Fake will-writing invoices drained cancer charity funds earmarked for research
A solicitor’s fake invoicing scheme diverted Cancer Research UK money away from cancer work and into a fraud built on non-existent clients, undeliverable emails and addresses that led nowhere. Michael Fogg, 47, of Cyncoed in Cardiff, submitted invoices for wills he had not written, then watched the charity pay out thousands before the discrepancies began to surface. The case ended with a suspended prison sentence at Newport Crown Court, but the financial damage had already been measured in very concrete clinical terms: the hearing was told the sum lost could have funded 48 biopsies.
The fraud was not complex in design. It relied on paperwork that looked routine from the outside and on the credibility of a solicitor operating inside a longstanding charity scheme. Cancer Research UK has run its free will writing service for 25 years, allowing supporters to leave gifts in their wills while paying solicitors a fixed fee for the legal work. In practice, that arrangement only functions when the legal services are real, the beneficiaries are real, and the records line up with living people at real addresses.
They did not.
How the charity uncovered the pattern
Fogg and his company, Trusting Willpower Ltd, joined the free will service in 2021. On 6 July 2023, concerns were raised inside the charity after the legal partnership team noticed irregularities and escalated them to the counter-fraud manager. The warning signs multiplied quickly. Cancer Research UK sends thank-you cards to people who pledge more than £100 in their wills, and 32 such cards went out to individuals Fogg said he had represented. Some of those recipients responded that they had never used him to draft a will at all.
That first round of checks triggered wider scrutiny. The charity had paid Trusting Willpower Ltd £18,150, out of invoices totalling £29,090. The remaining payments were held back while the organisation tried to verify whether the claimed clients were genuine. When investigators began checking email addresses and physical addresses, the record started to fall apart. Emails bounced back as undeliverable. Some addresses did not exist. Other people contacted by the charity denied using Fogg’s services or said they were not living at the address provided.
The numbers were stark. Cancer Research UK sent 250 emails to people Trusting Willpower Ltd claimed had made wills. Fifty-eight were undeliverable. Of the broader group later contacted in relation to 260 wills, eight people confirmed they had used Fogg’s services, while 41 said they had not. Investigators also found 172 clients with invalid phone numbers and 38 with invalid email addresses. These were not small clerical errors in a large caseload. They were the kind of defects that strip a transaction of any credibility.
Fraud by false representation inside a trusted service
Prosecutor Charles Archer said the total fraud was based on 40 invoices and amounted to £4,800. That figure sat beneath the larger invoice total, but the courtroom picture remained the same: a solicitor had exploited a position of trust to extract charity funds for work that did not exist. Judge Carl Harrison was direct in his assessment, telling Fogg: “You had a position in the legal profession which allowed you to fund your greed.”
The fraud also had a wider symbolic weight because of the setting. Cancer Research UK’s free will scheme exists to help supporters put their affairs in order while linking estate planning to future support for cancer research and patient services. When a solicitor abuses that channel, the harm is not limited to balance sheets. It also corrodes confidence in a service designed to help people make decisions about legacy giving at a vulnerable point in life.
In victim impact evidence, the charity’s counter-fraud manager, Phil Sapey, said the organisation received no benefit from the service in this case and that the false claims represented funds that would have gone toward curing cancer and supporting people living with the disease. The court also heard that the money paid to Fogg could have funded 48 biopsies, a reminder that administrative fraud in healthcare philanthropy can be translated directly into lost diagnostic capacity.
Sentencing, remorse and the cost of abuse of trust
Fogg pleaded guilty to fraud by false representation at an earlier hearing. At sentencing, he received 10 months’ imprisonment, suspended for two years, along with a 24-day rehabilitation activity requirement and 120 hours of unpaid work. The court heard that he was of previous good character and no longer works as a solicitor.
In mitigation, his barrister James Tucker said Fogg felt “deeply ashamed” of his conduct and described him as a family man and parent with health problems including a brain injury, epilepsy, anxiety and depression. Those personal details did not alter the central legal finding: the fraud involved deliberate misrepresentation, repeated false invoicing and a sustained attempt to secure payment from a charity that believed it was funding legitimate legal work.
The case leaves a plain lesson for any charitable or healthcare-adjacent payment system that relies on trusted professionals. A free will scheme depends on verifiable identities, traceable clients and auditable work products. Once those links break, the charity is left paying for phantom services while intended beneficiaries lose resources that should have supported cancer research, patient care and the infrastructure behind both.