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They were informed of that criminal past when he tried to purchase Bury and again when he bought Scunthorpe, so once they get done with their Hilton investigation, the FA should start investigating its own deficiencies.
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It’d be a grudge if IB were filing these his or herself or alerting the whole of Scunthorpe to them. Just because you want to ignore basic facts and their implications doesn’t mean that IB is wrong for relaying them.
They aren’t incidental, either — these charges are the sort of thing that exmplify what’s happening with the club and are indicative of its financials health and chances of survival.
If you don’t like the posts, feel free to ignore them, but that won’t make it so that anyone with legal authority is doing so.
And another CCJ.
To plagiarise Kate Bush
Oooh he’s here again
The man with a grudge on his back.Just how I feel about IB and his persistent constant agenda, just saying
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It sounds increasingly as if there’s not a lot of funding going on right now as it is.
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As someone just watching from afar and trying to make sense of it all, one thing that’s stuck out to me is that a fair number of the posts on Facebook and even here suggest that fans support Hilton because they fear there is no other alternative.
(Of course, others appreciate specific aspects of his ownership, from this year’s squad to engagement with fans, and that’s fine too.)
So I’m curious, do you think fans’ feelings toward Hilton would shift, especially after the story today, if there were parties interested in purchasing the club from him? Is it the man himself or the idea that he is the one person who would keep the club afloat?
There’s no right or wrong answer, of course, I’m just not in town to get the vibe of it all myself.
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Hi IB,
I can’t speak to any moderator’s decisions, but if it’s information relevant to the ownership, stadium, or anything else to do with the club’s ongoing situation, I’d welcome the opportunity to review it and further research from there. It’ll be in safe and useful hands.
You can email it to me: JordanZakarin@gmail.com. As a journalist, I have no horse in the race, so to speak, and only want to see Iron fans supporting a sustainable club with honest ownership.
Hi Jordan,
I did post the information on the forum yesterday afternoon but it appears to have been deleted by the moderators, unfortunately.
When you start deleting information which is readily available in the public domain, as I demonstrated in my post, it sets a dangerous precedent because people will consider you to be part of the problem, rightly or wrongly. As I said to a few people last week, it doesn’t really come as a surprise to me, especially after reading SST’s post on 11/07/23 regarding his conversation with Hilton. Furthermore, there is nothing in the way of consistency when it comes to the moderating of the site. I could direct the moderators to a contributor on here who is throwing surnames about left, right, and centre with absolutely no supporting evidence and his/her posts remain live.
I rather get the distinct impression that the moderators are keen to establish what I know, they just don’t appear to be so keen for it to be known by their members.
As always, I will remain respectful of their site. It’s their site and they can moderate it as they see fit.
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EFL would have provided one more year of funds, so the £220k number Hilton threw out there was nonsense. It was £70k, he clearly just didn’t want to spend it. His prerogative, but why lie? I’m pretty sure that the supporters on Facebook would have backed him if he’d said that deporting the kids in the academy to Antarctica was the most prudent thing for the club.
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Hilton is the one that blew up the sale. And regardless, you can’t just squat past the end of your lease and issue yourself new leases. That would be utterly insane — nobody would ever vacate a premises or pay rent again. (Politically, that sounds good to me, but there’s no law that currently supports it.)
Hilton has essentially made up this ridiculous clause so that Swann would have to sue to evict him, which would cost Swann money and time. The bluff was called; I don’t think he realized how eager Swann is to file lawsuits.
Nobody who has the money to buy the ground would be doing this. Hilton doesn’t want to show income, and I know for a fact that he spent much of April and May trying desperately to find investors. His reputation now precedes him.
Will Hilton’s lawyers bring all this history up in court plus the gambling addiction
That would work both ways…
Anyhow the purpose of the hearing will be to establish, in the absence of a valid lease issued by the freeholder, if Hilton and Scunthorpe United Football Club Ltd have any legal right to remain at GP.
Who knows what evidence may be submitted or accepted to show the reason for the validity of the seven day lease is due to the uncooperative nature of the land owner to not wanting the sale to proceed because he changes the goal posts when it suits.
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That’s very kind of you to say. The problem we face is that neither of these guys is particularly likable or trustworthy. There’s no good guy here, though general incompetence is not the same as malice.
With regard to the stadium deal and how it fell apart, it was a pretty simple sequence of events that began in early April (this is based on conversations with a number of parties)
1. Hilton asked Swann for an adjustment to the deal, which I think was about payment schedule.
2. Swann said no, unless Hilton agreed to some conditions, which I believe included proving he had the income.
3. Hilton then came back with a list of problems he suddenly found with the ground. The ransom strip was one of them, and he wanted Swann to get it registered, which would have taken months.
4. Swann said instead of that, he would pay for insurance against any problems that could be caused by the unregistered land while Hilton took care of registering it.
5. Fighting, squabbling, negotiations break downHilton, as he keeps flogging, just offered to do the £3m deal “after legals,” which kicks the can further down the road til at least the fall. Given his business history, and the fact that he broke up the last deal and then took the ground hostage, it only makes sense for Swann to ask for a fair amount of money upfront.
I hope nobody takes this as me defending Swann — I got invovled with the club to drive the guy out. He’s miserable and let greed fool him into believing Hilton from the jump. Had he taken the consortium’s deal, he’d be home free with a profit eight months ago and far fewer legal bills.
That said, dealing purely with facts about this deal and case, he’s the one who has the truth on his side.
We don’t, but I don’t doubt Zakarin’s commitment to the club or honesty when stating what he believes to be true. I would with Swann and I am sceptical of Hilton. Though, the latter may be true, I cannot fully place my trust in their best intentions as I would a fan.
Though, I think this strip of land would be sorted by either Swann or Hilton if they weren’t looking for an excuse.
This would only apply it Swann were trying to sell the stadium to somebody that didn’t own the club. Hilton owns the club, so it’s irrelevant.
If Swann wins the case and tries to sell the ground to some unrelated developer, then the community asset clause will kick in and he’ll have to offer to sell it to the community.
If I was buying land and property I wouldn’t buy if a strip of unregistered land was dividing it into two. Surely it is Swann’s responsibility to register it?
It’s not just from him either. Jordan Zakarin has spoken to people who Hilton has borrowed money from in the past and they are not on good terms with him, due to lack of returns of money. OK, this is based on Jordan’s word, so it may be taken with a pinch of salt. However, it all adds in to concerns which make sense given past failed ventures and Company’s House records. Jordan seems a well intentioned guy as well, and provided a lot of info and work which showed up Swann, so I think he is motivated by concern for the club.
Thank you for the kind words and trust. I’m happy to explain more about the Hilton victims with whom I’ve spoken, I’d just prefer to do so in a one on one conversation to make sure I’m respecting their privacy.
As for my intentions, I certainly never anticipated investigating a second owner when I began learning about the club, fans, town, and rotten situation last summer. And I wouldn’t have had a number of people not come to me with some information about Hilton. After watching the tumult with Swann and having felt so welcomed by the fan base from the start, I decided that I couldn’t shrug at the information presented.
My protracted silence was a product of waiting to see how the season turned out, as I didn’t want to create any further turmoil during the crucial run-in. Now seems like the right time to warn folks as much as I can and get the word out in every platform as possible.
In the event that it becomes clear that a phoenix club reoresents the most viable option going forward, count me in to contribute for the initial investment. I only want to see this saga end with a happy ending for Scunny fans.
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Any actual evidence that Hilton tried and failed to get £3.5 million?
IF you were right, then we already know Swann valued the land at £5.2 million in around November 2019 (see May 2021 Shareholder and Fans Update), and property prices have gone up quite a lot since then. You’ve just provided a solid reason to suggest Swann doesn’t actually want to sell…and answered Cliff Byrne’s Right Peg’s question.
At least some of Hilton’s details clearly aren’t made up because we can see them for ourselves.
Swann valued it at £3.5 million, which was already inflated from what independent evaluators told potential buyers at the time. If he wanted even more beforehand, it was perhaps because he hadn’t yet taken out a £1m loan against the property from a dodgy lender, which he did in 2021 or so.
I’ve spoken with folks who Hilton tried to get loans from to buy the land, hence my comment on the collateral he offered.
Again, I’ve got nothing good to say about Peter Swann —- I first got involved with Scunthorpe United to get him out and made whole videos and public appeals that trashed him —- and I’m know he’s a pain in the ass to deal with. But given his own financial problems (some of which I unearthed), I do not think he is trying to not sell the land and stadium. There’s only so much that can be done on it, after all.
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Hilton gave a fairly comprehensive response to the rest of the recent hysterical character assassination also.
Very interesting, which accusations did he address? What were the explanations?
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He doesn’t know one, has no idea who you are and what you did to help get Swann out, obviously. Given you registered on 1 Nov 2022, you’re clearly not a new account. You’ll find LK doesn’t understand this simple fact, as demonstrated by similar responses to other posters who question what Hilton does. A small handful on here don’t take to strangers well (‘it’s a local forum for local people!’) and may abuse and insult you, but many of us will be interested in your take, so welcome Jordan.
Thank you for the very kind words and warm welcome! I’ve been watching along with great interest over the past number of months out of concern for the fans that have been so nice to me — to finally be rid of Swann just to have another disastrous owner would be plain unfair.
I’ve certainly seen reasons to worry, which I largely laid out in my initial post. That said, I’d be thrilled if my suspicions were unfounded, business matters were finally put aside, and see winning football return to a fan base that deserves it more than any other.
Now that I can travel again (was tough with the newborn baby!, I plan to visit and take in a match next season, no matter where the club is playing its home schedule.
I’m not hiding my identity, how many other New York-based Scunthorpe fans with active concern in the finances of ownership do you know?
You must be the guy who featured on Gareth’s Iron Army video when he started in New York and finished back at GP for a game last season yeah🤔
Yep, I’m the guy from the video. Didn’t get out to GP this spring, newborn baby made it hard to get away, but I plan to come watch the club wherever they play this coming season!
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What I’d love for him to be asked is where the money for all of this is coming from. None of his businesses have shown a profit — on paper, filed with HMRC, at least — and many have even failed to pay debts.
Hilton spent all spring trying to get loans from people he’d ripped off in the past, and when that predictably failed, he could not afford Glanford Park and the adjoining land.
Stadiums around the size of GP cost about £20-30m to build even before the price of resources began to soar. How can he afford something 10x the cost of something he couldn’t afford?
If the answer is subsidies from the town, he has a very poor track record there. (See links below for more on that).
Wages are also becoming absurd. I’ve learned that Chapman is on £1200 a week to now be a backup keeper in the NLN.
People may say that it’s Hilton’s private business and who cares so long as he funds the club, but that’s also what was said about Swann, Ron Martin at Southend, and many more. There’s going to be precious little profit should the club ground share this year, so fans are owed an explanation of how the club can spend all this money and where it comes from. If it’s debt on the club, that’s very perilous.
https://www.nottinghampost.com/news/nottingham-news/developers-want-build-bungalows-site-3763232
https://www.derbytelegraph.co.uk/news/local-news/question-mark-over-future-derelict-3921061
https://www.nottinghampost.com/news/nottingham-news/developers-want-build-bungalows-site-3763232
https://www.derbytelegraph.co.uk/news/local-news/question-mark-over-future-derelict-3921061
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