JAIL now looks all but certain for CWM fraudster Jody Smart after Spain’s Supreme Court threw out out her appeal against a four-year prison sentence.
Spain’s highest court ruled her appeal inadmissible this week, meaning judges refused to even examine her arguments rather than hearing and rejecting them.
Judges also ordered Smart to pay costs for a second time, on top of the compensation she already owes her victims.
Her only realistic option left is Spain’s Constitutional Court, which does not retry criminal cases but instead examines whether a defendant’s fundamental rights were breached during the original trial.
She has 30 days to file, but lawyers close to the case say the court may not even agree to hear it.
Smart, sole director of the collapsed Continental Wealth Management (CWM), was convicted in April 2025 of deliberately swindling two of her victims out of a combined €370,000.
The court found that Smart persuaded one victim, Tim Benjamin, to pay CWM €300,000 for a Costa Blanca property that never existed.
When Benjamin went to complete the purchase, Smart told him the money was gone.
A second victim, Sally Anne Hodgson, was working as an administrative assistant for CWM when Smart talked her into lending the firm €70,000.
Smart promised to repay the loan within 12 months plus interest, then sacked Hodgson weeks before CWM collapsed without paying back a cent.
A third complainant, Mark Davidson, was defrauded of €800,000 but died before the verdict was delivered.
The High Court of Valencia upheld Smart’s conviction and sentence on appeal in October 2025, ordering her to pay costs for the first time.
“It’s great to have the judgment backed by the High Court of Valencia and it means Jody is now just a short hop from jail,” Carlos Coll Miralles, the lawyer representing her victims, told the Olive Press at the time.
Smart’s conviction came nine years after CWM collapsed in 2017, leaving hundreds of mostly British expats out of pocket.
The firm, run out of the Costa Blanca, is thought to have cost its clients around €35 million in total.
A wider criminal case, covering roughly 1,000 alleged CWM victims, collapsed at a court in Denia in 2023, when the judge ruled there was ‘insufficient evidence’ to prosecute four other executives.
READ MORE: EXCLUSIVE: Inside the Costa Blanca’s €35m CWM pension fraud – as justice is finally served
Smart’s former partner, Darren Kirby, has been named throughout the case as a central figure in the scheme, but has never faced conviction.
Company secretary Alan Gorringe was tried alongside Smart in the Alicante case but died before the verdict was delivered.
Separate civil damages claims linked to the CWM collapse are still progressing through the courts in the Isle of Man.
Smart continues to run Oceana, an upmarket beach club and restaurant in Benissa, an inland town on the Costa Blanca, and has posted from holidays in Venice, Greece and Thailand over recent years.
Benjamin and Hodgson have waited years for any of the money to materialise.
But while Smart seems to have the funds for endless obscenely expensive appeals, the pair are unlikely to ever see the money.
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