‘James Bond' fantasist is jailed

9:40am Thursday 3rd July 2008

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A CONMAN who duped a businesswoman and a police officer out of thousands of pounds in a plot as extravagant as a Hollywood blockbuster has been jailed.

Craig Taylor, who went by the alias of Peter Franks, convinced his victims he was in MI5, the Military Police, the SAS and the Secret Service.

Taylor modelled his alter-ego on a character from James Bond novel Diamonds Are Forever.

A woman from Lymm was among his victims. She does not want to be named, but she told the Warrington Guardian she felt ‘disgusted’ by his betrayal.

She knew Taylor, who lives in Oakwood, as Peter Franks, and met him through an Internet dating site. He preyed on her and, after proposing to her, stole £1,600 from her bank account before being caught.

In an exclusive interview with the Warrington Guardian, (left), she spoke about how she became suspicious of Franks’s supposed work and eventually turned him in.

Taylor, aged 45, appeared at Nottingham Crown Court on Thursday, where he was sentenced to six years in prison for obtaining property by deception.

The court heard how he told the police officer he and his MI5 colleagues were in a syndicate and bought items at Government auctions before selling them on for a 30 per cent profit.

The police officer, from the Nottinghamshire force, gave Taylor £10,500, even after Taylor had begun an affair with the officer’s wife that ended their marriage.

The tale that emerged was so fanciful that Ian Fleming himself might have struggled to work it into his spy novels.

Taylor’s concocted fairytale included claims he had worked with Scotland Yard, stints serving with the Military Police in Hong Kong, the SAS and a glittering career in MI5.

The liar weaved an intricate and convincing web of deceit and violated the trust of those who grew close to him.

He relentlessly stuck to his extravagant tale, even telling arresting police officers that special forces were on their way to save him.

On the day he was meant to appear at court he continually telephoned court staff telling them he was delayed, before finally announcing he had been arrested by Scotland Yard and could not make it to court.

Taylor was known by his real name only to his real wife and children. Everybody else knew him as Peter Franks.

In a bizarre twist, Peter Franks is a character, a diamond dealer from Amsterdam, in the James Bond novel Diamonds Are Forever.

Taylor used his story to charm his way into an armed forces office and a police station in Sheffield before being arrested when he tried to get into Sheffield Crown Court.

In court he painted a picture of himself as a gambling addict, an ‘incurable romantic’ who never set out to steal from or cross those he met.

His previous convictions show a criminal becoming more and more confident, starting with a spate of burglaries in the 1970s before obtaining property by deception became his crime of choice.

In his criminal career he has impersonated a police officer, handled stolen goods and escaped from prison.