Burns, who has 10 England caps, confirmed he and his family made official complaints to the Bath-based mortgage advice firm, which accepted Bunton’s resignation shortly afterwards.
In the Bath Chronicle, Burns detailed the abuse he endured at the hands of the high-flying mortgage executive and rugby club chairman.
Freddie Burns’ brother Samuel Burns posted a series of Tweets in mid-January on his Facebook page from Twitter handle @havingalaugh3 after the family had identified Bunton (pictured) was behind the tweets (see below).
He said: “After several weeks of seeing my brother Freddie Burns aggressively trolled and personally attacked on Twitter, I am shocked to discover that the person behind the alias @havingalaugh3 is none other than Oldfield Rugby Club chairman and director of London and Country Mortgages Patrick Bunton.”
The @havingalaugh3 Twitter handle has since been deleted as has Bunton’s account on Linkedin.
London and Country confirmed Bunton’s resignation from the broker on the 30 January after 20 years with the firm and a day later, the Association of Mortgage Intermediaries also accepted his resignation from his role as chairman after five years.
Pat Bunton was approached by Mortgage Solutions but offered no response.
London and Country confirmed Bunton had left his role but declined to comment further.
Robert Sinclair CEO at AMI said: “As a consequence of the resignation from L&C, AMI rules required that he left the Board. We cannot comment on these other matters.”
On 1 February, underneath AMI’s announcement that Bunton has resigned, Freddie Burns tweeted:
RT STANDING UP TO BULLYING
This man aggressively trolled me for weeks behind a false account and has decided to “resign” after I made official complaints to his work. A “former” director of L&C mortgages and chairman of Oldfield Old boys. The truth has to be heard! https://t.co/552CgpS1Qr
— Freddie Burns (@FreddieBurns) February 1, 2018
Bunton joined London and Country in 1993 after a management role with Britannia BS, has been chairman of Oldfield Rugby Club and went to the same public school in Bath as Burns, Beechen Cliff.
Here are the screen capture images posted by Samuel Burns of tweets sent to his brother:
