Cruel to be conned

I met a conman the other week - a fully-fledged fraudster. And I will tell you, it is frightening how easy it is for people to get taken in by them.

I met him at a party and later worked out he had ripped people off at the same party to the tune of at least half a million quid. There are so many worrying things about this tale that I could go on for hours. Firstly, he used all the obvious smokescreens of a good conman – affluent, plausible and offered to give his investors ‘tax-free’ returns to avoid the taxman. He told people with pensions he could ‘release’ some of the value – even though all of them are a good 10 years away from their pension age. He told them he could set up a QROP overseas and then would funnel the money back t...