Florida home, sports cars and a £17,000 Harley . . . all from your cold-call misery
The data Del Boy
POSING on a £17,000 HarleyDavidson, Nick Sayer soaks up the winter sun outside his holiday home in Florida.
It is one of several shots of motorbikes, supercars and lavish holidays he has posted online in recent years… to the delight of his friends.
For while pensioners are targeted every day by cold callers, the man who sold their personal data is apparently relishing the spoils.
B2C director Sayer – who is nicknamed Del Boy – is among a group of bosses at the firm who have got rich quick by selling people’s most personal information.
The 45-year-old father of two says he carries out his business from a ‘man cave’ in the garden of his home in Kent.
He began his working life as a diver on oil rigs in Azerbaijan, before, he claims, he was set up in business by a Greek shipping billionaire.
They ran a commercial diving company before he decided to make money for himself by selling personal data with a series of companies, most of which have been dissolved or liquidated. ‘For years I was called “oh, you’re just a Del Boy”,’ he said. ‘I work from home, I’ve got a little log cabin thing out in me garden, that’s where I kind of base me-self.
‘I don’t like being in the house, I just go out there. It’s a bit of a man cave really.’
While his garden office may be modest, Sayer’s other tastes are much more ostentatious. His Facebook page shows off images of nine sports cars as well as pictures of him skiing in Banff, Canada.
The British-built TVR Tuscan Speed Six sports car which he pictures on a drive on his profile costs up to £50,000 and boasts a top speed of 180mph.
The Harley-Davidson Road King motorbike he is seen on in one image costs £17,595 new. Sayer regularly holidays with his family at his villa in Kissimmee, Florida, which they rent out for £600 a week. The home has a games room, swimming pool and spa, five bedrooms and four bathrooms, all ‘fitted with luxury furnishings’.
The fake cash fraudster
Also trading in people’s personal information for B2C is convicted fraudster Gary Doran, 36, who wanted the Mail’s undercover team to pay Sayer off the books. The Mancunian, who now lives in Marbella, was jailed for six months for fraud in 2004 for trying to use two fake £10 notes to buy vodka.
A 23-year-old student at Manchester Metropolitan University at the time, he tried to buy drink with the fake money at the Queen of Hearts pub in Fallowfield. The barmaid rejected the notes and the police were called, later finding him with 15 other fake bank notes.
After serving time in jail, he has since run several failing businesses with his father and brother from their family home in Manchester.
Most recently, as sales director of B2C Data, he asked an undercover reporter from the Mail to buy data off the books as a ‘favour to a friend’. He wanted the money to be paid directly i nto Sayer’s personal account, as a way of avoiding tax.
Jet-setting boss who said he knew nothing
B2C owner Stephen Hogg insists his firm ‘do everything completely, totally and utterly by the book’.
The jet- setting golfer was, however, completely oblivious to his staff offering to sell data tax-free through their own accounts.
He even had no idea Doran had previously served time for fraud.
The 46-year-old lives with his wife Sarah, 43, and their children in a £400,000 five-bedroom house in Rushden, Northamptonshire.
Last week, there were three cars on the driveway outside the large home in a secluded cul-de-sac.
Hogg appears to have spent much of the past month playing golf at clubs across Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire. He and his wife also go online to boast of their holidays to Portugal and Australia.
‘Holidays, bar, golf and no diet!’, he wrote during one of his travels.
The couple, who have two children, started B2C Data just three months after Hogg’s previous data company Unique Prospects was dissolved.
He said he has also shut another firm down in the past after ‘certain allegations’, before insisting ‘ that wasn’t my company by the way’.
When approached by the Mail about B2C’s activities, Hogg said: ‘We are a member of the ICO [Information Commissioner’s Office], and DMA [Direct Marketing Association]. We do everything correctly.’
When told his employees had offered to sell his company’s data off the books and that Doran is a convicted fraudster, he added: ‘You’ve just made me aware of two things that I need to go and talk to people about.’
He described B2C Data as ‘a legitimate business’ working within the law.