Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Cruel seaducer
AN acclaimed sailor has been jailed again after using charm and lies to plunder the bank accounts of lovestruck women at a rate of knots.
It is thought Peter Berry, 51, has conned up to £2million from his victims during a 20-year career of fraud.
Detectives say the trickster, dubbed Britain’s biggest love rat, has duped more than 100 women into handing him cash.
Officers have described the former dockyard worker has having a “perverse skill” in seducing women with money.
Berry – likened to cartoon ogre Shrek by one of his many victims – persuaded girlfriends to lend him cash so he could “help friends trapped in the Himalayas” or invest in “business opportunities”.
But after a whirlwind romance he would disappear, splurging the money on his millionaire’s lifestyle as a worldrecord holding yachtsman.
He even used his elderly adoptive mum’s identity to apply for loans and rack up debts on her cards.
Berry, who uses a string of aliases, has now been jailed for eight years thanks to evidence from three more victims.
It comes after he was handed a fiveyear prison sentence in 2010 for 19 similar fraud offences.
In 2012 he was released early on licence – and quickly started where he had left off.
Within a year he had fleeced the three new victims out of a total of £68,000.
MARRIED
He was recalled to serve the remainder of his jail term but he changed his name and left a trail of broken hearts as he went on the run and married a woman who knew nothing of his con tricks.
Berry was seen in London in 2014 sporting a beard and talking in an East European accent.
He evaded police but after being spotted by someone who recognised him from a BBC Crimewatch appeal, Berry was nabbed in 2015.
Officers caught up with him living at a house in the New Forest, Hants, with his wife who knew him as Jonathan Jones.
Berry – also known as John Keady, Taz Keady and Jay Smith – was returned to jail to serve the rest of his original sentence, and was charged with seven new offences. This week a jury heard how he posed as a successful businessman, kayaker and Harvard University graduate to snare his latest victims.
He targeted well-off women on dating websites, convincing them he was a thriving business consultant by visiting luxury car and yacht showrooms.
Berry – whose yachting exploits include a world record set alongside US adventurer Steve Fossett in 2002 – met the first victim, 51-year-old horse rider Joanne Clifford, in October 2012.
Calling himself James Smith, he convinced Ms Clifford, of Swindon, Wilts, he had a doctorate in engineering and was building a prototype wind turbine, which she “invested” in. She handed the crook £35,000.
In the following months he met lab technician Kate Peel, 36, of Southampton, followed by 66-year-old
You are a conman and a crook and you told a pack of lies in the witness box JUDGE JULIAN MALINS LAYS INTO THE LOTHARIO Berry has once again shown that he is a very convincing & plausible thief PC ASTRA BARNES AFTER FRAUDSTER WAS CONVICTED
Christine Gearing, who was his neighbour in East Preston, West Sussex.
After meeting at a kayaking club, Ms Peel loaned Berry £18,000 to invest in a “start-up IT company”.
The money was from £20,000 left to her when an ex-boyfriend died.
After losing contact with Berry, Ms Peel went to the police nine months later to report him missing, only to be told he was being investigated for fraud.
Ms Gearing said Berry started off doing odd jobs for her before talk soon turned to business deals when she let slip she had inherited money from the sale of her late mother’s house.
She said she put £15,000 in what Berry promised was a “short term, high interest investment in a consortium of peer funding”. She told Inner London crown court that when she left to go to Australia on holiday, she “realised I had probably made two of the biggest mistakes of my life”.
Berry picked up Ms Gearing from the airport on her return – but only to plead for more money, which she refused to hand over.
Police contacted her in November 2013 to tell her she had been conned.
Unemployed Berry, of Brockenhurst, Hants, was convicted on Thursday of seven counts of fraud. Judge Julian Malins QC told him: “You are a confidence trickster and a crook. You have pleaded not guilty and told a pack of lies in the witness box. Within no time at all [after the release from jail] you are preying on women for the purposes of extracting money. “I saw the witnesses, heard what they had to say ... each of these victims. And they were very gutsy to ... give evidence. “There was a serious detrimental effect on them and a financial one because they had lost so much money.” The judge said the women felt they “had been made fools of ”.
Outside court, PC Astra Barnes, of Sussex Police, said: “Berry has once again shown that he is a very plausible and convincing thief. He has a perverse skill in identifying women who have independent means and savings, but who can still be vulnerable to his specious charm.”
PC Barnes added: “He can come across as genuine and personable, but in reality he is a serial thief.”
As a yachtsman, Berry set a record in 2001 when he skippered a trimaran from Plymouth in Devon to La Rochelle in France faster than anyone before him.
A year later, he helped beat the time by sailing the route with Fossett on the entrepreneur’s £8million maxicatamaran – and the record still stands.
Fossett, the first person to fly solo non-stop around the world in a hot air balloon, died in a plane crash in California in 2007, aged 63.
Britain’s biggest love rat duped 100 women & netted £2m over 20yrs He wed while on the run after leaving trail of broken hearts