A company director conned customers out of more than £3m to fund his lavish lifestyle including Rolex watches, fast cars and luxury holidays. Duncan Grant, 54, orchestrated a complex fraud to swindle investors who pumped cash into his business refitting ATMs and money counting machines.
But despite collecting around £3.8m over six years, Grant used just £549,000 for the company. He blew the rest on jewellery, flash motors and meals at fancy restaurants.
Unbeknown to his victims, Grant was a director of 16 companies, but had been bankrupt and changed his name twice before being made bankrupt again. Patronus, based in Crowborough, East Sussex, was a legitimate firm, but the fraudster used his clients' cash to pay for his luxury £1m-plus rented homes and his wife's expensive tastes, police said.
One of the tactics Grant used to con victims was to use his parents’ illnesses to get sympathy and claiming he needed financial help. He also struck up false friendships with wealthy clients by pretending to have similar hobbies or interests in common.
A string of victims reported Grant to police in December 2019. It was revealed he had been bankrupt and changed his name twice before being made bankrupt again, all while acting as a director of 16 companies.
Police and analysts, including the Insolvency Service and HM Passport Office, worked through mobile phones, iPads, laptops, and around 2,500 emails and 3,000 pieces of paper to uncover the intricacies of Grant’s crimes. Investigators unearthed the back and forth layering of the money being sent between Grant’s accounts, in order to disguise the origins of the funds.
In October 2021 he was charged with 18 counts of fraud and 18 counts of directorship offences At Lewes Crown Court on June 1, Grant was jailed for 12 years and six months after pleading guilty at an earlier hearing.
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Fraudster 'lived a life many could only dream of'
Detective Constable Fleur Jones, of the Surrey and Sussex Economic Crime Unit, said Grant "lived a life many could only dream of" all using other people’s money.
She said on Wednesday (June 21): "This was a complex investigation where Grant had moved monies between many bank accounts in order to try to obfuscate where over £3m of victims’ money disappeared to. One of the things I felt was important was to be able to tell those victims exactly what their money was spent on by Grant.
"Between us, my team were able to trace the journey of each person’s money through numerous accounts and transactions until we found that it had been spent, amongst other things, on rentals for luxury homes, fast cars, jewellery, Rolex watches, holidays, and expensive meals in top restaurants.
"Grant lived a life that many could only dream of, using other people’s money that they had invested in him in good faith, thinking he was either using it to develop a business or that he was helping his elderly parents. Many of these victims thought they were his friend."
