The victims of Darlington conman Jonathan Price
….. he was unable to get access to his vast funds in an offshore account in the Cayman Islands
By Neil Hunter The Northern Echo, UK
The victims of Darlington conman Jonathan Price, who was jailed today, were many and varied. NEIL HUNTER reports
THE FLORIST.
Price met the businesswoman in 2007 – two years before he was jailed for fraud – but their relationship did not begin until January 2010, while he was on day release from prison.
He claimed to be a multi-millionaire but said for one reason or another, he was unable to get access to his vast funds in an offshore account in the Cayman Islands.
Three months after their relationship started, Price told the 33-year-old florist that he had a brain tumour, the condition was terminal and that he did not have long to live.
At about the same time, he was introduced to the woman’s parents, who were told he had been serving a prison sentence for VAT fraud and also about his “illness”.
He showed the woman’s father bank statements in his name which purported to indicate his wealth, but said he was unable to get at the money for private medical treatment.
In October 2010, Price moved into the parents’ home in Dorset – where the woman had been living since giving up her London flat – and pretended his condition was worsening.
In the end, the woman’s family paid more than £24,000 to Price for alleged treatment, fares and other related expensed for what he said were life-prolonging trips to London.
Price always assured the family that he would repay the money when he got access to his overseas accounts – but, of course, never did.
THE RETAIL MANAGER.
Well before fleeing the first family’s home, he had been in contact with the shop manager through the same “sugar daddies” dating website he used to target all his victims.
In September 2010, he started exchanging emails with the retail manager – this was a month before moving into the home of his first victims in Bournemouth.
They had met up in London and had lunch in Harrods which was paid for by Price – using money fleeced from the first family for his bogus medical treatment.
Price claimed to have a white Rolls Royce and usually lived in Dorset – in the exclusive Sandbanks area, where football manager Harry Redknapp was a neighbour.
In November 2010, he said he needed to go to Geneva, Switzerland, for a little while, and told his lover that she would not see him for about a week, said Mr Dent.
“From then on,” said the prosecutor, “he began an enhanced episode of deception, having laid the entirely false groundwork of being a very wealthy and generous man.”
Firstly, through a number of text messages from his phone and fabricated friends’, he claimed to have been knocked down, and later the messages said he had collapsed.
There followed phone calls and further texts saying he was in hospital in Cambridge, and later that he was being transferred to a specialist head injuries unit in Sheffield.
Secondly, he later visited the 38-year-old’s flat in London and stayed for a couple of nights. He was introduced to her elderly mother, who lived in a rented house in Essex, and went in to display what Mr Dent described as “bizarre” behaviour.
Mr Dent said: “From December 2010, [the woman] was without income after being made redundant and was reliant on her savings and credit cards,” Mr Dent told the court.
“The defendant must have been well aware of her circumstances, but it did not stop him from exploiting her and driving her into financial ruin.”
Thirdly, by January 2011 – by this time he had driven off from his first victims in the LandRover – he had come to stay at the second woman’s flat in the Bettersea area.
He was so much in her confidence, he managed to convince her that two so-called friends had somehow cancelled all of his credit cards, and he was unable to get cash.
“He always managed to make himself appear to be the victim of a series of unfortunate mishaps,” said Mr Dent. “This enabled him to start using her credit cards and money for his day-to-day living expenses.
“This happened from January to June 2011, and it was always on the basis that the defendant would reimburse her.
“There were a number of trips abroad, all of which seem to have been funded by the woman – causing her to run up credit card debts and drain her bank and savings accounts.
“From January to June 2011, on the repeated false promise he would repay the expenditure when his temporary financial difficulties were resolved, he ran up all sorts of costs.
“The hire of the LandRover Discovery cost in the region of £5,000 plus parking fines that the defendant managed to incur,” Mr Dent said.”Her credit card balances were vastly increased – one went from £2,355 to £9,125; another rose by £642; a third was run up to about £9,600; and the balance on another was increased to approximately £1,600.
“[The woman] by this time simply could not afford to pay sums due on her credit cards. She was unable to pay her share of the rent on her flat. She was totally insolvent.
“In the end, it seems that the defendant managed to dishonestly obtain upwards of £22,000 from the family – principally from [the woman].”
By July 2011, Price had disappeared.
THE CHEMIST.
Throughout much of the time he was with the second victim, he was also regularly engaged in conversations with another on-line target – in a well-paid job with a pharmaceutical company.
In early December 2010, the single woman came into contact with Price through the same dating site he had used to snare the others.
They met up close to her work in Maidenhead, and went for a meal in Windsor, during which Price said he was a wealthy man living in Knightsbridge.
The pair arranged to meet at the woman’s parents’ home in North Yorkshire for New Year’s Eve – but the charming conman failed to turn up.
Nothing more was heard from him until later in January when the 42-year-old got news that Price had been unwell and he had tried to harm himself.
By the following month, they were again in contact and met up at King’s Cross station – with Price in a Land Rover Discovery thought to be the one he drove off in from his first victims.
This was also the time he was in a relationship with the second woman.
In May 2011, Price picked her up in the Discovery and proposed marriage. She accepted and was taken to Graffs Jewellers in Bond Street, London. She chose an expensive engagement ring, and an arrangement was made for it to be altered and collected later. The ring was never given to her by Price. Instead, after making various excuses, he gave her a ring that was nothing like the one she had chosen – and was probably a fake of some kind.
By the summer of 2011, he was staying with his third victim and did not seem well. He said he was going to stay with a friend in London – the exiled Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky.
At this time, the woman was planning her wedding, and Rockliffe Hall, near Darlington, was booked at a cost of about £96,000.
In the end, the event had to be cancelled. As far as the woman knew, it was because Price had been admitted to hospital in Berkshire with high blood-pressure. The truth was that slippery Price did not pay anything up front to the hotel, and so it refused to honour the booking. The couple ended up being married on Christmas Eve at Harrogate Register Office with just four guests.
In the continued belief that Price was filthy rich, his wife allowed him to use her savings for his day-to-day living expenses on the basis he would pay her back when his minor cash-flow problems were resolved.
In January 2012, Price said he wanted to move north, so his wife put her home up for rent and they lived together at various temporary addresses across the region. The woman had given up her job, and the couple moved in with her mother and father on the outskirts of Darlington.
Before long, Price had also started to fleece her parents too. By the time he was arrested on May 30, Price had swindled £72,000 from the family.
THE HOTEL.
They had booked Rockliffe Hall, near Darlington, for the wedding to be held in November 2011. Despite all sorts of “smokescreens” from Price, manager Nick Holmes cancelled the booking when no money was forthcoming. The hotel was left out-of-pocket to the tune of £12,000-plus for the advance preparations it had made and for giving the wedding party exclusive use of it.
THE BUSINESSMAN.
Through his wife’s previous connections, Price met a businessman in Leeds in February last year, and soon recruited him on the basis he would pay him £1,000 a day to manage his wealth. The man was told “the usual nonsense”, said Mr Dent, about the property portfolio, offshore funds and that he was suffering from cancer. No salaries were ever received despite assurances from Price that funds would be forthcoming.
Price used the man’s American Express card details to pay for the hire of a Range Rover, on the pretext he needed the details to arrange a holiday for him and his family. He also purported to treat the man and his daughter to tickets for a West End show – all of it came to nothing – and the man was more than £12,300 out-of-pocket.
THE CAR DEALERSHIPS.
In May last year, Price went into Audi Leeds, and claimed to be a millionaire with offshore accounts. He placed an order for an Audi A8 with extra features for a cost of £70,075. He also ordered a £44,198 Audi A5 cabriolet for his wife. The smooth-talking crook even managed to get a hire car for the interim. He showed the salesman on his laptop computer two transfers to the dealership for £20,000 and £40,000. The money was never received, and the company only learned of the deception when Price’s wife told them of his arrest.
THE REMOVAL MEN.
Price arranged for Ripon Removals to transport and store furniture from his wife’s home in Berkshire to an eventual new address in Huby, Harrogate, North Yorkshire, in January last year. He did not pay the storage fees, never had any intention of doing so, and had no means to. The firm is owed £3,677.
THE COMPUTER COMPANY.
In November 2011, Price asked Cellpipe Limited, a computer services company based in Berkshire, to carry out work on domain names for his business interests. He met a director and made it clear he had ample funds in an offshore account to pay for the job. The company quoted £6,235, and Price said he would have the money but he company has never been paid a penny and is owed more than £10,000.
THE BOAT FIRM.
Price visited Shepherds Boats in Windermere, in the Lake District, with his wife in April last year, and placed an order for a cruiser. As usual, payment was never made. Over May Bank Holiday weekend, Price returned with his wife and placed an order for a £420,000 Sealine F42, and wrote a cheque. Later in the day, he wrote another cheque for £8,900 to pay for having the boat berthed with the company. Neither cheque was honoured.
THE ESTATE AGENTS.
Silverdale Farm at Darley, near Harrogate, was on the market for £2.5m in October 2011. Price put in an offer of £2.125m which was accepted. There was some problem over a planning matter which resulted in the vendor writing a cheque for £900 to the prospective buyer and that was cashed. Predictably, no sale ever happened, so the money was obtained from the vendor in an entirely fraudulent way.
Through the same estate agent, Price pulled off a similar stunt on Newby Manor, a £5m property in Huby, near Weeton, Harrogate. His offer of £4.85m was accepted by the vendor – who had been told a series of lies about Price living in Monaco as a tax exile. Solicitors were instructed by each of the parties, but the proposed purchase never took place and could never have happened. The charade resulted in a loss of £788 to the vendor for his legal fees.
Price had on offer of £1.85m accepted on a property on the outskirts of Leeds, and apparently instructed solicitors, but later pulled out of the deal. He turned his attention to two other properties in the area, claiming he would pay up to £4.5m for the right place. As usual, nothing came of this, apart from wasting the valuable commercial time of people who took the conman at his word. He was arrested shortly afterwards.
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