Conman who claimed TV chef was his friend f leeced elderly of £270k
A CONMAN posing as an antiques expert who boasted of his friendship with Marco Pierre White has been jailed for defrauding elderly customers out of more than £270,000.
Stuart Porter, 57, claimed he had been friends with the celebrity chef for 20 years, and said they were about to open an upmarket pub together.
But the rogue trader was actually struggling to keep up with an extravagant lifestyle, living in expensive houses but not paying the rent and sending his children to private schools while failing to pay the fees.
In the summer of 2013 he emptied his antiques shop of stock in Stamford, Lincolnshire one night and fled with the heirlooms that families had been trusting him to sell .
Porter also left with thousands of pounds he had convinced people to loan him towards an electrical export business.
Officers discovered Porter – who was using the name Alan Johnson – a month later in Yarm, North Yorkshire, running another shop called Lovejoy Antiques, in a nod to the 1980s drama about a roguish antiques dealer.
He admitted a charge of fraudulent trading relating to the antiques shop, and five further charges of fraud involving the electrical business. He was jailed for five years and four months at Lincoln Crown Court on Friday.
The fraud amounted to £272,000. This was made up of £126,000 of antiques which disappeared, £68,000 from trade creditors at the shop and £78,000 loaned to him by people who invested in his electrical engineering business.
Only about half of the antiques he took have since been returned to their owners.
Judge John Pini QC said: ‘You’ve brought about widespread distress to a great many people. This was a sustained abuse of trust with many people losing treasured items.’
White was pictured in a local newspaper with Porter four years ago after he travelled to the antiques business in Stamford to officially open the shop.