Property conman Keith Fryer is sent to jail

Property conman Keith Fryer, 68, has been sentenced to three years in jail and been banned from being involved in the management or formation of a company for five years.

The news will be greeted with relief by estate agents, who were conned into handing over details of sellers whose properties had been sticking on the market in the belief that Fryer had a buyer lined up.

Fryer would then charge sellers a supposedly refundable ‘processing fee’ for getting the buyer. But the processing fee vanished into thin air and there never were any buyers.

Repeated warnings by EAT about Fryer – who popped up in different parts of the country, not always using his own name and using different ‘company’ names, including Equity Locations and Capital Funding  – were picked up by investigating police in Bolton, although after legal arguments the jury was never told about his activities, which were also exposed on Watchdog.

The jury also didn’t get to hear about Fryer’s time in prison in America.

In fact, in 1997 he was imprisoned for five years for the part he played in an $18m ‘Ponzi’ investment scheme.

He persuaded 88 victims in the Philadelphia area to hand over large sums of cash, which he said he was using to finance second mortgages in England and Wales, taking advantage of the UK’s higher interest rates and promising large returns.

In fact Fryer, who had a home in Florida, was using the money to fund his con, whereby he paid interest to earlier investors with cash handed over from newer investors.

Among his victims were two judges and the wealthy owner of a supermarket chain.

Altogether the US authorities estimated Fryer’s scheme attracted more than $30m in investments worldwide, with him paying the cash into accounts in several countries including England and Israel.

Sentencing Fryer at that time, US District Judge Edmund V Ludwig bemoaned the fact he could not order a longer term. “This was an extremely large fraud that ruined the finances, and in some instances the lives, of many people,” he said.

Back in England after his release, Fryer went to live in a smart gated estate in the North with his wife Naomi. He became, of all things, treasurer to the residents’ management association and over four years stole nearly £40,000 from unsuspecting friends and neighbours.

They had little to suspect of the grey-haired pensioner: he drove a Jaguar and he and his wife regularly jetted off to foreign holidays.

They had no idea he had done time in prison, and none that the plausible conman was trawling estate agency offices looking for victims – a practice that led to him giving undertakings in the High Court, which appear to have been meaningless.

But it was his fraud among his neighbours which landed him in Bolton Crown Court where he was sentenced.

Judge Steven Everett sentenced Fryer to three years in jail and banned him from running a company for five years.

He said: “You are a greedy individual. You want things you can’t afford to have, so you get them by dishonest means.”

Fryer is likely to be released from prison in about 18 months’ time, but readers should remember that if he attempts to run a company within five years, that will be a criminal offence.

A proceeds of crime hearing will be held on January 18 to try to recover the money Fryer stole.

Detective Constable Rick Armstrong, of Bolton CID, handled the investigation and has now retired after 33 years in the police force. Fryer was one of his last cases.

He said: “Quite simply, Fryer is a conman.”