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.
