Even if a financial fraudster has been convicted and has paid the balance of a confiscation order - the main instrument of prosecutors in their efforts to recover the proceeds of crime - the courts can force him to pay more later even if he inherits it innocently. This is the story of Benjamin Wilson.

Judge Grieve QC, sitting at the Central Criminal Court, has increased the value of a confiscation order made against Benjamin Wilson, a convicted fraudster, from £1 to £31,905.33. Wilson will have to pay the new amount in 28 days or face a further 14 months in prison.

In 2014 Wilson was sentenced at Southwark Crown Court to seven years’ imprisonment for defrauding more than 300 investors of more than £21 million. He had pled guilty to fraud, forgery and operating a collective investment scheme without authorisation.

The court found that his total benefit from his criminal conduct amounted to £21.84 million. However, due to his bankruptcy and civil proceedings in the High Court brought by the FCA, it was accepted by all parties that he did not have assets available to him at that time to pay. The court, for some reason or other, then made a confiscation order of £1, perhaps to keep in practice.

While Wilson was in prison, his mother died intestate. The UK's Financial Conduct Authority discovered that he was likely to have an interest in her estate and that he had received a payment from the John Lewis Partnership, her former employer, representing death benefits due to him from her pension scheme.

Section 22 POCA allows a prosecutor to invite a court to reconsider the amount available to a defendant and to increase the value of his confiscation order if it considers it just to do so. As with all confiscation orders, the assets available do not have to represent the proceeds of crime and they can have been acquired after the making of the original confiscation order.

The FCA obtained a restraint order against Wilson in November 2015 in order to preserve the value of assets in which he had an interest while it investigated further.