A professional gambler who posed as a lord while scamming nearly 200 people with fake cruise holidays has been jailed for five years.
Richard Lester made around £400,000 by setting up a ponzi-style scheme using a company that offered sham cruise miles to fund his online habit and later allowing him to ‘live the high life in Las Vegas.
Victims from around the world would often only find out they had been conned when they turned up at ports and were turned away by cruise operators.
Jailing Lester – who hung his head in the dock – Judge Alexander Mills said victims were left helplessly watching their dream breaks ‘drift off into the morning sun’.
The 56-year-old former stockbroker duped 184 people into purchasing ‘miles’ from his firm Cruise Direct UK Ltd which they were told could be converted into cruises.
They were hoodwinked by ‘deliberately convoluted’ terms and conditions by Lester, who went under the names Lord Lester, Les Richards, Barry Williams and Richie Lescovitch.
Victims came from the US, Australia, Canada, France, Japan and Germany, as well as the UK.
Victim impact statements read in court included one from Australian Kim Berthen, who lost £6,600 on a 30th anniversary trip with her husband.
Richard Lester, 56, backed his lavish lifestyle and gambling addiction with cash swindled from customers who paid for cruises that were never booked, Chelmsford Crown Court heard
Lester is pictured at the 2012 World Travel Awards in India after his firm won an accolade
She said: ‘I stupidly invested in this company thinking of wonderful holidays together. It makes me so angry and depressed to know I made a stupid decision.’
Agents employed by Lester had to deal with the customers’ fury and disappointment.
Elizabeth Erskine, based in New South Wales, described the ‘harrowing’ situation, saying: ‘I had to experience the fear and distress of my life crashing around me.’
Lester, of Luton, Bedfordshire, caused misery for five years from 2009, with many of the bogus cruises touted as setting off from ports in Essex, including Tilbury.
Essex Police started a ten-year investigation after victims approached the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau, initially dealing with 324 claims.
He was convicted of fraudulent trading and concealing criminal property after a nine-week trial at Chelmsford Crown Court. The total loss to customers was £406,856.
The jury was not told that he had been jailed for three years in a Young Offenders Institution at Middlesex Guildhall Crown Court in 1989 for 22 offences of dishonesty including theft, obtaining property by deception and handling stolen goods.
Lester’s company was struck off by Companies House in 2014, leaving customers with millions of useless, unclaimed miles.
Prosecutor Andrew Evans said they were ‘deliberately misled’ by fake documents which showed the booked cruises.
Early investors posted positive reviews in online forums after going on cut price trips, encouraging more people to sign up.
The company’s apparent success saw Lester travelling to India at one point to pick up an industry award.
Tania Panagiotopoulou, defending, told the court there were ‘thousands of satisfied customers’ over some years before her client’s operation turned criminal.
But Judge Mills added Lester ‘gaslit’ victims, often claiming it was their fault holidays had been canned. The ‘shifting sands’ of excuses included blaming customers for not answering emails, not checking his website, or problems with non-existent staff and alleged changes in cruise ship procedures.
‘This was a well-planned and complex fraud carried out over a lengthy period of time and it was done knowingly and willingly on your part,’ he said.
Lester was sentenced to five years behind bars at Chelmsford Crown Court (pictured)
The defendant’s previous convictions had ‘not mellowed him’ because he had gone on to carry out a fraud ‘in a bigger and bolder way’.
PC Leanne Smith, who has been investigating Cruisemiles and Lester since 2014, said: ‘This has been a large and complex investigation, with officers gathering dozens of statements from victims.
‘Securing justice for these victims meant scouring several bank accounts to trace exactly where their money has gone.
‘All their money leads back to Lester. His greed left hundreds of people thousands of pounds out of pocket.
‘They were tricked into committing more and more money to his scheme, unaware that money was going directly into Lester’s pocket.
‘Many of the cruise companies they were expecting to holiday with had no record they were ever due on board their ships.
‘Lester poured funds into a lavish lifestyle he bragged about to the same victims’ he defrauded.
‘Money was frittered on online poker websites and his other business interests.’