Director of UK CBD Brand Virtutum Limited (which traded in Hull as CBD Asylum) has received a sentence with a suspension for money laundering and fraud.
Alex Hope (41), and Liam Jones (42), his codirector, both plead guilty in Hull Crown Court to fraud on June 20, 2026. Hope, who was convicted separately of money laundering for channeling the proceeds from two fraudulent loans into a series of bank accounts in order to buy property on the Canary Islands, was also convicted.
Hope was a director of Virtutum when the company secured a £56,000 loan from a private lender in 2021. He had earlier, as sole director of the management consultancy A Hope Ltd, fraudulently obtained a £25,000 government-backed Bounce Back Loan in August 2020, declaring a turnover of £100,000 when the company’s accounts showed less than £13,000.
Funds from both loans were laundered through a number of accounts before forming part of a €245,825 payment for a two-storey, semi-detached house in Puerto Calero, Lanzarote, bought in the names of Hope and his wife, according to the Insolvency Service.
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Jones was convicted of one count of fraud over the £56,000 loan. In signing the agreement, both men gave personal guarantees that no litigation was taking place against them, when, the Insolvency Service said, a specialist litigation firm had in fact been pursuing them for around £800,000 since 2019.
Hope was found guilty of two counts each of fraud and money laundering. He also failed to reveal the value of shares of his company while bankrupt. A three-year jail sentence suspended for 3 years was handed down to him, along with an 8-year suspension from the position of company director. In addition, he received 250 hours unpaid labor and a 3-year prison term. Jones was sentenced to a 10 month prison term, suspended for an 18-month period. He also received a 2-year ban on being a director of a business and 100 unpaid hours.
‘Alex Hope deliberately lied about his company’s turnover to secure a Covid loan meant to help businesses survive the pandemic,’ said Mark Stephens, Chief Investigator at the Insolvency Service. ‘He then laundered the proceeds of both fraudulent loans through a string of bank accounts, using the money to help buy a property abroad.’
Virtutum was founded in 2017 during the rapidly expanding and light-regulated CBD market of the UK. It built CBD Asylum, a Hull based retailer for CBD isolates. More than 80 CBD Asylum products, spanning oils, drops, capsules and sweets, had reached ‘validated’ status on the Food Standards Agency’s public register of CBD novel foods, allowing them to remain on sale pending safety assessment, all filed under a single application tied to the US isolate supplier Mile High Labs.
The directors of both companies were declared bankrupt by March 2022. According to the Insolvency Service, it will be seeking the recovery of the funds fraudulently acquired under the Proceeds of Crime Act of 2002.