A conman who claimed to be the captain of a luxury cruise ship has been ordered to pay back £351 despite making more than a quarter of a million pounds fraudulently. He scammed people by claiming he could arrange cheap cruises to exotic locations.
Jody Oliver, 44, was leading two separate "fantasy lives" and would spend the week with his wife and children near Brecon and the weekends with his male fiancé in Newport while using the name Jonathan. He told his wife he was involved in a number of successful businesses which required him to travel overseas and told his partner he worked for Carnival, the parent company of P&O, as a cruise ship captain.
The defendant went to extraordinary lengths to create the persona of being a captain, including dressing the part and forging company documents, and then used that bogus job to scam people out of almost a third of a million pounds. The former special constable has a previous conviction for forgery as part of a £3m sponsorship con on rally driver Colin McRae as well as a previous conviction for a VAT scam.
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Describing the fraud at Oliver's sentencing hearing last year prosecutor Andrew Davies said: ""The defendant was at the centre of an intricate web of lies and deceit. He did not care who he hurt or sought to swindle and lied even to those he professed to love. The defendant used different names and job descriptions to obtain money and to live a life that he could not afford. He was living two separate fantasy lives – neither of which he could sustain with legitimate income."
The court heard Oliver told his Newport partner that he was senior manager at Jaguar Land Rover before claiming he had been headhunted by BWW to work in America. The court heard that a few years into their relationship Oliver told his fiancé he had changed career and been made a cruise ship captain with Carnival, the parent company of P&O. This was to be the start of a systematic fraud against members of his partner's family and his friends with Oliver claiming he could secure luxury cruises to exotic locations at cheap prices.
The defendant went to great lengths to carry out the "masquerade" including dressing as a cruise ship captain complete with bogus corporate lanyard as well as producing fake letters, documents, and payslips from the firm, setting up fictitious email accounts supposedly from fellow Carnival employees, and providing details of excursions, ships, and flights to his victims. In total Oliver scammed people out of £320,000 for the non-existent holidays.
While this was happening Oliver was operating two banks accounts, one in each name, taking out high-interest loans, and gambling huge sums of money – in one year alone he lost £136,000 through gambling. He and his fiancé were also planning to buy a £685,000 house in the village of Old St Mellons.
When the cruises people had booked failed to materialise the defendant created a series of excuses including technical issues with the ships and problems overseas but that some of this victims went so far as to pack their bags and wait for the transfers to the ships which were never to arrive. In January 2019 some of the people who had paid for cruises reported their concerns to the police and the following month he was arrested at his parents' house in Presteigne in Powys.
He answered "no comment" to all questions asked but gave a prepared statement to officers in which he said he had been diagnosed with a brain tumour which affected his memory. In a subsequent interview he said he was not suffering with a brain tumour but had problems with his sinuses. In further interviews he denied ever claiming to be a cruise ship captain, saying people must have been mistaken. He claimed he was just called 'captain' as a nickname as he was "fond of the sea" though his wife later confirmed to police that he in fact got sick when he went on the water.
Jody Francis Oliver, now of Barbourne Road, Hereford, pleaded guilty to fraud and had also previously pleaded guilty to a bail offence after failing to turn up at court for an earlier hearing. He was sentenced to six years and one month in jail in August last year.
A Proceeds of Crime Act (POCA) hearing at Cardiff Crown Court on Friday heard Oliver benefited to the tune of £272,111 as a result of his fraudulent behaviour but only had assets worth £351. Judge Wayne Beard ordered the defendant to pay that sum within three months or serve one month imprisonment in default.
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