A city worker who “dreamt about being like James Bond” but volunteered to spy for Russia when he ran out of money has been jailed for seven years.
Howard Phillips, 65, from Harlow, Essex, told two officers posing as Russian agents he wanted to work in intelligence to avoid a “nine-to-five” office job after clearing out his savings.
He also handed over the home address and landline for Grant Shapps, then the defence secretary, during the undercover MI5 sting.
Phillips was found guilty in July of assisting what he believed to be Russian intelligence service agents, in breach of the National Security Act.
Now he’s been jailed for seven years after offering to provide logistical support for Russian agents across the world in the increasingly desperate hope it would bail him out of his money worries.
Sentencing him at Winchester Crown Court, Justice Cheema-Grubb told him: “You were prepared to betray your country for money. I sentence you on the basis you are not ideologically driven but motivated by money.
“You took a grave risk and didn’t care what damage you caused. Through the deliberate work of the security services you were caught before providing material assistance to a foreign intelligence service so the danger was averted.”
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In a victim impact statement, Sir Grant said he had welcomed Phillips into his home after moving to the area in 2002.
“I feel it has been a complete breach of trust by Mr Phillips,” he said.
“He chose to take whatever information he had and attempted to sell it to a foreign intelligence service thereby, wantonly, putting myself, my family and ultimately the country at risk.
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“My personal details provided by Mr Phillips are extremely sensitive and again I would say that any disclosure places myself and my family at a very real and serious risk.
“What is unacceptable is one individual’s reckless behaviour exposing my entire family to the extremely serious risks that come from foreign intelligence service’s activities.
“The UK has enough to do dealing with external threats, it’s shocking to find that someone in the neighbourhood would think it a good idea to try to sell information about the UK defence secretary to an unfriendly foreign state.”
The elaborate undercover operation saw two MI5 agents adopting Russian accents to pose as members of Russia’s foreign intelligence agency, the SVR. Phillips had never heard of the organisation.
Phillips also volunteered his services to the Russians in a letter intercepted by MI5.
In WhatsApp messages, he masqueraded as a British citizen called David Marshall – “a British citizen, born in the UK to British parents” with “several situations of utmost benefit to convey and offer”.
He further boasted of having “connections in high places”.
He was then asked to prepare a document explaining how he could assist Russian intelligence and deliver it to London on a USB stick on 4 April last year.
Then, on 26 April, he met the MI5 agents, who called themselves “Sasha” and “Dima”, at the London Bridge Hotel, where he was filmed from multiple angles.
His arrest followed on 16 May, when he was apprehended by plain-clothed officers at a coffee shop near King’s Cross railway station.
Jocelyn Ledward KC, prosecuting, said Phillips was “struggling financially” and seeking “interesting and exciting work for easy money”.
Phillips, who is divorced with four grown-up children, became an insolvency practitioner in 1986 and had worked for Bond Partners in the City.
He became self-employed in 2011 and then worked as a manager in the charity sector, before moving to GDPR compliance in “semi-retirement” in 2018.
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But he struggled to re-enter the workforce as his savings ran low, saying he’d sent out hundreds of CVs and adding: “I was avidly seeking employment but none was forthcoming.”
Among the places he applied was MI5, where he applied in 2014, and again in 2024, saying he “wanted to act in the service of my country” – but he found they wanted candidates with a university degree.
Ex-wife, Amanda, told the court that Phillips became “infatuated” with spy books and films and had “over the top dreams” about “serving this country somewhere and being James Bond.”
“He loved James Bond and the image, the suit and the nice car, being someone you could respect, someone people liked, someone special,” she added.
In a series of increasingly fanciful letters he offered his advice to Conservative ministers on how to influence the public, and to Hollywood actors – including Tom Cruise and Jennifer Anniston – asking to meet and talk about how to get into the movie business.
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But his finances were “decreasing rapidly”, and he used up all the money he had gained from the sale of a property.
He had a balance of £25,126.09 in his bank accounts on 29 April 2023 but by 20 May 2024 it had dropped to £374.48 after using his savings to pay off Santander credit card bills.
Phillips denied materially assisting a foreign intelligence service to carry out UK-related activities under the National Security Act 2023, but was found unanimously guilty by a jury at Winchester Crown Court after four hours of deliberation.
