A gang of con-men who used Monopoly money to trick jewellery dealers in a £7m scam have been sent straight to jail this week.
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The crew would sandwich actual Monopoly money between real euro notes in piles of money, and on other occasions would cover the words ‘Monopoly’ and ‘facsimile’ with paper bands used to hold the bundles together.
Judge Julian Lambert told the gang at Bristol Crown court:
The fraud operated required you men to establish confidence in your victims so it was thought you could be trusted. You operated as a crime group, using reconnaissance and meticulous planning. It required considerable ingenuity and effort to establish dishonest ends.
Their biggest swindle was at the expense of jeweller John Calleija, who had a shop in the Royal Arcade in Old Bond Street, London. They defrauded him of £6.1 million using the toy cash.
They also pulled off similar scams in Bristol, Wiltshire and Leeds.
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When I first saw this headline I thought they meant ‘Monopoly money’ as in counterfeit money, but nope – these guys used actual Monopoly money mixed with real money and managed to defraud people for £7 million. That takes a serious amount of balls to even attempt. Imagine buying millions of pounds worth of items from a high-end jeweller and having the gall to pay them with shiny fake multi-coloured Monopoly money? Madness.
Shame there’s no such thing as a ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card in real life. Well, unless you’re this guy.
