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Cabbies in London will no doubt recall the exploits of the Marquess of Blandford who was well known as a regular non payer of Taxi fares. However one of the most notorious conmen of all time was probably Paul Bint who didn't discriminate when it came to conning the public. God knows where Mr Bint is at this moment in time but the chances are that where ever he is he won't be himself?
Bint was cornered on March 25 2000 while posing as a surgeon in an attempt to get a free cab ride at Berwick-upon-Tweed.
Bint who left a Scots beauty queen pregnant after convincing her he was a wealthy lawyer, grew up at Higham Ferrers in Northamptonshire.
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The Times (London)
August 18, 2000, Friday
HEADLINE: Fantasy QC is given a taste of real justice
BYLINE: Tim Reid
Many colourful conmen and wild fantasists have entertained Britain's courtrooms over the years, but none, surely, has been as imaginative and prolific as Paul Bint.
Barrister, doctor, aristocrat, hotelier, playboy, Bint has played them all since he was 14, with often disastrous consequences for his victims. Yesterday the serial conman, in reality a women's hairdresser from Nottingham, had a less romantic role thrust upon him: that of prisoner.
Bint, 38, whose latest wheeze involved impersonating a barrister in the Lockerbie bombing trial to trick railway executives into putting him up in a luxury Edinburgh hotel, was jailed for two years.
Known by police as "King Con", Bint was moved to the five-star hotel for three nights in January after telling staff on a Virgin train travelling from Birmingham to Glasgow that his laptop computer containing crucial case details had been stolen. The train was stopped for a search, but the delay was so long that other passengers were taken to Glasgow by taxi while Bint was put up at the Caledonian Hotel at a cost of Pounds 545.
Bint, of no fixed address, who during his career has duped people out of hundreds of thousands of pounds, including an Pounds 84,000 Ferrari, a Porsche and a Rolls-Royce, also admitted stealing a barrister's robes and wig from Birmingham Crown Court so that his ruse appeared authentic.
At Newcastle Crown Court he pleaded guilty to making off without payment from a restaurant and "attempting to obtain a free taxi ride from Berwick-upon-Tweed, Northumberland, to Newcastle while posing as a doctor".
Judge William Crawford heard that since 1980 Bint had committed 116 offences and appeared in court 17 times. Sentencing Bint, also known as Lachlan Gates, the judge said: "It's clear you are the most imaginative, ingenious, plausible, and for a period successful, confidence trickster."
Even his defence counsel, Eric Elliott, said: "On the face of it he makes Walter Mitty look like a BBC Nine O'Clock News reader."
Other charges which Bint had denied, including claiming that he was an investment banker called Piers Hanson to obtain medical treatment at a BUPA hospital and the theft of a Pounds 900 laptop computer, were left on file.
Bint began his obsession for deception when he posed as a doctor after undergoing an appendix operation at the age of 14. Since then his favourite scam has involved posing as a locum and touring hospital wards authorising blood transfusions and dispensing pills.
He was first caught in 1983, but only after he had arranged X-rays, attended a man who had a collapsed lung, put 12 stitches in another man's head wound and tried to bluff his way into a heart bypass operation.
In July 1993 he was ordered to be kept indefinitely at a psychiatric hospital in York after Nottingham Crown Court was told that he had bluffed his way into St James's Hospital in Leeds. He wandered the corridors carrying a stolen pager and tending to patients. In one incident he told the parents of a 17-year-old girl hurt in a road crash that she would live. Six hours later she died.
He was released from hospital in April 1994 but in October that year was jailed for five years for theft and burglary, also linked to incidents while posing as a doctor at Royal Preston Hospital and Blackburn Royal Infirmary.
He was arrested after a woman called police because Bint, posing as Dr Pearce Hanson, had given her mother sleeping pills that knocked her out for 12 hours. He had also asked to feel her mother's breasts for lumps saying: "Trust me, I'm a doctor."
Bint also enjoyed posing as an aristocrat and had claimed to be a dancer with the Royal Festival Ballet. He was once arrested on the M1 in a Mercedes that he had taken for a test drive, claiming that he was the Duke of Arundel.
In 1983 he gatecrashed a party held by Viscount Linley, and tried to introduce himself to the actress Koo Stark by sending a bottle of Dom Perignon to her table.
He was jailed the next year for five years for a string of offences, the judge telling him: "You are not mentally ill. You have an unfortunate talent which you have used over and over again to persuade others that your fantasy world exists."
In 1988 he was sentenced to four years in jail by a judge at St Albans Crown Court for tricking a salesman out of an Pounds 83,000 Ferrari while posing as the Earl of Arundel. He also once took a Golf GTI Cabriolet while pretending to be a relative of the Lord Chancellor. Posing as Piers Oppenheimer, he test-drove a Porsche and disappeared with it. He also once pretended to be Lord Forte's grandson to do the same with a Rolls-Royce.
In January Bint, posing as the high-flying QC Lachlan Campbell-Brierdon, ensnared Nikki Gonelli, a former Miss Edinburgh. During their five-week romance, he talked of his London mansion and classic car collection, before presenting her with an engagement ring. As the wedding approached police turned up at Miss Gonelli's flat with a warrant for his arrest.
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