decision. This commentary assesses this decision and ultimately concludes that while the Supreme Court’s approach is sound in principle, it does not provide a solution which encompasses the broader spectrum of cases falling within the category of CV fraud. The Andrewes approach to the calculation of ‘criminal benefit’ may therefore require considerable adaptation in future cases. Perhaps most importantly, the absence of discussion on causation leaves this corner of the confiscation regime a grey area. This paper sets out to offer a principled solution which might resolve this issue.