A man found guilty of aiding a foreign intelligence service after handing over personal details to the Secenecy Secretary, Give undercover officers who he believed to be Russian agents.
Howard Phillips, 66, was convicted in July after hearings that he was looking for “quick money” when he offered his services to undercover officers, known as Dima and Sasha.
Phillips, from Harlow, in Essex, handed a USB stick containing details relating to Shapps, including his home address and the location of his private plane, to one of the officers, the trial heard. He told the jury he was Jewish and met Shaps in a synagogue as his local MP in the Helwyn Hatfield constituency.
Phillips, who told fake Russian agents he was retired and working on insolvency, was arrested in May 2024 and charged under the National Security Act.
Sending him to Winchester Crown Court, Judge, Grs Justice Cheeme-Grubb, said: “You are prepared to betray your country.
“You took a dangerous risk and did not care what harm you caused. Through the deliberate act of the Security Services you were caught before the material aid was provided.
In a victim impact statement read in court, Shapps said she was “shocked” when she was briefed on Phillips’ activities and worried for her family’s safety.
“He chose to take any information he had and try to sell it to a foreign intelligence agency, thus, my family and ultimately the country’s danger,” Shaps said.
“My personal details provided by Mr. Phillips are very sensitive and I would also like to say that any disclosure would put myself and my family in real and grave danger.
“What is unacceptable is someone’s reckless behavior that exposes my entire family to the grave dangers that come from a foreign intelligence operation.
“The UK has enough to deal with external threats, it’s shocking that someone in the neighborhood would consider an unfriendly state to be in the UK’s defence.”
In court, Phillips admitted to “exposing” Russian agents and hoping to pass information about Russian States to Israel, as he believed it would “benefit” the State.
The ex-wife of the accused, Amanda Phillips, told the court during the trial that she “dreams about making films to do with Mi5 and Mi6 as she is” infatiated with it “.
He was struggling financially and in the process of applying for a job with the UK border force when he was approached by undercover officers. He wrote to the Russian embassy offering his services.
In March 2024, while job application and pre-employment checks were being conducted, Phillips exchanged emails with undercover officers, believing them to be intelligence officers.
Phillips agreed to provide a document on a USB stick explaining what he could offer them by placing it in the exposed seat shaft of a bicycle that was located on a corner of Polygon Road in the St Pancras and Euston area of London.
In May of that year, undercover officers met Phillips at a Costa cafe in West Thurrock where he told them he could give them personal details for SHALPS.