A modern day Robin Hood who claimed to have been “sent by God to take back some of the wealth that the outrageously rich had taken from the rest of us”. This Belfast born cat burglar was a meticulous planner whose roll call of marks numbered Sophia Loren, Zsa Zsa Gabor, John Aspinall and Maria Callas. He quoted Confucius, Oscar Wilde and Proust and targeted “rich prats” as it gave him a “sexual thrill”. The 1965 film He Who Rides a Tiger starring Tom Bell and Judi Dench was based on Scott and concluded that: “If I rob Ivana Trump, it is just a meeting of two different kinds of degeneracy on a dark rooftop”. Raffles would have been proud.
Category: THE BOLD AND THE DARING
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Peter Scott (born Peter Craig Gulston, 1931 – 2013)
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Hilary Devey
This Lancastrian tycoon transformed the Dragons’ Den with her 80s style shoulder pads and comments such as “he made my foot itch”. Thrice married Devey has five homes around the world and claims to have “felt sexism in every way conceiveable”. She’s “proud to pay tax” and dubs David Cameron “weak”. By ‘eck. -
Marcus Cooper
A property developer extraordinaire with a “passion for deals”. He has been involved in deals involving many of London’s most expensive properties and founded the Marcus Cooper Group in 1991. Cooper purchased the capital’s second largest home, Witanhurst on Highgate Hill, for £32 million in 2007 and put it back on the market five weeks later for £75 million and acquired One Cornwall Terrace, designed by Decimus Burton, for £80 million in 2013. Other transactions have included the former QVC building in Battersea and 16 Grosvenor Estate properties in Belgravia and Mayfair. -
Ronald Edwards (1931 – 1994), better known as Buster Edwards
Variously a boxer, nightclub owner, florist and criminal. Edwards became famous as one of the 1963 Great Train Robbery gang. He fled to Mexico but returned to Britain in 1966 when his £150,000 share ran out. After a 9-year stint in jail, he set up a flower stall in Waterloo where he was himself robbed by Dexter Fletcher, the then boyfriend of Absolutely Fabulous’ Julia Sawalha, in 1991. He was found dead hanging from a steel girder in a lock-up garage in 1994 whilst under investigation as part of an inquiry into a large-scale fraud. Phil Collins played him in the 1988 film of his life, Buster. -
Giovanni Di Stefano
Jailed for 14 years in March 2013 on charges of deception, fraud and money laundering, Di Stefano is a man who is often referred to as “The Devil’s Advocate”. He has been variously linked to such luminaries as Saddam Hussein, Harold Shipman and Nicholas van Hoogstraten. Others he’s associated with include Jeremy Bamber, Kenneth Noye and John “Goldfinger” Palmer. He plainly should have kept better company. -
David Elias
Some say he died in 2009, others, including the Serious Fraud Office, suspect he’s hiding out in the rainforests of Borneo. This bankrupted businessman was best known for drinking red wine from a teapot at breakfast and for his public spats with Egon Ronay, Richard Desmond, Lord Rothschild and Ernest Saunders. He met his wife, Nicola, in a nightclub. When asked what she’d require to move in with him, she asked for £5,000 a month. He organised it that very night and though most of his assets have been seized, she continues to drive a top of the range Mercedes and lives in comparative luxury on the island of Labuan, Malaysia. The investigators are still watching. -
Eric Hersman
The Sunday Times describe him as a “secretive US financier” but Hersman, who is a sometime resident of London’s Bulgari Hotel is also said to have brokered the $1.6 billion buyout of Formula One over lunch on the French Riviera in the spring of 2005. Hersman was a contributor to the McCain-Palin campaign in 2008 and his company, Churchill Capital, is based in Mayfair. -
Robert Bourne and Sally Greene OBE
Well-known for their numberplates “2 BE” and “NOT 2B,” this power couple live on Cheyne Walk and are a little bit like Marmite. In Chelsea, Bourne has aroused controversy by attempting to gain planning permission to turn George Best’s favourite boozer, The Phene, into a house and in Soho, Greene’s makeover of Ronnie Scott’s caused apoplectic outbursts amongst traditionalists. Labour supporting Bourne is described as a “property and leisure entrepreneur” whilst his wife just happens to control the luvvies favourite theatre, The Old Vic in Waterloo. Bourne and Greene are a duo who should not be underestimated. -
Leslie "Les" Allen-Vercoe (also known as Les Vercoe)
This property developer tried to sell Britain’s ugliest crib, Updown Court at Windlesham in Surrey, for £70 million in 2008. It languished on the market for years and looked like a cross between a Tesco store and Center Parcs. The mansion included five swimming pools, a heated marble driveway and 103 rooms. Nobody loved it but after it was repossessed in 2011, it was finally sold on for £35 million. Meanwhile, Allen-Vercoe appeared in the dock at Southwark Crown Court in 2012 in relation to a case involving the £10 million mortgage fraudster Joanne Sarah Pier (also known as Zoe May Fletcher and Maria Micheala). He was cleared. -
Raffaele Mincione
He was once engaged to Heather Mills but had a very lucky escape when she chose to marry Sir Paul McCartney instead. This Italian banker got the bargain of the century when he purchased 25 Lennox Gardens in Knightsbridge for just £18 million. The asking price had been set at £40 million and a previous offer of £34 million had been rejected.