A compulsive conman who has spent two decades adopting 21 different aliases to scam victims out of hundreds of thousands of pounds is back behind bars. Sebastian Astbury has previously posed as an MI5 agent, a banker, a Lord, a Royal Navy officer, a Royal Marine, a property developer, a shipping magnate, a winemaker and a luxury car salesman to hoodwink his victims.
The fantasist - who has 66 previous convictions for fraud - began cheating his latest victim, from Dorchester, just months after being released from prison for a previous con. He posed as a landscape gardener to swindle £3,000 out of an unsuspecting customer. Shortly after paying the money up front, David Russell received a worrying message from the website MyBuilder explaining it had removed Astbury's company from its listings and closed his account.
Astbury, whose real name is Andrew Penfold but has also been called Zac Langley, disappeared and ignored Mr Russell's calls. As the 44-year-old was jailed for two-and-a-half years for fraud and breaching a serious crime prevention order, Mr Russell said: "I really can't grasp how Mr Astbury can continually defraud people when he is known to the police and must surely know he will be caught again and again.
