British conman jailed in US for £50m trail of fraud and theft | Crime | The Guardian Skip to main contentSkip to navigationSkip to navigation
robert tringham
Robert Tringham with former girlfriend Barbara Abrass: he bought her a new home in Florida.
Robert Tringham with former girlfriend Barbara Abrass: he bought her a new home in Florida.

British conman jailed in US for £50m trail of fraud and theft

This article is more than 14 years old
Cancer victims and celebrities among victims of thief who played role of upper-class businessman, court papers show

Robert Tringham gave every appearance of living the American dream ‑ a self-made man, running a string of lucrative investment businesses in the United States, he lived in a million-dollar house and always had a beautiful woman at his side.

But behind this well-crafted front, the reality was that Tringham was an international conman who traded on charm, confidence and American weakness for a cut-glass English accent.

Financial investigators in the US believe he left a trail of misery across 10 American states and several countries dating back to the 1980s. They are embarking on an international effort to find offshore accounts, hidden properties, and secret deposits to recover some of the estimated $50m he has defrauded and stolen.

Tringham, meanwhile, is behind bars after finally being convicted in a Los Angeles court of 10 charges of federal fraud and tax evasion.

The Guardian can reveal from US and British court documents that the names caught in his web of deceit included Bruce Springsteen, Johnny Depp and John McEnroe, as well as young children suffering from cancer, widows and successful international businessmen from Germany, Bulgaria, Norway, Canada, the UK, US and Australia.

Born Rodney Duncan Tringham on May 4 1945 in Basford, Nottinghamshire, he was married with a daughter and in his early 40s when the first details of his skill as a conman emerged.

His tactic was simple, but effective. "He is one of the most dangerous sorts of criminal," said Lawrence Gilmore, who represented Springsteen when the rock star sued Tringham for $2m losses after he tried to pirate his music. "He wore the smartest suits, and spoke perfect public schoolboy Queen's English. He had an extremely powerful personality, he was very persuasive. I have sued him I don't know how many times under various different corporate guises. But eventually his company went into liquidation, he went bankrupt and skipped the country."

Tringham, 64, faces a jail term of up to 170 years for his latest con, in which he tricked unsuspecting investors into handing over $7.3m in a so-called Ponzi scheme.

One US financial investigator said: "In many ways he is probably a genius ‑ but he is also an insane fantasist. He seems to believe in this alternate reality, that of an international man of mystery. And from what we have seen there were always plenty of women and what it looks like is that he was doing this to impress the next woman."

With Springsteen's lawyers on his trail, Tringham showed up in Florida, having changed his name from Rodney to Robert. In doing so he concealed a string of criminal convictions for fraud, forgery and theft in the UK, the last of which in 1989 saw him jailed for three years.

"What we eventually discovered was that when he got out of prison in the UK in 1992 he began travelling to the US on tourist visas. Then he moved to Florida under his new name, with a new British passport," said Joe Akrotirianakis, assistant district attorney in central California.

He conned British property developers into investing in a holiday development in the sunshine state. One victim, Doug White, lost more than $240,000, money which Tringham used to buy his then girlfriend Barbara Abrass a new house in Florida, court documents say.

With the British investors struggling to find out what had happened to their money Tringham continued to target more victims in America and across the world. US investigators believe he had at least one middleman in Europe, who recruited new clients for his schemes.

Court documents show this middleman stated that Johnny Depp and John McEnroe were clients, in order to convince new investors of Tringham's credibility.

As he settled into the lifestyle of a successful businessman, court judgments were handed down in numerous states against him. But he stayed one step ahead, forcing some victims to hire private detectives to pursue him in New York, Florida and Los Angeles.

In Kansas pensioner Bob Settle was tricked into handing him 1800 German financial bonds. Settle sued for $20m ‑ the amount the bonds were said to be worth ‑ but never got his money back.

Other victims were more vulnerable. By April 2004 he had tricked a children's cancer charity in Chicago into parting with more than $1.5m as part of a $3.5m scam involving investments run by a fake entity set up by Tringham.

Jim Pesoli, president of the charity, said: "The whole thing has hit us very hard financially. We met Tringham, he was a smooth-talking Englishman who said he had worked across the world in finance. He was very convincing. We did our homework, we felt reassured because we were investing in a bank. When we found out what he had done we just felt it was pretty sad when someone has to stoop that low and take money from a charity that helps children with cancer."

By 2005 he was living in Los Angeles, and had set up the investment scheme which ultimately led to his downfall, persuading investors to part with some $7.3m to place in his company First National Ban Corp.

Most of the funds, however, were used to enrich Tringham. Now dating a new, much younger girlfriend, Hui Wang, he used $1.5m from his latest con to buy her a luxury house in an expensive neighbourhood of LA, and a new Land Rover.

By now the American authorities were catching up with him. But Tringham continued creating new companies to carry out further frauds. Jeri Tulipan was one of his last victims. She parted with $1m which was part of a $9m fraud targeting investors in Germany and the US.

When she threatened to go to the authorities, she received a string of threatening emails. Like the majority of investors, she has never got her money back.

"He presented himself as intelligent and knowledgeable," said Tulipan. "I met him in an impressive building and the company signs were up outside. He was in a three-piece suit, and had a British accent, he was very convincing.

"But everything he said was a lie, everything he has done in his life is a lie. For what he did to me and others he deserves everything he is going to get."

Tringham will be sentenced in June.

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