Where did fridge-carrying fundraiser's donations go?

To the public, he was the fundraiser known for carrying a fridge on his back for hundreds of miles for charity. But, nearly five years after Thomas Judge started collecting money for mental health support, a group of former volunteers and staff say they have seen no evidence any of it has been used for charitable causes.

Thomas Judge is known on Teesside as the man who tackles charity walks with a fridge on his back to "represent the weight someone with mental health problems carries every day".

When he set off on his most recent expedition from Middlesbrough to Benidorm in August last year, he told the BBC the charity had raised £28,000. At the end of the walk in November a further £10,000 had been added, he said.

A Just Giving page for online donations said these would support First Contact UK Mental Health to "continue offering suicide prevention, early intervention and community-based mental health support". The funds were transferred to the charity's bank account.

Asked for evidence they had been used for charitable causes, Judge said the advertised projects were long-term. He said everyone who gave money for the 2025 trip understood they were donating to fund the walk itself - and the walks raised awareness of mental health challenges.

Judge, a former businessman from Stockton-on-Tees, approached Stacey Baldam in 2025. Her 16-year-old son Cameron had taken his own life and she had set up the Cameron Laidlaw Foundation with the intention of helping prevent the same happening to other young people.

She said Judge had offered to help, describing to her how his organisation offered respite breaks and equine therapy, and then used her foundation's name to promote the fridge walk to Benidorm in memory of her son.

But she feels he "used Cameron's death for his own platform, for his own benefit".

"It has become clear to me that he often makes false promises and fails to follow through on them," she said. "Despite his initial promises to support young people and their mental health, none of these commitments materialised."

Judge started fundraising under the name First Contact UK in 2021. A Go Fund Me page asked for sponsorship for his first - fridgeless - walk to Benidorm the following year.

He said the walk was funded entirely by him and his family and he had been trying to raise £30,000 to buy a "respite caravan" for people living with mental health problems, and their carers. The page shows £7,604 was donated.

Judge continued to fundraise, often using collection tins, some of which still sit by tills in businesses around Teesside.

He and volunteers would also collect cash near Middlesbrough and Newcastle football grounds on match days. On the journey down to the ferry before their second Benidorm trip, they took their tins to the grounds of Leeds United, Oxford United, Nottingham Forest and Southampton.

Judge has attributed any issues regarding the management of funds to others. He denies any wrongdoing and said he acted in accordance with the charity's constitution. He said his estimates of money collected were given in "good faith" and were not intended to represent exact figures or "monies held in any single bank account".

The Charity Commission said it had "opened a regulatory compliance case to assess concerns raised" about the charity.

The charity's website claimed it offered services such as respite caravans, equine therapy, group exercise sessions and walking breaks. But the BBC has been unable to find any examples of its money being spent on services for local people living with mental health problems.

Judge said all funds were used for charitable purposes, specifically raising awareness of mental health issues and suicide prevention, and he did not use them for personal benefit. Some advertised objectives were not achieved due to a lack of funds, he said.

But those involved in one event he organised - a walking five-a-side football tournament to help people in the Tees Valley - said this was, in fact, a fundraising event rather than something money was spent on.

Lindsay Phelps is one of a number of staff members and volunteers who left the charity "angry and upset" and "disillusioned" with Judge.

"I think the biggest thing I feel stupid for is getting my family and friends involved," she said.

"They would stand there with a First Contact UK T-shirt on, collecting money. I just felt like I'd let everybody down."

As a former headteacher who had taught Cameron, Phelps met Judge through the teenager's mother and her foundation.

"He said he was going to dedicate the walk to Benidorm to Cameron and wanted First Contact UK Mental Health to work with the foundation and help them," she said.

"I responded to a call for volunteers on Facebook and got involved that way. Then very, very quickly he asked me to be the CEO of his charity."

Phelps said "everything had to be done in cash" and Judge had "hated" the online donation platform she set up to take card payments for donations. "He didn't like that at all," she said.

When collection tins were used, Phelps said there was "no correlation" between what went out and what came in. She was simply told a total at the end of each day, she said.

"I started looking at the bank account and it was just constant. Like, there'd be £60 a day spent on food and drink, or there would be his Amazon Prime membership," Phelps said. "There were two gym memberships on there too."

First Contact UK Mental Health had been registered as a community interest company in 2023 before being given charity status in June 2025.

"He'd spent over £1,000," Phelps said. "He'd been to Go Outdoors [an outdoor activity retailer] and I asked him for the receipt and he said he didn't need it because the charity didn't start until the charity bank account was set up.

"And I said 'no, the charity starts when we got a charity number'."

The BBC has seen evidence of these transactions. Judge said the gym memberships were for volunteers on the walk, to help them prepare, the Go Outdoors purchases were equipment for the walks, and the meals were for volunteers fundraising for the charity.

Kevin Wilcox was another who had responded to a call for volunteers on Facebook in 2025 and said he had been "sucked in".

They could raise "going on £1,000" a day at a football ground and, at the time, he believed the money was helping people who, like him, suffered with poor mental health.

"[I] believed everything he told me," he said. "He's pulled the wool right over my eyes and thousands of others.

"Not just people who've volunteered and worked for him over the years, it's people in the street. He's so convincing."

Wilcox joined Judge on the second Benidorm walk in August last year, setting off from the Navigation Pub next to Middlesbrough Football Club's ground. The Boro had beaten Sheffield United and, as the crowds flooded out of the stadium past the pub, Judge, Wilcox and a team of volunteers were standing with collection tins.

They then set off on their journey to cheers and clapping, through a balloon arch with confetti cannons. Wilcox made it to Spain, but not to Benidorm.

He had left the trip, he said, after discovering the donations were being used to pay for the journey itself.

"I was completely disgusted when I found that out and straight away I booked a flight home," he said.

Transactions seen by the BBC show the Go Fund Me money from the 2022 walk was transferred to a business bank account set up by Thomas Carroll, an associate of Judge and director of the limited company First Contact Teesside Ltd.

This business was dissolved in July 2023 and Judge and Carroll said money in the bank account had been lost to the Crown after becoming "bona vacantia", a term for funds left in bank accounts when a business closes down, when there is no owner of the money or the owner cannot be found.

The Treasury confirmed the money had been transferred in August 2023 but could not say how much. Neither Carroll nor Judge could give the exact amount, with Carroll suggesting it had been "several thousand pounds" and Judge saying he did not know.

Carroll said he had closed the account in the way he understood was correct, leaving the money in it, and was unable to afford the fee required to reverse the automatic transfer to the Crown. The BBC understands this fee is about £400.

Carroll said he had been too unwell to deal with company business at the time the funds became bona vacantia. He claims a member of staff was supposed to withdraw the funds, but did not. The member of staff disputes this.

The charity's website, which has now been taken down, stated people needed to be referred for support by "NHS services or their GP".

The Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys NHS trust said local departments had "extensive links" with community and voluntary services, to which patients could be referred.

It said it did not keep a central record of referrals to charities and other organisations but was "not aware of any referrals to First Contact Mental Health".