Safe cracker turned tycoon went back to jail after lavishing cash on a football club
businessman b May 12, 1936 d April 13, 2021
George Reynolds had a gold-laminated business card that read: ‘‘Managing director, chairman, gentleman, entrepreneur, adventurer, maker of money and utter genius.’’ He might also have added: ‘‘Burglar, smuggler, safe cracker, tax evader and jail bird’’, but at the peak of his success, when the Sunday Times ranked him 112th in its rich list with a fortune of £260 million, he modestly left them off the roll call of his accomplishments.
For the most part his fortune was honestly gained. Reynolds, who has died aged 84, was serving his fourth spell in Durham jail for theft in 1976 when a priest suggested to him that, as he was clearly no good at crime, he might try his hand at going straight and becoming a legitimate businessman.
On his release he tried running a joinery business, a coffee bar and a nightclub before he hit upon what he called the ‘‘brilliant idea’’ of making kitchen worktops out of chipboard.
Cutting costs and corners, piling them high and selling them cheap, he became ‘‘the chipboard king’’. With the proceeds he built Witton Hall, a mansion in Co Durham, northeast England, bought a town house in London next door to one of the Spice Girls, and a villa in Spain. There was the obligatory yacht, a private jet, a helicopter and a fleet of cars. He also bought Darlington Football Club, installed himself as chairman and built a 25,000-seat stadium, which naturally he named the George Reynolds Arena.
When he bought seven of his workers new Mercedes and paid off their mortgages, he appeared on Oprah Winfrey’s TV show and she hailed him as ‘‘Britain’s best boss’’. He was also friends with Donald Trump.
Life was sweet and Reynolds was riding high. Yet by 2005 he was back behind bars, having made the rich man’s fatal mistake of buying a football club. When he took over Darlington FC in 1999, it was in the bottom tier of the Football League, heavily in debt and on the verge of extinction. He promised to take it to the Premiership ‘‘within five years’’ and poured his cash into a new stadium in readiness for playing Manchester United.
Initially he was hailed by fans as a knight on a white charger. Yet the relationship soon soured. He claimed he was going to sign Paul Gascoigne, but he never arrived. The team continued to struggle and the new stadium was largely unoccupied. As the fans turned against him, he grew bitter. When they reminded him in raucous fashion of his criminal past, he mocked them by taking to the pitch in a prison suit with arrows and a ball and chain around his ankle.
Local paper the Northern Echo joined the criticism and he responded by threatening editor Peter Barron, who took police advice and had panic buttons and other security devices installed at his home. ‘‘There are those who found him entertaining and admired him for his self-belief and determination,’’ Barron said. ‘‘However, there is no hiding from the fact that he was a criminal who resorted to bullying when he didn’t get his own way.’’
By the end of 2003, Darlington were sliding into bankruptcy and administrators were called in. Reynolds stood down as chairman and the club was sold to a consortium of city financiers. As soon as the deal was done, Reynolds drove to his local bank and withdrew £500,000 in cash. The bank informed the police, who stopped his Mercedes and found the money in the boot.
He was charged with money laundering and tax evasion – his personal tax returns having improbably declared that his only income was his old-age pension. In 2005 he was given a three-year sentence as the judge took a sideswipe at the ‘‘egocentric folly’’ that had cost him his fortune. An unrepentant
Reynolds cast himself as the victim. He told the court it was a ‘‘very serious offence to be successful, ambitious and to work hard’’ and waved to the press as he was led away.
His irascibility spilled into his private life. Wives had to be changed ‘‘every 12 years, like a washer-dryer’’, he said. He wed three times and is survived by three daughters.
George Reynolds was born in Sunderland in 1936, to a life of poverty.‘‘It was very hard. If you didn’t steal, you starved. You had to be able to fight,’’ he recalled.
He was sent to a reformatory at the age of 8, and left school illiterate. As a coal miner he learned to use explosives, and put the skill to use by cracking safes. He was jailed four times by the 1970s, and later said: ‘‘Prison was good for me. It rehabilitated me. I’m not proud of what I’ve done but I’m not ashamed either. I may have used a crowbar to steal but I’m not like the people in the City who use a pen.’’
When he emerged from his final jail term, he opened an e-cigarette shop. ‘‘If you want to make money, always go for an addiction,’’ he said. He spent his final years living in a topfloor apartment in Durham with fine views over the river and the cathedral. ‘‘You can see the prison too,’’ he noted. ‘‘That puts things in perspective.’’ –
‘‘I may have used a crowbar to steal but I’m not like the people in the City who use a pen.’’
George Reynolds on his criminal past