A grandmother cleared of fraud charges after spending seven years with the allegations hanging over her, says every part of her life has been "destroyed".
Krista Brown, who was arrested in 2017 and charged three years later, says the stress of not knowing when her trial might be scheduled has affected her "financially, mentally, physically".
The 51-year-old, who denied the charges, says she closed her business and had to rely on benefits.
The case against Ms Brown was eventually dropped by the Crown Prosecution Service last week.
In an interview with OceanNewsUK, Ms Brown, who has been writing about her experience of the criminal justice system under the pseudonym The Secret Defendant on X, formerly Twitter, says she has been through "hell" waiting for her case to come to trial, having pleaded her innocence throughout.
Krista Brown was the managing director of Persona, a recruitment company which she founded in 2008. She says the company had an agreement with HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) to repay unpaid tax in instalments after experiencing some accounting problems.
But in January 2017, Ms Brown says her "nightmare" began, when she was arrested under suspicion of fraud relating to her business and taken to a police station where she says she was questioned for between five and six hours.
"It was a shock," she says. "I thought, 'They're going to realise their mistake' - it was just a matter of time. That's what I thought was going to happen - it just never went like that."
Initially placed on bail and told to surrender her passport, Ms Brown was re-interviewed months later. But it took more than three years before she discovered she was being charged on three counts, including money laundering and not paying National Insurance, in February 2020.
'A bottomless pit'
Ms Brown describes her frustration trying to navigate the complexities of the criminal justice system - at points without any legal representation - receiving few updates, and having to deal with court hearings which would be repeatedly adjourned.
"I felt if I could just go and knock on the door and speak to a judge myself and take all my paperwork, it could be sorted out so much quicker," she says. "It was a bottomless pit with no end date, no accountability, no review dates."
Eventually Ms Brown says she had to close her company for mental health reasons.
"Everything I'd worked so hard for - a single mum who opened their own business - gone, just like that, through no fault of my own."
Left without any savings and reliant on benefits, she says she reached her "rock bottom" - which led to her trying to kill herself.
"I just thought, 'When is it all going to end?' I'm an ordinary person, I'm not a super-hero. There's only so much people can take."
The case against Krista Brown, which began with her arrest in 2017, was dropped last week after prosecutors said "we will offer no evidence on all counts".
The Crown Prosecution Service told OceanNewsUK: "We take any allegations of fraud extremely seriously as they can have a devastating impact on victims. At all stages we must keep all our cases under careful review, to ensure our legal test is met.
"As part of our on-going duty to review the case, we concluded that the evidential part of our legal test was no longer met so offered no further evidence at a hearing on 18 October 2023."
The HMRC said: "We are unable to comment on the tax affairs of identifiable individuals or businesses due to strict confidentiality laws."
Asked about delays to court cases, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Justice told the OceanNewsUK it has "introduced a raft of measures to speed up justice for victims and improve the justice system since the start of the pandemic," and "are working closely with the judiciary to help cases move through court as efficiently as possible. "
In the seven years since her arrest, as well as detailing her journey through the criminal justice system on social media, Ms Brown has completed a degree in anthropology, and set up a successful food, clothing and toy bank for struggling families in Hackney, east London.
But while she is "delighted" to no longer be facing trial, she says it will take time to come to terms with what has happened.
"You can't just forget about it," Ms Brown says, "I'm looking forward to the moment that I feel like I can celebrate - it's not quite there yet."
