SEVEN people who lost money when the Hangman’s Inn thrift club cash was stolen faced a Petty Debts Court action against themselves yesterday. All denied owing money totalling some £2,200 to DNA Recoveries.

DNA director Conrad Ceillam said the defendants were signatories to a letter instructing his company to recover the money from the pub’s former licensee, Lynn de Garis, who was jailed in May for stealing it.

The debt had to be registered against a house owned by Mrs de Garis and this had entailed instructing Advocates Ozannes to act on DNA’s behalf.

Further legal fees had been incurred when Mrs de Garis had changed her bail address.

The defendants claimed they did not ask DNA to instruct the advocates.

‘They’ve given us a bill for something we never asked them to do,’ said one.

Another said the group had never asked for anything to be done beyond taking out the original summons.

Mr Ceillam said his company usually would not charge for its services but take a percentage of the debt it recovered.

‘But when we were de-instructed and we knew we would not even get back our advocates’ costs, we imposed a charge of our own,’ he said.

All of the defendants were summoned separately for differing amounts. Two married couples were summoned jointly.

Assistant-Magistrate Cherry McMillen said there would be no ‘across the board’ decision – each case would be dealt with separately.

It would, however, be useful to deal with all the cases on the same day.

She warned that any witnesses called must appear in person – letters from them could not be considered as evidence.

She adjourned the case to 9.30am on Wednesday 23 August.

* Mrs de Garis was jailed for 21 months for stealing £19,148 from her former pub’s thrift club.