Bogus SAS love cheat jailed for
conning women

Jonathan Price, 41, swept his victims off their feet with bogus claims of a past life in the SAS and friendship with the late Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky.

He also posed as a super-rich businessman with a white Rolls Royce and a home in the exclusive Sandbanks area of Dorset – despite, in reality, being a penniless career criminal.

The Walter Mitty figure – who targeted women on a website for “sugar daddies” – even married one victim, with whom he has had a child.

They planned a £96,000 wedding at Rockliffe Hall Hotel near Darlington but instead ended up getting married at Harrogate Register Office in front of just four people.

Price tricked a Leeds garage into loaning him a car when he placed orders for a £70,000 Audi A8 with extras and a £44,000 A5 for his wife, after showing a sales rep details of money transfers on a laptop.

He also made a series of offers for luxury homes, including a £5m property near Harrogate.

Sentencing Price at Teesside Crown Court yesterday, Judge Howard Crowson said he was “selfish” and had “preyed” on the vulnerability of victims who were seeking love and companionship.

“You have a record of fraud offences and theft which demonstrates you regard this as a way of life,” added the judge.

The website used by Price to find his conquests was set up to match beautiful women with wealthy men, the court heard.

Price first conned a florist in her 30s from Bournemouth after beginning a relationship with her, then moved in with her parents and swindled £24,000 out of them for life-prolonging cancer treatments he pretended he needed.

He then turned his attentions to a London-based 38-year-old retail manager, persuading her to let him use her credit cards. Within months she was left bankrupt, with losses running to £20,000.

“She has lost her flat, she had to declare herself bankrupt and she now lives with her mother,” said Adrian Dent, prosecuting.

Behind her back Price wooed a chemist from County Durham, whom he eventually married.

He defrauded her out of £72,000 and her parents out of a further £7,000. She had his baby last year and they have since divorced.

Businesses including an estate agency and a boat dealership lost around £50,000 as a result of his lies.

Price, whose last known address is near Darlington, now appears on the waltermittyhunt.com site which purports to publicise people who falsely claim to have been in the services.

He has previously pleaded guilty to 14 frauds and one count of theft. Price’s latest offences were committed between 2010 and 2012 but his past convictions for dishonesty date back 20 years and he has been jailed four times.

During his attempts to feign serious illness, Price would shiver, vomit and claim to be suffering terrible headaches, Mr Dent said.

The conman, who sported a bushy beard and wore dark glasses for the hearing, has not had contact with his parents, who live in Lincolnshire, since 2000.

He was arrested in May last year after his “deeply suspicious” parents-in-law reported him to the police.

Peter Sabiston, defending, has told the court previously: “He is unsure because of the lies he has told, what is true and what is fantasy. He does seem to lead a life of fantasy.”

His barrister told the court yesterday that Price realised he may never see his child again, and accepts he has “damaged some people very badly and caused a lot of hardship to people he was very close to”.

After the hearing, Det Con Vikki Cooper said: “This case has involved a protracted investigation and now it has concluded I hope Jonathan Price’s victims are able to gain closure and move on with their lives in the knowledge he has received a prison sentence befitting his crimes.”