31,000 PARLIAMENTARY ONLINE PORN REQUESTS
ebay scammer Norman Fowler
Nearly 31,000 attempts were made to access porn websites in the Houses of Parliament between March and October last year, according to a freedom of information request from the Press Association. Parliamentary authorities say the majority of attempts weren’t deliberate, and that the figures show requests to access websites, not actual visits. The number of requests was much higher in previous years – 213,000 in 2015 and 113,000 in 2016.
Whenever I think I’m about to snare a bargain on ebay, I hear a little voice at the back of my head warning me that it could be a scam. Happily, I haven’t yet been taken for a ride, but then I was lucky enough not to run into 39-year-old Norman Fowler from Colchester (pictured).
He was recently convicted of cheating innocent people out of more than £21,000 on ebay and Gumtree, advertising expensive gadgets and jewellery that he didn’t own and had no intention of delivering. In 2016, Fowler was extradited from the Costa Brava, where he had fled under a false name (he claimed it was to start a new life, not to evade justice).
Fowler is now serving a 20-month sentence on nine counts of fraud. But that’s scant consolation to those who were taken in by his lies, including the buyer of a £5,500 Rolex watch that never existed. It’s emerged since that because Fowler had “no visible assets” at the time of his arrest, he was ordered to repay just £1, leaving his victims thousands of pounds out of pocket. We think he got off lightly.