Fraudster faked seven different lives in £45m scam spanning decades

Fraudster’s seven fake lives revealed: Conman posed as a pilot, multi-millionaire tycoon and friend of Boris Johnson to scam £4.5m before he was revealed as a jobless father-of-three

• Jody Francis Oliver was actually a married, unemployed father-of-three

A fraudster faked seven different identities to pull off scams worth an estimated £4.5million before it was all revealed as decades of lies. 

Jody Francis Oliver, 45, falsely pretended to be a British Airways pilot with a £30 million trust fund, a police officer, a cruise ship captain, a Swedish-speaking car expert and a friend of Boris Johnson.

He also lied about being a property tycoon renovating his £10.5 million townhouse in Notting Hill and planning to buy a holiday home on millionaires’ row in Sandbanks, Dorset, and a motoring tycoon designing his own Rolls-Royce. 

Oliver was none of these things – he was an umemployed man from the Welsh borders who had a wife and three children.

But over the past two decades, as ‘Jon Oliver’, he was also had two male fiancés and at least two boyfriends while pretending to be people he is not. 

In 2020 Oliver introduced himself as a British Airways pilot but BA said he was never an employee

Oliver (pictured) benefited from £272,111 as a result of fraud. He now only has assets of £351

The lies began as early as after he left school when he worked as a special constable with Dyfed-Powys police. 

Sources who knew him have spoken to The Times to piece all his lies together, revealing that he faked the signature of a senior officer to commend his own performance. 

In 2002, Oliver married Laura who was a teacher, and set up an off road experience driving school. 

Through that, he met champion car rally driver Colin McRae and told him he had got him a £3 million sponsorship deal with Coca-Cola. The deal did not exist. 

He also told young driver Kris Meeke he had secured him €400,000 with Ryanair – also a lie. 

Campbell Roy, the business manager of McRae, who died in a helicopter crash in 2007 told the Times: ‘For what purpose he did all of this, I’m not sure. It was likely just an ego trip.’

Oliver used fake contracts and fictional executives’ names to sign letters but was caught out by police. 

He admitted two counts of using false documents in 2004 and was sentenced to 200 hours of community service, it is reported. 

Jody Oliver (pictured), 44, went to extraordinary lengths to create a persona of a P&O cruise ship captain by creating false documents and wearing a costume

After Oliver lost his job with the police he founded companies that supplied slot machines, pool tables and games to pubs and cafés in 2009.

But while there, he continued to invent stories to colleagues and kept a fake framed invite to Margaret Thatcher’s funeral on his desk. He also reportedly owed tens of thousands to suppliers. 

Oliver later pretended to be the co-owner of Vaughan Brothers Funeral Directors, but the company had never heard of him.

He told his family he needed to spend weekends away as part of this ‘role’ but reports say he was actually with a boyfriend during this time, pretending to be a police officer called Jonathan Kane. 

Read more: Bogus luxury cruise ship captain who raked in £272,000 from holidaymakers while living bizarre double-life is ordered to pay back just £351 – after blowing victims’ money on gambling

After this relationship ended, in 2011 aged 34 he met a 19-year-old man on a dating app and moved in with him in Newport – while pretending to be a ‘director of events’ at Jaguar Land Rover who needed to travel for work.

In 2016 he conned his wife’s father into paying him £105,000 to help fight a fake legal case after his bank account was ‘hacked’ – but his father-in-law contacted police when he realised the whole thing was a set up. 

Another of Oliver’s cons included pretending to be a cruise ship captain. He sold tickets for a ‘P&O cruise’ in 2018 which never happened. 

His wife eventually separated from him when she saw photos of Oliver and his secret fiancé in bed together on Facebook. 

Oliver later got a job at a Volvo garage using the name Joey Oliver where he claimed he spoke fluent Swedish, but was actually speaking ‘nonsense’, and sold fake shares into Volvo, reports said. 

In August 2019, he was found guilty of VAT fraud relating to his gaming company and received a two-year suspended sentence and rehabilitation.

In 2020 Oliver introduced himself as a British Airways pilot but BA said he was never an employee. 

In August last year Oliver was jailed for six years and one month for the cruise fraud but the investigations continued. 

This May, Oliver pleaded guilty to 17 charges of fraud and theft carried out during his time as a car salesman in Worcester and a further charge relating to his father-in-law. 

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