Belfast fraudster who conned elderly while on bail avoids jail

A convicted fraudster who continued to con elderly victims while on bail has avoided a return to jail.

Fifty-seven-year-old George Henry Patrick Crossett of Lyndhurst Drive in Belfast was given an 18-months suspended sentence on Thursday.

He was originally sentenced in 2018 for defrauding 17 vulnerable, elderly people of more than £100,000.

The court heard he befriended his first victims at his electrical shop on Shankhill Road in Belfast.

Belfast Crown Court was told that he defrauded another two victims of more than £12,000 after meeting them at a shop he opened in Holywood, County Down, while on bail.

Crossett, who completed his previous sentence last March, admitted that he was in debt to his bank, his wife, HMRC as well as customers and other creditors.

'No intention of repayment'

The judge said Crossett gave his victims receipts promising to pay them back with interest within eight weeks.

When the deadline passed, he would claim to have been injured, burgled or that a relative had died.

Crossett was sentenced at the Laganside Courts in Belfast

One of his victims, who he talked into handing over a car to be paid off in instalments, has since died.

Crossett went onto sell the car to a dealer having only repaid some of the £6,500 owed.

When sentencing Crossett, the judge said that fraud caused more harm beyond the actual money lost.

He said Crossett's frauds were deliberate and he had no real prospect or intention of repaying his victims.

The judge said that there was "no doubt" that the threshold for custodial sentence was passed but questioned what could be gained by returning Crossett to prison so soon after completing his last term, during which he had done a number of programmes including victim awareness.

Crossett was given an 18-months prison sentence, suspended for two years, and was ordered to repay his victims within six months.