Fraudster jailed over £500,000 copier con

Jonathan Wilbourne, 46, played the part of a successful businessman, holidaying in New York and buying fine art, on the back of an elaborate financial scam supplying photocopiers.

“Charming” Wilbourne, whose adoptive brother is the Assistant Bishop of Llandaff in Wales, often made references to the fact his father was a vicar and his ecclesiastical connections.

In one case Hull Council had to bail out a primary school which his children attended, St Thomas More Primary, when a finance company pursued them for £30,000, while homeless charity Hull Homeless and Rootless project, which he was a director of, was among his other victims.

Wilbourne, who ran his company Cyan Systems from his former home in South Cave, also duped his “long-lost” brother, Simon Blyth, the owner of several estate agents in West Yorkshire.

Investigators said typically Wilbourne would act as a broker, setting up a lease on behalf of a client with a financing company, but would return later offering them a deal for a new machine, costing thousands more and saying he would buy out the old lease, but then installing a second hand one instead.

Unbeknown to the client, the old lease would not be paid off and they could end up with several leases, racking up “extortionate” bills.

He made money on top by coming to fix them as part of a maintenance contract.

Roger Woodward, senior crime prosecutor working for the complex casework unit in Leeds, said: “He’s a very good salesman, very good at persuading people into entering deals. He established a trust with his clients and then abused that trust.”

Despite being interviewed by police in 2010 and making a number of admissions, and being made bankrupt that year, Wilbourne went back into business with a former colleague, setting up a franchise called Datasharp Yorkshire.

The franchise was terminated after six months, but Wilbourne, who pleaded guilty to 16 offences at an earlier hearing, the majority fraud, but also forgery, obtaining money transfer by deception and concealing property, continued using the name, later changing it to Dataprint Yorkshire.

Det Sgt Phil Shrimpton said: “It was a name they believed they could trust even though he had been disenfranchised by the parent company.

“It was agreed he should be further arrested and interviewed and he made further admissions.”

In all at least 30 victims were identified, and investigators believe he got away with it for so long as people were too embarrassed to come forward.

Prosecutor Jayne Beckett told Hull Crown Court that Wilbourne was adopted at birth and as an adult tried to find his natural family. He met and established a relationship with his brother Simon Blyth, and offered to take care of his photocopying needs, but ended up forging his signature.

He also defrauded a small school in East Yorkshire, Beswick and Watton primary school, signing them up for quarterly payments of £140 for what he claimed was a new photocopier, but was in fact an old machine he’d got from Brough and South Cave Medical Practice.