Pub fraudster jailed for two years

A confidence trickster who posed as the brother of comedian Peter Kay in order to scam pub landlords in the East Midlands has been jailed for two years.

Derby Crown Court heard that Peter Stead, 50, told publicans that his name was Danny Kay and he was raising funds for a sick youngster. Stead told one publican that he wanted to book a function room for an event to raise money for the Lewis Mighty Fund and that Peter Kay would make an appearance.

Stead admitted five counts of fraud between 2008 and 2012.

In jailing him for two years Recorder Adrienne Lucking said Stead had committed a particularly mean offence.

She said: “You exploited their interest or their admiration for another individual to gain their confidence.

“That was mean in itself.

“You would take their money, make excuses and not give them their goods.

“In doing that you carried out a well practised and planned confidence fraud.”

The judge added: You played on people’s sympathy and their empathy and their wish to help others and they gave you their money.

“They thought they were helping a fund or providing charitable support to a young man who needed it.

“It’s difficult to think of a meaner kind of confidence fraud.”

Meanwhile a man in Somerset will be sentenced after he admitted conning a pub into believing he was TV star Louis Theroux.

Allan Debenham booked a room at the Duke of York pub in Shepton Beauchamp and gave staff a phone number for the BBC’s finance department plus an order number to arrange payment for his three night stay.

He also got the staff to put two bottles of wine on his room tab, but was rumbled by staff who became suspicious when the PA telephoned the pub and asked for two bottles of Cava and “some fags” to be taken up to the room.

Debenham pleaded guilty to two charges of dishonestly making a false representation by claiming he was Louis Theroux from the BBC.