The Raymond Crockford Files
WITH more and more school-leavers being encouraged to eschew academia and opt for a more practical and lucrative trade, scaffolder Raymond Crockford’s ‘bling bling’ lifestyle will have ambitious kids practising their construction techniques up and down the country.
However, for 63-year-old Crockford, his modest scaffolding income was rather well supplemented by the far more lucrative and totally tax free shoplifting business.
The ducker and, indeed, diver had been living large for 27 years, chilling in his £500,000 five bedroom Dorset home with landscaped gardens, electric gates and a 50 inch plasma screen.
Crockford also had a second home in Spain, two Mercedes, a BMW and, wait for it, 80 suits.
However, the stolen goods king was eventually nabbed after trying to half-inch (pinch) three bottles of Mahatma Gandhi (brandy) from a local shop (erm, shop).
In the follow-up search of his home, police then discovered a veritable Aladdin’s cave of stolen goods.
On sentencing Crockford to three years in prison and ordering him to pay back £470,000 of the money he made from his activities, Judge Recorder Andrew Langdon told him, “You are extremely efficient at it and you converted what you had stolen into cash which you spent not on the bare necessities, but funding a standard of living many honest men and women seldom achieve.”
Expect City headhunters to be beating a path to his cell door.
A property tycoon is suing a bus company for over £300,000 after his Ferrari was involved in a crash with a bus. One can’t help but sneer.
Posted: 25th, May 2007 | In: Strange But True Comment (1) | TrackBack | Permalink
