A world record holding sailor who pretended to be an investment banker has been jailed after defrauding multiple girlfriends out of thousands of pounds.
John Keady was sentenced to five years and three months for 11 fraud charges after the judge described him as having lies “woven into the very fabric” of his being.
Originally from Plymouth, and named Peter Berry, Keady once sailed with Pete Goss and Steve Gossett and in 2001 set a new world record when he skippered a trimaran from Plymouth to La Rochelle ten hours faster than anyone previous.
Yet despite his success, he changed his name from Berry and embarked upon a bizarre trail of deceit where he systematically conned girlfriends, friends and family out of £80,000.
Many of his victims he met online, and by posing as a banker, persuaded them to hand over their account details which he then used to steal from their accounts and take out false loans.
Prosecuting, Philip Lee said in Truro Crown Court: "He has flattered them, been attentive, gained their trust and affection, reduced them to becoming emotionally involved with him and, in some cases, gained the trust of children."
His string of lies extended to family and friends too, with Keady even lying to his recently widowed mother who, after lending him £30,000 in cash, had to remortgage her house twice to pay off her son’s supposed debts.
Pleading defense, Barrie van der Berg told the courts Keady suffered from a personality disorder, diagnosed in 2003, and that he should be given credit for pleading guilty.
However it still remains unclear why exactly Keady conjured up such bizarre stories – such as one where he convinced girlfriends he needed £11,000 to fund a rescue operation for friends trapped in the Himalayas.
He told Keady: "You embarked upon a systematic campaign of deceit involving vulnerable victims. You constructed elaborate webs of false stories in order to obtain sums of money to support yourself.
"Your campaign of cruel, mean and underhand deceit has spread from Hampshire, across the South and South West. There was nothing impulsive about what you did. It was calculated."
It was only after some of the women he betrayed began asking questions that his deceit began to surface.
According to the regional newspaper, Western Morning News, one of his former wives, Lynn, in a bid to track him down, painstakingly pasted together shredded phone bills and credit card statements before calling every number she didn't recognise.
She said the phone calls unearthed around 15 other love interests with some as far afield as Singapore, Holland and the Czech Republic. Lynn went on to speak to another of Keady’s women Julie, who later confronted him. He then broke down and confessed his devious actions in full to her.
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