Regina v Bint (31 October 1997)
In this case the appellant appealed against sentence for 107 offences including 84 offences of obtaining by deception, 15 of abstracting electricity, three of theft, two of burglary, one of forgery, one of criminal damage and one of using a false instrument.
The appellant was discharged from prison on 23 August 1996. He then unsuccessfully sought help from the probation service, Department of Social Services and bail hostel but was declined on the respective grounds that he was (at that point) not 'licensed', homeless but not on bail.
The judge, Mr. Justice Kennedy, said that while his barrister, Ms Gluckstein “has presented this case most attractively” and pointed “fairly to the fact that some of the offences of abstracting electricity were occasions when he was trying to phone the probation service”, the court would have a “more sympathetic view” had matters been confined to “a relatively small number of offences in those early days”.
The appellant, dubbed “King Con” by the tabloids, who was reported to have committed more than 500 offences, had passed himself off as a surgeon, a QC and an aristocrat. He was reported by BBC to have arranged X-rays and tried to bluff his way into a heart by-pass operation. He was also reported to have persuaded a few to let him drive away at least a Mercedes, a Porsche and a £83,000 Ferrari.
In 2000, the Newcastle Crown Court heard how he posed as a prominent lawyer (one newspaper reported that he denied posing as QC as reported in some newspaper) in the Lockerbie bombing trial and tricked (on the pretext that the court papers, his wallet and laptop were stolen) Virgin rail into putting him up on the luxury Caledonian Hotel. While there, he ran up a bill of over £500, romancing a former Miss Edinburgh. Apparently he had stolen a barrister robes from a Birmingham Crown Court before he boarded the train.
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