A notorious confidence trickster from Northamptonshire is back behind bars after being found guilty of a £3.5 million property swindle in which he tried to buy luxury homes in Northamptonshire without having a penny to his name.
Richard Jerome, from Towcester, was branded “a confidence trickster and a menace” by a judge after a jury at Exeter Crown Court finally put an end to his career of deceit.
Jerome, aged 65, of Watling Street, posed as a suave international financier working with Unesco, even though he had only just been released from jail for an identical series of frauds in which he targeted rich professional single women.
He and his teacher wife, Hazel, went round Devon, Cornwall and the East Midlands pretending to be super rich ex-pats who had just come back from tax exile in the Caribbean and were searching for the perfect retirement home.
They made cash offers totalling more than £3.5 million pounds for houses in Sidmouth, East Looe, and Daventry including the clifftop former home of writer R F Delderfield.
The couple’s aim was to repeat a swindle in which they persuaded the owners to let them move in while the money to close the deal was transferred from abroad. They would then become middle class squatters who refused to budge or pay rent.
In the end they failed because the owners and their estate agents became suspicious and realised they had both done it before
Jerome used a string of aliases to go on upper-crust dating websites to target professional women, telling them he was a multi-millionaire with business interests around the globe and an annual income of £1 million.
In reality, he was a former minicab driver from Towcester who had less than £200 to his name and only just been released from jail.
He served just a quarter of a 15 month sentence and within days of his release he created a false identity and started an internet seduction of a woman accountant who he fleeced for $100,000.
He sent e-mails claiming to be on business trips or holidays in the West Indies, Canada, St Petersburg, Turkmenistan, Minsk and Switzerland while in fact he was living in Britain and police still had his passport.
He told his victims he was an international banker who acted as consultant to the relief charity Unesco and swindled the accountant by telling her his bonds would earn her $5 million.
Jerome and ex wife Hazel, aged 62, made false representations that they had the funds to purchase a string of properties, including Ambleside House and Badby Lodge Farm, both near Daventry, between 2009 and 2011.
Jerome also face three charges of obtaining more than £1,000 worth of surveys on the properties by deception and the $100,000 fraud against London based accountant Lalita Lalvani in 2011.
They were found guilty of all charges and Jerome was remanded in custody pending sentence by Judge Erik Salomonsen.
His wife was bailed but warned she faces jail.
The judge said:”He knows he is facing a long prison sentence. Last time he was jailed for 15 months but the time he actually spent in custody was remarkably short.
“That is not a matter for a judge. We simply impose the sentences which are administered by the Home Office and the prison service.”
He told Jerome: “You know the score. You are a confidence trickster. You are a menace. You were a menace when you were convicted before and you continue to be a menace.”
Jerome and his wife moved on to Cornwall where they made a £310,000 offer for Valhalla in East Looe. They returned to their old stamping ground in the Midlands where they offered £560,000 for Ambleside in Hellidon, near Daventry and just under £2 million for Badby Lodge Farm.
He never came up with any money to back up the offers and spun a bizarre web of deceit in which he explained the delays by saying he was waiting for money to be transferred from his business interests abroad.
All his property deals fell through when estate agents learned his true identity and found newspaper cuttings dating back to his previous conviction in Huntingdon Crown Court in 2009.
On that occasion Jerome was jailed for 15 months and his wife was given a 10-month suspended term after they admitted a series of frauds which led to them being dubbed ‘the middle class squatters’.