For a quarter of a century, Cancer Research UK has quietly offered an extraordinary act of generosity to the public: a free will-writing service. The idea is as practical as it is profound. Solicitors prepare legally binding wills for supporters, and the charity pays the bill—£120 plus VAT for an individual will and £170 plus VAT for mirror wills, the kind often taken out by couples who want to leave their estate to one another in the same terms. For a person living with cancer, or for someone who has watched a loved one suffer from it, making a will is not just an administrative chore. It is a way to reach across time, to say to the future, “I want my death to help those who need it.” The scheme is built on trust: trust that the solicitors are honest, trust that the wills are made in good faith, and trust that every pound taken from the charity is spent on parchment, so to speak, not on padding someone’s pocket. The program has run for twenty-five years because that trust has, with rare exceptions, been honored. It has become one of the most quietly effective tools in cancer research fundraising, allowing ordinary people to leave a legacy long after they are gone. But every now and then, a person arrives who mistakes that trust for an opportunity to exploit it—and the courtroom heard one such story.
That person was a man by the name of Fogg, and his company, Trusting Willpower Ltd, joined the free will service in 2021. The name of his firm now carries a bitter irony. Trusting willpower is exactly what the charity was doing. It had accepted him into a scheme designed for professionals who believed in the cause, or at least who wanted to use their legal expertise for something good. Prosecutor Charles Archer set out the shape of the case in court, describing how Fogg and his company became part of the carefully structured service. He would draft wills for people who wanted to remember Cancer Research UK in their legacies, or perhaps simply needed a will and were directed toward the charity’s supported network. The charity would then reimburse him for the work, at rates that were modest and fixed. This was not a get-rich-quick arrangement. It was a partnership meant to cover the solicitor’s reasonable costs while allowing the volunteer supporter to get professional advice at no personal expense. The real value of the scheme was not in the fees but in the relationships it built between the charity and the public. Each will represented a person who, even at the end of life, wanted to contribute to beating cancer. Fogg’s involvement may have looked unremarkable at first. But within about two years, something was deeply wrong.
The alarm bells began, as they often do in fraud cases, with something that seems almost sentimental: thank-you cards. Cancer Research UK, like many charities, has a practice of sending such cards to supporters who pledge more than £100 in their wills. It is a small, courteous gesture—a way of saying thank you to someone who has chosen to leave a gift to future science. But when the charity sent out thirty-two of those cards to individuals whom Fogg claimed he had prepared wills for, some of those people responded with confusion. They said they had never asked Fogg to draft their wills. They had never met him for a consultation. They had certainly never made a pledge through him. Imagine the moment these people opened their mail: a card from a cancer charity, thanking them for a bequest they did not know they had made. There might have been shock, perhaps even alarm about identity theft or a family member making decisions behind their backs. In truth, they were among the first to stumble across a far more cynical story. On 6 July 2023, Kelly Brooks, Cancer Research UK’s legal partnership manager, raised concerns with the charity’s counter-fraud manager, Phil Sapey. Brooks had noticed the discrepancy and sensed that something more than a clerical error was at work. She was right. The thank-you cards had been intended as tokens of appreciation. Instead, they became evidence that Fogg may have been inventing clients and perhaps fabricating instructions.
When Fogg was confronted and asked for an explanation, he did not admit any wrongdoing. Instead, he insisted that he had received instructions to prepare wills on behalf of the individuals in question. In other words, he claimed that these were real clients, that he had the paperwork, that the charity should not worry. It was the sort of explanation that might have worked in a world where thank-you cards did not reach the people they were meant to thank. But the evidence said otherwise. The invoices told their own story, and it was a sobering one. Trusting Willpower Ltd sent Cancer Research UK a bill for £29,090. The charity, by the time the concerns were raised, had already paid out £18,150 of that amount. The remaining money was withheld, wisely, pending clarification. The withheld sum may not sound enormous in the scale of a major charity, but it represents something more than pounds and pence. It represents research that will not be done, lab time that was never booked, and perhaps the early stages of a clinical trial or a supportive care program that will now have to be delayed. Every financial abuse of a charity is, in the end, an assault on the mission itself. And the mission here is urgent: finding ways to detect, treat, and cure cancers that continue to claim millions of lives. The fact that the charity held back the remaining £10,940 shows caution and responsibility, but it also suggests that the charity’s staff understood they were dealing with something that could poison the entire scheme if left unchecked.
The deeper human damage in this case goes beyond the money. Charities survive on goodwill. Cancer Research UK does not have the power to compel donations; it must earn them. People give because they believe that their donation will be handled responsibly, and that belief is fragile. When a solicitor who joins a free will service is accused of using that service to generate false invoices, the public is right to feel betrayed. It is a betrayal not just of the charity’s finances, but of everyone who has ever made, or planned to make, a will in support of cancer research. Think of the older person at home, writing down their wishes, imagining a future where fewer people die from cancer. Think of the couple making mirror wills, trusting that their final gifts will be used to support a cause that mattered to them. They did not expect to become instruments in a billing scam. They did not expect their names to be attached to wills they never made. The emotional toll is difficult to quantify. Some recipients of those thank-you cards may have felt embarrassed, confused, or even guilty. Others may have felt a sudden, unsettling sense that their own vulnerability had been exploited. The legal profession, too, suffers when one of its members is accused of such behavior. Solicitors are held to high standards of honesty and integrity because they handle people’s most sensitive affairs, including their wills. An abuse like this one chips away at the trust that the entire profession depends on. The court heard that Cancer Research UK had operated its scheme for twenty-five years—a generation of careful practice, oversight, and mutual respect. One case cannot erase that legacy, but it can cast a long and painful shadow.
In the end, this case is not just about one company or one defendant. It is about accountability and the protection of kindness. Fraudsters are often caught not because their schemes are elaborate, but because they underestimate the people they are trying to deceive. The charity’s staff paid attention to the small detail of thirty-two thank-you cards, and that attention ended up exposing a pattern of alleged dishonesty. That vigilance is something to be grateful for. But the case also reminds us how easily trust can be exploited, especially in a setting where people are expected to be good. Cancer Research UK’s free will service is a beautiful idea, but it is also a vulnerable one. It relies on solicitors to be truthful about the work they have done, and it relies on charities to verify, check, and challenge when something feels wrong. This case will likely lead to stronger safeguards, more rigorous verification, and perhaps an even greater emphasis on checking that every will associated with the charity is genuine. There is a quiet tragedy here, too. Fogg’s alleged actions may make it harder for honest solicitors to participate in such schemes, and harder for charities to offer them without fear of abuse. But the greatest tragedy would be if people stopped making wills in favor of cancer research because they no longer trust the system. The fight against cancer is long and difficult, and it depends on the accumulated generosity of ordinary people. The court will decide the legal consequences of the evidence it has heard, but the human lesson is already clear: an institution’s most precious asset is not its money or its brand. It is the simple, honest trust that allows people to give with open hearts. Protecting that trust is just as important as raising the funds to fight the disease itself.