Denise paid £26,691 to Andrew Milne. Now she wants to tell her story.

“It broke my heart, that was my savings towards a new car,” one woman who paid Milne tens of thousands of pounds told us. “He has just wiped me out.”

In all our coverage of Andrew Milne, you may have noticed something missing: the names and faces of those who paid him. That quote, which ran in our first article, was unattributed, like all the others.

It isn’t hard to understand why. Paying someone £25,000 isn’t something anyone wants to boast about. There’s an awful lot of shame around, if you know where to look.

On Friday, I called up one retired couple who welcomed me into their living room when all this began. They had been selling their home when Milne got in touch with his demands. Though their solicitors were clear that they didn’t need to pay, they couldn’t bear the thought of the young family moving in having to face Milne as their freeholder. So they stumped up the cash.

I asked them if they now wanted to go on the record. A pause, then: “we’d rather just leave it behind us, Daniel.” Who could blame them?

But after South Yorkshire Police announced this week that they have launched a criminal investigation into Milne, one woman has decided she’s happy to be identified.

This is Denise Jeffcock. Those were her words in our first piece: the broken heart, the unbought car, the wiping out. Why didn’t she want to go public before? “I was so frightened before that he would come back at me, because he’s a clever man,” she says. “He’s a solicitor. I’m nobody.”

Denise, we think, was the first. She got in touch with Milne, not the other way around – after he had bought the freeholds, but before he had started sending letters. Denise knew that she owed a bit of overdue ground rent on her house in Bradway, so contacted her new freeholder to pay it. And yes, there had been a home alteration, not permitted in the lease. “Obviously, I had to fess up about the loft,” she says. “And then it all just just spiralled from there.” 

Terrifying court papers, increasing demands, threats to demolish the loft, constant time pressure. Added to that, Denise’s beloved mother-in-law Pat had recently died of breast cancer. “My head was all over the place with what was going off,” Denise remembers.

She never stood a chance. “He’s really gone to town on me,” Denise says ruefully. “I’m a victim, basically. One hundred, thousand, percent.”

A single page of one of Milne’s multiple letters shows the kind of aggressive communication Denise was subject to. Responding to a compromise offer that Denise had made via her solicitors, Milne said that: “your client’s property is now completely unsaleable… Your offers are of no interest and are rejected.”

He also accused Denise of badmouthing him to an estate agent (something Denise denies) saying: “if there is any more such behaviour, there will be an additional £50,000 surcharge.” He said that Denise had “got [herself] into this situation due to pure greed,” and added: “our client has a £10 million portfolio and does not need to have any dealings with rude people or time wasters”. When I ask Denise for her view of Milne, she says: “[He has] no thought for the working people, for people who worked hard all their lives… he’s the big man, and we’re the minions.”

Denise knows exactly how much she paid Milne. “It was £26,691,” she says, without hesitation. That, plus her solicitors’ fees, which she’s still paying off. Her life savings have been decimated, so they’re allowing her to pay the debt back on a monthly plan.

“I block the money out now,” Denise says. “I try and not think about it, because it just depresses me so much.” And she’s put her home on the market. “I need to get out of this house now. It’s just” — she pauses for a moment — “it’s just tainted.”

I ask her what she would like to say to Milne. “Give me my money back,” she replies.

Despite her anger, Denise is now feeling more positive. As we reported this week, South Yorkshire Police have launched a criminal investigation into Milne. Denise tells me she was “jumping up for joy”, when she heard the news. “He made my life hell,” she says. “And I hope he gets his just desserts.” (Andrew Milne has denied all allegations of wrongdoing.)

It’s now six months since we first covered this story. It began with Milne telling us he would “definitely bring proceedings for Defamation and Malicious Falsehood if you publish such complete and malicious lies.” He obviously expected that this would stop us publishing. We didn’t back down, and our work brought a chorus of condemnation, with MPs criticising Milne in parliament, the national press covering it, and police looking into the matter. Now they are formally investigating whether Milne committed blackmail and fraud through his “very aggressive” letters.

And what of Milne himself? In the last week we’ve heard that more letters have been sent out, now offering to sell freeholds for just £3,000 — surprisingly low, for a man who claims to have a £10 million portfolio. It’s still about ten times what he paid for them, but an awful lot less than his original asking price. The resistance of Sheffielders seems to be wearing him down.

This is almost certainly The Tribune’s last piece of any length on Milne, at least for a while. If the criminal investigation progresses much further, we will become very limited in what we can publish, for legal reasons. If it doesn’t — well, we think we’ve told the story. Readers can make up their own minds about what happened in Sheffield in Autumn 2025.

We wanted to end with Denise. She, and others like her, are at the heart of this. Those who felt they had no choice but to hand over tens of thousands of pounds, and are still feeling the devastating impact. But now, hopeful that something might be done to put things right.