SKINT TRUCKER WHO 'SOLD' RITZ FOR pounds 250M
SKINT TRUCKER WHO ‘SOLD’ RITZ FOR pounds 250M
0 Comments | Daily Mirror, The; London (UK), Jul 28, 2010 | by JOSH LAYTON
A JOBLESS conman was jailed yesterday for five years over an “elaborate and outrageous” scam to sell The Ritz.
Penniless lorry driver Anthony Lee, 49, duped property developer Terence Collins into thinking the famous hotel was up for grabs.
Lee said the building was being sold for pounds 250million and received pounds 1million as a downpayment.
Police say the conman then went on a pounds 650,000 spree, including buying a Range Rover Vogue for his partner and a Med cruise. Lee carried out his scam after claiming he was a close friend of the reclusive billionaire Barclay brothers who own the central London hotel.
But Sir Frederick and Sir David Barclay had never heard of him.
Judge Stephen Robbins told Lee: “You were found guilty by a jury of this elaborate and outrageous scam, purporting to sell The Ritz hotel, thereby obtaining pounds 1million from your victim. This offence was compared to other fraudsters who tried to sell the Eiffel Tower, Brooklyn Bridge and Buckingham Palace.”
Lee had posed as a high-flying speculator despite never having completed a deal in his life.
He told Mr Collins he had a contract to sell The Ritz for a “bargain ” pounds 250million – at least pounds 350million less than its face value. His victim then sought the support of Dutch billionaire financier Marcel Boekhoorn who coughed up the pounds 1million in December 2006.
Mr Collins told the Dutchman the Barclay brothers had “secretive reasons” for selling the hotel and a casino through a third party.
But the sale never happened and the money was never returned – though police recovered roughly pounds 350,000 of it.
Lee, of Goole, East Yorks, claimed at the four-week trial the pounds 1million was for a separate property deal he had with Mr Collins. The businessman told Southwark crown court in South London that he agreed to refer to the payment as an introductory fee for a deal in North Yorkshire “for accounting reasons”.
Lee, an undischarged bankrupt who had a police caution for theft and was behind with his rent at the time of the scam, insisted during the trial this month he was just a “straight-talking Yorkshireman”.
Judge Robbins told him: “This con or scam or sting, whatever term is used, was probably motivated by your mistaken belief that Terry Collins had deprived you of another potentially lucrative property deal and it may be that this offence was done out of revenge.”
EIFFEL TOWER? YOURS FOR pounds 50K
FRAUDSTER Victor Lustig “flogged” the Eiffel Tower – for scrap metal.
In 1925, a businessman paid roughly pounds 50,000 for the structure in Paris and a bribe to Lustig, who vanished with the cash
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