Highlanders conned victims out of £73k by fraudster - including to pay for fake cancer ‘treatment’ and ‘investing’ in fantasy diamond mine in South Africa
A fraudster who spun an ‘elaborate and highly imaginative web of lies’ to con several people out of more than £73,000 has been sentenced to 33 months in jail.
But 56-year-old Michael Walker's sentence was backdated by Sheriff Ian Cruickshank to his date of remand on October 4 last year, and with only half the sentence being served, he could be released in weeks.
Walker was appearing for sentence at Inverness Sheriff Court following the preparation of a background report and the case was originally heard by Sheriff Gary Aitken.
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Sheriff Cruickshank told Walker: "This fraudulent scheme was perpetrated over a six-and-a-half-year period and was an elaborate and highly imaginative web of lies. Then you went on to hoodwink others to obtain over £8000."
The court had been told previously that Walker lured his victims into "investing" in a non-existent South African diamond mine, pretended to be dying from cancer to his friends who he also conned into paying for non-existent holidays.
His biggest victim of his scheme was a pensioner friend of his mother.
Walker was living with the elderly man for a time at a property in Mansfield Park, Kirkhill when he launched his scheme in February 2009.
The court heard that Walker told his victim, who was 69 at the time, that he had a friend called Barney Yorkston who was formerly in the Army, became a mercenary in South Africa and had a diamond mine.
The pensioner obtained equity and up until October 2016 handed over approximately £65,000 to Walker.
Fiscal depute Susan Love told Sheriff Aitken that Yorkston did not exist but Walker produced emails and text messages purporting to be from Yorkston to encourage the family friend to keep on investing in exchange for gifts and holidays which never materialised.
Walker was so convincing, he successfully got some of the cash claiming it was to pay for medical costs due to his "illnesses" which included leukaemia and Hodgkin’s disease.
Ms Love said Walker's scheme was then extended to friends in his social circle he had met in the Clachnaharry Inn between January 2015 and October 2016.
He told a woman acquaintance he was terminally ill and persuaded her to part with £2871 for flights and accommodation to London and Croatia.
"He told her he was dying from cancer and he wanted the money to go to Croatia because it was on his bucket list. He also asked her for money to pay for private medical care.
"But she became suspicious when his 'chemotherapy' did not appear to affect his health."
Ms Love added that two other men, who had been customers of the same pub, paid Walker £5517, thinking it was either an investment into the 'diamond mine' or to pay for holidays he would arrange for them.
The prosecutor said that Walker either cancelled the 'holidays' he never booked or didn't turn up at the airport, leaving his hapless victim on one occasion to pay for another flight.
Defence counsel Bill Adam said his client had no previous convictions and intended to move to Ayr to live and work.
He added: "He appreciates his behaviour was inexcusable and reprehensible as well as the effect of this on the people who trusted him.
"He abused that trust. He was in a spiral of debt and kept trying to play catch-up."