Poker Player who Posed as ‘Lord’ Imprisoned in £400K Fake Cruise Scam

• British gambler and fake ‘Lord’ Richard Lester operated a bogus cruise company
• He scammed 184 vacationers from across the world out of £400K while living the high life
• Sentenced to 5 years in prison at Chelmsford Crown Court

A British “professional gambler” who claimed to be “a lord” and scammed almost 200 people through his Ponzi-style sham cruise company has been sent to prison for five years.

Richard Lester, 56, from Luton, England, duped 184 people out of £400K (US$500k) through his business, Cruise Direct UK. The company purported to allow customers to purchase miles to be exchanged for cruise vacations, but it was a scam. Much of the money was “frittered away on online poker websites,” according to prosecutors.

One had flown from the UK to Florida only to find their dream cruise was a nonstarter.

The Lord Taketh Away

Lester, who sometimes called himself “Lord Lester,” among a slew of other aliases, used deliberately convoluted terms and conditions and would attempt to gaslight his victims into believing it was their fault, the court heard.

Meanwhile, the defendant was “living the high life” in Las Vegas, gambling and playing poker tournaments, according to Judge Alexander Mills. The fraud persisted from 2009 until the company’s demise in 2014. Ironically, during that time, Lester won the “World’s Leading Travel Rewards Program” accolade at the 2012 World Travel Awards.

He was found guilty this week of charges of fraudulent trading and concealing criminal property after a nine-week trial at Chelmsford Crown Court.  

“This was a well-planned and complex fraud carried out over a lengthy period of time, and it was done knowingly and willingly on your part,” Mills told the defendant.

Lester Has Form

The jury wasn’t told that Lester had spent three years in a Young Offenders Institution in the 1980s for 22 offenses of dishonesty, including theft, obtaining property by deception, and handling stolen goods.

Securing justice for these victims meant scouring several bank accounts to trace exactly where their money [went],” said Essex Police Constable Leanne Smith, who investigated Lester, in a statement.

“All their money leads back to Lester. His greed left hundreds of people thousands of pounds out of pocket,” she added. “Many of the cruise companies they were expecting to holiday [vacation] with had no record they were ever due on board their ships. Lester poured funds into a lavish lifestyle he bragged about to the same victims he defrauded.”