hmmmm
Just checked an old email address and saw a PM related to this subject sent to me a couple of months ago digging about the story.
@cee_ell: I actually met him for the first time on VS flt to LA when I was going out to visit my ex. Whatever he was doing out there, it took him to LA 3 or 4 times a year so whenever we were in town together we would take an R44 out from Group 3. His story was that he was big mukkas with Peter Lowry and had a residency permit for the US based on having made a major investment in G3 as a "silent partner". the fact that his name didn't appear anywhere on their website wasn't a major drama if he was a silent partner, so I let it pass.
On one occasion (I can't remember if this was either Dec 1999 or Dec 2000 - so are you sure about the alleged arrest date?) he arranged for us, and some friends from the UK to take an R44 from Group 3 out to Catalena, but it was short lived because we got as far as LAX and had to put down for 3 hours waiting for a Wx system to pass. In the end we didn't have the time to get there and back so returned to Van Nuys where Peter took him to one side and half an hour later Mark left the room looking quite red faced. We ended up going back to the VS crew hotel where he was staying - and that seemed to be how he knew a few of the crews because he knew all of the VS layover hotels and seemed to find ways to get invited back to the rooms where the hotel put on the crew buffet for the incoming/outgoing crews to get something to eat on the change over. his line was he knew them from having done a lot of flying with the pilots, but he seemed to know more cabin crew than anything else.
He also claimed at various points to have been involved in various Virgin businesses. I know he was doing some IT contracting for Virgin Energy as a start up, but also claimed to be involved in "Virgin Helicopters" - not that I had ever come across such a venture.
In 2004 I was back in LA for the final time and called in at G3 to have a chat with them about doing some hour building/training and mentioned I knew Mark and got cold shouldered, but without explanation.
As for appearance: he is/was about 5'8", stocky with fair hair. He also blinks a lot.
@air-bender: About 2005 I had word that he had gone out to Dubai to sell luxury yachts. I hadn't heard from him in about 3 years (he came and went a bit after 2001 when he flew his girlfriend out to Dubai and proposed and she turned him down - it was kind of odd that for all the money he flashed as an IT contractor they were living in her 2 bed terrace in Luton while his mother had a reasonably large pad and a bit of land in Witney, but that in itself didn't say much, though on a couple of occasions when I found myself hanging around for him on a pre-arranged meet to fly I'd call the house number explain to her I was waiting for him to turn up at Redhill to take the EC120 -GECZZ if anyone ever came across it, and she'd hang up on me. The last time it happened I was set to fly out to Paris with him and it fell through at the last moment and she got the hump about him "talking bollocks" - I suppose my antennae should have been up at that point, but he was a mate so I gave him the benefit of the doubt)and tried to look him up. I tried again a few years later which turned up this thread after I googled him and the only Mark Lamb I could find alongside this thread was an article about a UK pilot who had gone out to the US to train as a pilot and who won an award from his flight school for the highest marks/course performance so presumed on the basis of him not likely to be able to fly again in the UK on a licence that he had rehabilitated himself in the US.
His IT background was pretty solid. he spent about a year working for the UK law firm Simmons and Simmons as their main IT guy, then a firm in Milton Keynes called Workplace Systems (we took the EC120 out to MK so he could give some of his colleagues a jolly around MK then flew it up to Lutterworth and parked it on the golf course) before he went to Virgin Energy in Covent Garden. If any of that rings true then it's the same guy.
I never parted with any money with him, and the worst of it was probably flying in a way that exceeded both of our licence privileges thinking he had an ATPL(H) which he didn't and perhaps being made to look a bit gullible/foolish with people who had actually sussed him out. Fair enough, I'll take that criticism, but then who hasn't done things they later think was ill-advised for a friend?