March was dominated by the trial of former Bermuda Housing Corporation (BHC) worker Terrence Smith who was found guilty of siphoning more than $1.2 million of taxpayers’ money from the organisation’s coffers before the month was out.

After deliberating for almost eight hours, a Supreme Court jury found Smith guilty of 42 counts of obtaining property by false pretences and not guilty of three, on March 29. The total amount of all the charges he faced over the matter was more than $1.3 million.

The court had heard that Smith abused his position of responsibility as property officer to authorise fraudulent payments to a carpenter who submitted fictitious bills for his work.

The 45-year-old creamed off massive profits from the scam, which he spent on living a luxurious life at his mansion in Tee Street, Devonshire.

Kulandra Ratneser, consultant to the the Department of Public Prosecutions, described Smith’s crime during the 19-day trial as “a monstrous fraud”.

Smith stood impassively in the dock as the verdicts were read out and Chief Justice Richard Ground refused to grant him bail.

The judge said: “The jury has found him guilty of a large number of crimes, each of which is serious, and the cumulative effect is massively serious.”

Mr. Justice Ground said the public could lose confidence in the criminal justice system if Smith were granted bail and added: “He faces an almost inevitably substantial prison sentence.”

As Smith was taken away in a prison van, family members, including his wife Veronica, gathered around it in tears. Less than two months later, Smith would be jailed for eight years for the swindle - the longest sentence ever given out for a fraud case in Bermuda.

Smith’s trial heard from more than 40 witnesses and involved more than 400 documents.

The con man was brought to justice after Steven Barbosa, the carpenter who helped him pull off the scam, turned supergrass and testified against him.

Under the promise of immunity from prosecution, Mr. Barbosa told the court how Smith instructed him to lie about the price of his work on the BHC’s homes on numerous occasions between September 2000 and February 2002.

He instructed him how to file fictitious invoices, then signed them off, and told Mr. Barbosa to hand back the overpayments in wads of bank notes - up to $40,000 at a time.

Among the extravagant purchases Smith is said to have made with the dirty cash were a $96,000 movie theatre for his home and a $10,000 fountain for his garden.

Later in the year, an attempt to sell the notorious Tee Street home would fail when bidders fell short of the reserve price.