James Bond fantasist wins sentence appeal (From This Is Cheshire)

James Bond fantasist wins sentence appeal

1:20pm Friday 21st November 2008 in

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A CONMAN who emptied his fiancée’s bank account before disappearing has had his sentence reduced by appeal court judges.

Craig Taylor, aged 45, of Noble Close, Birchwood, duped his Lymm victim into believing he was an MI5 agent and SAS veteran before raiding her bank when she was on holiday.

He had actually served only 44 days in the Army in 1981, before being discharged.

His six-year sentence was reduced to four years and nine months at the Court of Appeal in London on Thursday.

Taylor, known to his victims as Peter Franks, had previously convinced a Nottingham police officer of his bogus MI5 tale and fleeced him of £10,500.

Peter Franks, his alias, is a character from Ian Fleming’s James Bond novel Diamonds Are Forever.

Taylor convinced the police officer to give him the money as part of a plan to buy items at Government auctions and guaranteed a 30 per cent profit.

After taking the officer on a false security operation in Sheffield, when he managed to talk his way into a police station and armed forces office, he was arrested when he tried to enter Sheffield Crown Court.

He was granted bail, but absconded and used that time to con his next victim – the woman from Lymm.

Her suspicions were eventually aroused and she reported him to police who realised he was the same man wanted in Nottingham for skipping bail.

He was jailed in June after admitting breaching bail and obtaining property and pecuniary advantages by deception.

He had previously promised to pay back the money he stolen from Miss Bee, but never did.

He was then sentenced in relation to a further £14,000 of unlawfully obtained property.

Sentencing him at Nottingham Crown Court, Judge Jonathan Teare described him as a ‘heartless man’, a conman and a ‘convincing and compulsive liar’.

But appeal judges Mr Justice Griffith Williams and Judge Andrew Patience QC said his sentence was ‘manifestly excessive’.

In June his victim said: “The fact he’s in prison and I helped put him there gives me satisfaction, but the sentence should have been longer. He’ll be out in two and a half years.

“He will do this again when he comes out. He spent nine months in prison just before I met him and that didn’t stop him.

“He’s going to spend his life doing this, it’s his career. It’s what he does.”