Eight years in prison for plain Mr Fraud
A JUDGE jailed a fake aristocrat for eight years yesterday over an attempted £229million bank raid – and insisted on calling him mister.
Self-styled peer Hugh Rodley, 61, dubbed the “Lord of Fraud”, masterminded an operation to launder cash from the botched heist.
He set up a web of accounts ready to take the haul from a Japanese bank in the City of London. But the plot failed after two computer hackers made a “careless” keyboard error after sneaking into the Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation.
Rodley, of Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, who bought a Lord of the Manor title, showed no emotion as he was jailed by Judge Martyn
Zeidman, QC, at London’s Snaresbrook Crown Court. “I call you Mr Rodley although I know you prefer the title lord,” said the judge. “I am told you bought some right to use that grander title but of course you are not a member of the Lords.
“You lived a life of luxury in a mansion with stables and you have given yourself the trappings of wealth and delusions of grandeur. But you were the chief executive if not the managing director of this fraud.”