A conman swindled £320,000 from family and friends of a boyfriend in fake holiday deals telling them he was a cruise ship captain - while at the same time having a wife and children.
Jody Oliver led two separate "fantasy lives", telling his wife he was a successful businessman and living with her during the week before seeing his partner – a man he had met on a dating website - at the weekends using the name Jonathan.
He told his wife he needed to travel abroad regularly for work and he told his partner he worked for Carnival – the parent company of P&O – as a cruise ship captain, reported WalesOnline.
Oliver 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 by claiming he could arrange cheap cruises to exotic locations.
Andrew Davies, prosecuting, told Newport Crown Court that 44-year-old Oliver was "at the centre of an intricate web of lies and deceit".
During the week he would live with his wife Laura and their three children near Brecon, lying to his spouse – whom he had known since the age of three – that he was a successful businessman with interests in a number of businesses including a fleet car operation, a gaming machine business, and a funeral parlour.
He told his Brecon family his work required overseas travel as well as weekend work but in reality Oliver spent the weekends living with his partner Rhys in Newport under the fake name Jonathan Oliver.
When pretending to be Jonathan the defendant would claim to be aged 38. Rhys – who knew nothing about his partner's wife and children – subsequently proposed to the defendant and the couple planned a wedding in Aruba in the Caribbean.
The prosecutor 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. Then 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 court heard the defendant went to great lengths to carry out the "masquerade", dressing as a cruise ship captain complete with bogus corporate lanyard, producing fake letters, documents, and payslips from the firm, setting up fictitious email accounts supposedly from fellow Carnival employees.
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, was taking out high-interest loans, and was gambling huge sums of money – in one year alone he lost £136,000 through gambling.
The court heard that 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.
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.
Oliver had previously pleaded guilty to fraud and a bail offence after failing to turn up at court, when he appeared in the dock for sentencing.
Judge Richard Williams said Oliver had run up debts through his "freeloading lifestyle" and then gone to great lengths to deceive people out of large sums of money. He told the defendant: "Your motivation was your profound dishonesty and willingness to leech off those of your acquaintance."
With a discount for his guilty plea Oliver was sentenced to six years in prison for fraud and to one month to run consecutively for the bail offence.
