Dirty rotten scoundrels who bagged Britain’s RICHEST SISTERS
Thought the Ecclestone saga couldn’t get more bizarre? Now the shamed ex-banker married to one of Bernie’s girls has hitched his used car salesman pal to the other — and together they’re boasting of being . . . by Alison Boshoff
THE jaunty image, made public five days before Christmas, was arresting: two young friends, dressed in dinner jackets, full of confident swagger.
Jay Rutland, standing on the right, captioned it: ‘Dirty Rotten Scoundrels’ — in reference to the 1988 Michael Caine comedy film of that name, about two conmen who compete to swindle an American heiress out of $50,000.
You may think the caption in very poor taste, as the two Essex boys- done-good in the photo have themselves formed romantic links with two heiress sisters — the daughters of motor-racing tycoon Bernie Ecclestone.
For these young women, however, $50,000 would be chicken feed — as each is said to be worth around £230 million, thanks to the stupendous fortune of their father.
Jay, 37, has benefited handsomely from this wealth. For he is the husband of Ecclestone’s elder daughter, Tamara, 34. And his ‘Dirty Rotten Scoundrel’ friend is Sam Palmer, who is about to join the Ecclestone clan — having proposed to Tamara’s 30-year- old sister Petra over the Christmas break, 14 months after her very messy divorce from James Stunt.
The loved-up sisters and their partners are currently at a luxury resort in Los Cabos, Mexico, posing in colourful ponchos for Tamara’s Instagram feed.
Palmer, 34, comes from Harlow, Essex, where his mum runs a beauty parlour. His jobs have variously included an electrician, a vintage car salesman in his father’s garage and a legal recruitment operative in Australia. These days, he’s working in Los Angeles at an art gallery patronised by his fiancee and living with Petra, her three children and numerous staff in a 123-room mansion — said to be the largest private residence in California.
No wonder he has the delighted air of a man who can hardly believe his luck.
Palmer was introduced to Petra by Rutland. The two men are thought to have got to know one another socially in Essex and have become very close.
Rutland took his chum (presumably on the Ecclestone shilling) on a trip on a private plane to Las Vegas to watch a boxing match. A picture posted online by Rutland of the two of them together in May 2017 was captioned: ‘Happy birthday to my old pal Invisibleman 61. He may be a menace to society but he’s MY menace to society.’
Why, you may ask, would Rutland use such language to describe his pal? It certainly seems that the idea of operating at the edges of society amuses both men.
Rutland was accused in 2016 of helping a fugitive drugs baron — serious allegations that could have landed him in jail for up to seven years had not the charges been dropped. This stressful episode coincided with a reported tricky patch in his marriage to Tamara, who took their young daughter, known as Fifi, on holiday to Dubai without him.
Happily, the couple are now reconciled. HOW, then, have these self-styled ‘Dirty Rotten Scoundrels’ in shiny suits and perma-tans been so successful with rich women? What’s more, how did they cast an almost instant spell on their wealthy Ecclestone inamoratas?
Tamara and Rutland were engaged a month after being introduced; Petra was bowled over by Palmer even though she wasn’t looking for romance and they became engaged within the year.
Rutland, like Tamara, wallows in the finer things in life. He likes expensive suits and meals in flashy restaurants and says he started collecting art in his early 20s.
His 70-year-old father is a retired newspaper van driver from Stepney, East London, whose eldest child, Jo, won TV’s The Great British Bake off in 2011 under her married name, Wheatley.
Rutland’s parents separated and his father has children by three different women. Jay was raised by a car dealer-turned-property developer stepfather in an £880,000 house in Chigwell, Essex, with, it appears, every advantage in life.
As a young man, Rutland made friends with a brash local crowd who later found fame on the infamous ITV show The only Way Is Essex, including Amy Childs, Joey Essex and Mario Falcone.
other friends include Jack Tweed, widower of Big Brother contestant Jade Goody, and EastEnders actress Jessie Wallace.
Rutland was a senior broker at the firm Pacific Continental Securities, but was banned by the Financial Services Authority ( FSA) in 2012 after an investigation found that he improperly disclosed insider information to make himself richer.
The City regulator found that in 2007, he had ‘ deliberately defied compliance procedures, acted against the interests of customers and disclosed inside information in order to improperly maximise sales by his team’. The FSA concluded he ‘is not a fit and proper person as his conduct demonstrates a lack of honesty and integrity’.
There followed a period of partying in Las Vegas and Los Angeles, then Rutland set himself up as a ‘broker consultant’. He met Tamara Ecclestone in January 2013 and proposed less than a month later, while they were on holiday in Dubai.
She has said: ‘I don’t think the amount of time you are together has anything to do with it.’
Three days after returning from their honeymoon, he was robbed at knifepoint at a petrol station in East London and had his £50,000 Rolex watch and a £20,000 gold bracelet stolen.
The planned prosecution of the suspect mugger was subsequently abandoned after prosecutors told defence lawyers they would offer no evidence.
In the early years of the couple’s marriage, Rutland ran a management consultancy company. His firm, Brigante Business Developments, filed accounts showing total net assets of £3,378 in the 12 months to July 2014 — clearly not enough to keep Tamara in flowers or handbags. He then moved on to being a property developer and, for the past 18 months, has been working for the Maddox Gallery chain, which deals in contemporary ‘ investmentgrade’ art by the likes of Andy RUTLAND Warhol, Damien Hirst and Banksy. said in an interview: ‘ Tamara doesn’t need anyone to provide for her financially. Before we got married, I was adamant there should be a pre-nup [pre-nuptial agreement] to protect her.
‘I wouldn’t dream of walking away with anything I hadn’t brought into the marriage, but it was important to have that formally recognised.’ For her part, Tamara revealed proudly: ‘He said: “Give me any piece of paper and I’ll sign it.” That was a real reflection of his integrity and I knew I could trust him.’
As well as daughter Fifi, now four, the couple have 15 dogs. At Fifi’s last birthday party, they hired a zebra for petting.
Their home in London is said to be worth £70 million. Rutland has said: ‘Yes, we could live somewhere smaller but we like it here and it’s a great investment.
‘We are very fortunate to be able to travel by private jet and take more holidays than most people. But the reality is we work, we look after our daughter, we lie on the sofa watching TV.
‘Don’t get me wrong, money cushions you from a lot in life, but it doesn’t guarantee happiness.’
That is a philosophy of life with which Petra Ecclestone would surely agree. She had a nightmare
divorce from her first husband, playboy James Stunt.
Allegations that he was abusive and violent and took drug overdoses were made — and denied — in court.
It was alleged, too, that he made a ‘gun gesture’ at Bernie Ecclestone in court.
And the two men traded insults, with Stunt branding his fatherin-law a ‘C-list dwarf’ and 5ft 3in Ecclestone responding by saying: ‘That’s how he sees it but whether he sees it when he’s high on his drugs or when he’s sort of normal I don’t know.’
Stunt also called his ex-wife a ‘horrible human being’ and her mum, Slavica, ‘Lady Macbeth’.
Having seen off Stunt, by December 2017 Petra was holidaying with Palmer, Tamara and Rutland in Dubai.
Petra said of Palmer: ‘I randomly bumped into him when he came to LA to visit Jay. I honestly thought I was going to be celibate or turn into a lesbian. You meet someone when you least expect it or want it.’
She added: ‘I would marry again, as I don’t believe you should say one experience will be like another experience in life. I’d get a pre-nup again, though.’ WITH In five months of starting to date Petra, Palmer had moved in with her. Over the summer, he supervised a cull of the cleaners, housekeepers and chauffeurs who’d been working for her during the ‘ Stunt years’. The couple then relocated to Los Angeles with her three young children.
Palmer has a similar The Only Way Is Essex pedigree to his playmate Rutland. His father was a used car salesman in South Woodford and his mother has a beauty business in Harlow. When asked about Palmer’s engagement to Petra, a receptionist at the salon said: ‘It is not necessary for us to comment.’
Palmer qualified as an electrician before working for his father’s business, Palmer’s Prestige Motors, which has since closed.
In 2011, he moved to Australia and worked as a recruitment manager, before returning to the UK in 2017. It seems that he immediately started work at the Maddox Gallery in London, where Jay Rutland was already working. In August last year, he helped to set up a gallery in Los Angeles.
One shudders to think what Bernie Ecclestone might think of Rutland and Palmer’s tongue-incheek view of themselves as Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. On the Formula One circuit, Bernie had a ruthless reputation and amassed a £3.6 billion fortune — although friends said he enjoyed the power more than the money.
Petra’s new fiance, aware of how brutally Bernie slapped down her errant ex James Stunt, knows he will have to watch his every step.