Conman jailed at last after 13 years of airport scams
STRANDED in foreign airports with no money, Andrew Gradon told fellow travellers he needed to borrow just 30 euros to make it home on a budget airline.
Few could resist handing over the small sums to well-dressed Gradon, who promised to pay them back on his return.
But there was no flight home for Gradon and the 42-year-old never repaid the money, instead pocketing the cash in a scam that generated as much as £15,000 a month.
Now, after 13 years evading authorities including Interpol, the conman has been jailed.
A court in Germany heard Gradon targeted women with expensive cars as they drove to the short-stay car parks of airports across Europe.
The former chef would tell them he had missed his flight and exceeded his bank card limit.
Gradon, originally from County Durham, proffered his genuine passport as proof of his identity and wrote down bank details and a fake email address to contact him if anything ‘went wrong’.
At his trial prosecutors said: ‘If they looked like they were in a hurry, so much the better.’
He was caught in January this year when a 51year-old woman from Munich reported him to the police.
The court heard Gradon approached the woman in the car park of Munich Airport and asked for 32 euros for a flight to London.
He played the part of a distressed businessman eager to get home to his wife and family.
However, after handing over the money she later became suspicious and searched for his name online, finding reports about his antics that said he had never been caught.
She contacted police and Gradon was arrested two days later in the same car park, trying to swindle another well-dressed woman.
The court in Munich heard that Interpol had been on Gradon’s trail for years. It obtained a photograph of him in 2010 when a victim took a snap of Gradon’s passport.
Tommy Forsell, who runs a graphics company in Stockholm, took the picture after handing Gradon 40 euros.
He said: ‘He wasn’t wearing a tie but he had on some kind of jacket and he looked a bit stressed – he did a really good role, he was very convincing. When he left I felt sorry for him and hoped he got home.’
Gradon had targeted travellers in Frankfurt, Hamburg, Prague, Cologne, Hanover, Bremen, Lyon, Sicily and Barcelona.
He was sentenced to ten months in jail and banned from Germany for three years.
Gradon, described himself as a ‘vagabond’, blamed cheap labour from eastern Europe for forcing him to resort to cons. He told the court: ‘I am too old for this now. When I get home I will work for my brother’s construction firm.’