Lottery conman is jailed
Wednesday August 19th 2009Stephen Drew, who ran a syndicate at his place of work has proved he could not be trusted and the Lottery conman is jailed for stealing the syndicate winnings and later claiming he was robbed at knifepoint.
Drew, from Nottingham, worked for Wiley and Sons in Bognor at the time of the National Lottery win and was a very trusted member of the workforce when he collected the winnings. His con led to 8 innocent men being arrested and held in custody, however police soon saw through the scam and later arrested Drew himself. He has now been jailed by Chichester Crown Court for 8 months for perverting the course of justice and theft and police hope that this will act as a deterrent to anyone else who may consider manufacturing false crimes in order to hide their own criminal acts.
It is not known how much money was involved in this incident or whether the syndicate is still going to buy lottery tickets, but it must have been a heavy shock to all of the members to find the person they had entrusted had engineered such a dishonest act. Now all syndicates are strongly advised to make sure that they choose a well known and trustworthy person to take charge of their tickets and winnings. It is suggested that it may be wise for more than one person to take charge of such syndicates. With the world in deep recession it is all too tempting for even some of the most trustworthy of people when large amounts of money are involved.