Our old friend GoldenEaglePilot
 

I think many of us will remember Kevin Crellin, known in this parish as "goldeneaglepilot"; I had a run in with PPrune management for doubtling his credentials and failing to respect his online investigations and their value; hopefully PPrune management at-least have learned a lesson about that.

I just heard this about him:-

Conman jailed for 21 months after failing to pass on donation to injured pilot (From Oxford Mail)

Personally, I thought he'd get a bit more than that - but on the other hand, a couple of years at Her Majesty's pleasure should hopefully give the nasty :mad: adequate time to contemplate behaviour and morality.

Hurray. I've been "had" by GEP as well. Fortunately only pride was hurt, nothing more serious.

He used to keep phoning me up, calling himself "David Henderson" trying to engage me in his various schemes and persecutions. I can't claim to have realised that he was a liar and a conman - I thought he was just a nasty and intrusive individual who should be kept in his box. Full credit to the people - primarily the pilot and his mum who were conned out of a lump of money for some flying training, who realised what he was and blew the whistle.

He did at one point try to threaten me with disclosure to my employer of something I'd posted in confidence on the moderators forum, so somehow he had access to that as well. What he didn't know of course, is that my boss had already :mad: me for the particular thing, so I told him to get stuffed ! A very nasty piece of work, but a competent conman sadly.

Genghis we sympathised with your plight at the time. This was truly an insidious character, but, as always, justice and sweet revenge best served cold.

Now, the bankers and the rest of the worlds swindlers...........:8

Thank you, and yes. There is pleasure to be found in watching the bodies of your enemies floating past :D

Hmmmm, got what he deserved. Just need to sort out Robert and job's a good 'un!:ok:

Is the extremely experienced Ferry pilot aware that his name was being used?


I heard Robert has sold up in favour of running a pub.

We have to find something more out about this.

"We have to find something more out about this."


Organising a p!ss-up in a brewery perhaps??

About time things finally caught up with that rat, including swindeling young folks on RC deals, glad he got porridge.

He did threaten and attacked everybody that did not go along with his line, and he was well protected around here...

What can I say

5 4 3 2 1.....;)

Thanks for posting Genghis, I think for the sum involved and what he was actually prosecuted for 21 months is a very good result and on a different day he could have got off a lot lighter.

I am in full agreement but....

21 months means he will be out in around 10 months. Leopards do not change their spots, so whilst this reprieve is rather good, everyone will need to be very vigilant once the notionally reformed character is released - too repeat his previous behaviour.

It will be very interesting to see where he reappears...

It is not unknown for a Crim to be released, smirking, to freedom at the end of their custody, only to feel a tap on the shoulder and a re-arrest by Mr. Plod on other charges. Very occasionally, Plod gets it right.
One can live in hopes.

As many people will already know, Kevin Crellin AKA David Henderson and Golden Eagle Pilot was convicted of three counts of fraud by deception at Oxford Crown Court. As a result, he was also in breach of an existing suspended sentence. He has now been sentenced to a total of 21 months imprisonment.

The three frauds were:

He obtained a significant amount of money from the mother of a young pilot in respect of training and aircraft rental which was never provided

He took cash from two people who thought they were sending money to the then wife of Jetblu who was badly burned in a fire in his aircraft. One of those counts was mine and I was called to testify about it. The total amount he collected was actually almost £6000 but only two contributors pressed charges.

Unfortunately, the case ran longer than I had been told it would and I was only able to watch the prosecution case from the point at which I gave evidence (I was first on but there were legal arguments before that which I missed because you are not allowed in court before you testify).

Jetblu was in court for the defence case and Crellin's performance in the witness box. I will leave it to him to give a detailed account of it but, from what he has told me, if it wasn't so serious, it would have been funny: Crellin's defence was unconvincing in the extreme. I did get some flavour of it from his barrister's cross examination of other prosecution witnesses.

In summary he claimed that the money for the lessons and aircraft rental had been paid over to a flight school. Unsurprisingly, there was no documentation and the school denied ever receiving the money. Also, an examination of his bank account showed a payment from the first victim going in on one day and a payment of exactly the same amount going out on the next. Where to? To pay a fine for another fraud. And no, I'm not joking!

He claimed that the money donated to Jetblu's wife was paid to her in small amounts in cash at meetings at motorway services. Apparently she preferred it that way rather than having it paid into her bank account.

At first he claimed he couldn't remember where they met, then said it was on the M40. This would have required her to drive for several hours with small children in the car for each meeting. The jury didn't believe him.

As I say, I'll leave it to Jetblu to fill in the gaps: from what he told me, Crellin's testimony must have been well worth hearing!

Finally, I would like to add a word about the process. It took absolutely ages and numerous contacts with various police forces and Action Fraud (AKA Chocolate Teapot!) to get anything started. In the event, the police officer at Thames Valley Police who ended up with the case did a superb job: the difficulty was in finding him.

The prosecuting barrister was quiet, understated and ruthlessly effective.

The defence barrister had the air of a good player brought on ten minutes from the end of a game when his team is six nil down, playing up hill on a sloping pitch on a rainy day. Which I suppose he was.

The judge was scrupulously fair and, I understand, made the time to talk personally to Jetblu although he was not a witness. I'll let JB expand on that if he would like to.

The moratorium on discussions here was at the police officer's request as he wanted to avoid anything that might prejudice the case. I would likely to thank the Mods, and everyone else here, for respecting that.

One small gem from the proceedings: when I was giving evidence, the judge asked me to explain how the forums work with particular reference to the rather whimsical user names some of us have rather than posting under our real names.

When I explained that, the defence barrister said, under his breath but the prosecutor heard and repeated aloud:

"Sort of a 'nom de Prune' then?". Everyone, including the Judge, laughed at that except Crellin. But then, by that time he didn't have much to laugh about.....

Goes to show that the court isn't serious all the time!

Anyhow, we have a result and now this piece of human sewage can be flushed down the toilet of history where he belongs.

By the way, a final piece of trivia: I believe that David Henderson was actually the name of the commanding officer of the RFC at the beginning of World War 1. I wonder if KC knew that?

This is second hand, but another witness in the case, tells me that Witness Support has told her that there should be no reduction below that 21 months.

That deserves to go into common useage.

Genghis

I heard that as well but think witness support misunderstood. The sentence is not suspended but will be subject to the normal rule that he serves half in custody and half on licence.

I wonder if there was any medical evidence to confirm his claim to be suffering a heart condition that means he could die at any moment.


Jonzarno Or the witness did.

Either way, the sentence will be subject to the normal rule that prisoners serve half their sentence in custody and half on licence. (Parliament's decision.)

There are a few exceptions to that rule but they do not apply to this type of sentence.

If so, so what?

Most of these conditions respond well to resuscitation (indeed, they're just about the only causes of cardiac arrest who ever respond to cardiac resuscitation).

If he collapses in a bedsit, he'll die. If he collapses in prison there's a fighting chance that someone will notice and he'll be resuscitated. So prison is clearly the best place for him.

Seems he's a cross-dresser as well!

https://www.facebook.com/actionfraud...36763696341348

Again second hand - I am told that KC missed the initial sentencing hearing as he had to "urgently" attend hospital concerning his heart. The cynic in me thinks that this seems like just another piece of calculated fraud. *Except* that this was apparently said to the court by his lawyer. One hopes that professionalism in a lawyer would not permit him to say that without seeing and hopefully presenting to the court, hard evidence to that effect.

Thanks for sharing your expert knowledge on sentencing practices.

G

That's basically right. He checked into the hospital the day before he was due to be sentenced with an alleged heart complaint. The judge ordered that he must surrender to police within an hour of being discharged.

When he did appear for sentencing, counsel told the judge that he had been informed that Crellin only had a short time to live. The judge, who is nobody's fool, asked to see the documentary evidence and asked the source of the information. The answer? It had come from Crellin himself. :ugh:

The judge was, apparently, quite outspoken in his response to that....

I am glad this is all dealt with and that lying toad got what he deserves. I was like Ghenghis on the receiving end of his regular phone calls calling himself Dave Henderson. I only realised the scale of what was going on when I was contacted by the mother of the young pilot who was defrauded telling me that Crellin had paid the money to me for a Jet Orientation Course!!

It still stuns me that despite all the evidence presented to PPrune they continued to aid abet and shelter him along with the shocking treatment of Ghengis.

I have never met the man but looking at the pictures of him I suspect he is not going to have an easy time in prison, so although it may be shorter than expected I doubt it will be comfortable.

Good riddance to bad rubbish. :ok:

Oh....

Ah,

tax evasion, theft, possible money laundering, perjury under oath, and the list goes on. It might just work:E

GenghisOn the contrary, it would be unprofessional (and incompetent) of a lawyer not to convey what he has been informed to the court .
Lawyers do not vouch for the truth or accuracy of what they have been told; they convey the client's instructions.
(If a defendant has been admitted to hospital the previous day, it is extremely unusual for a medical report to be available.)

A barrister would not be surprised by a Judge ordering that a defendant must surrender to police within an hour of being discharged from hospital – see Jonzarno's post 22 above. Such an order is to be expected; the terms of the order are likely to be stricter/allow less leeway where a defendant has been proved to have perpetrated deceptions.
Such orders usually result either in defendants attending court (having recovered sufficiently, coincidentally of course) or producing a medical report confirming that they are unfit to do so.

Nor, when a defendant does attend court, would a barrister be surprised by a Judge asking if there was medical evidence to support/confirm a defendant's claim about his condition - see again Jonzarno's post. (A defendant would be warned that such a question is inevitable.)
A Judge is likely to suspect that if such evidence was available it would have been produced or, if not available at such short notice but could be obtained given more time, say 7 days, that the barrister would have asked for the case to be adjourned for that to happen.

Well, what a surprise. ;)

NB: It should not be assumed that, even if a medical report had been produced confirming Crellin's claim, it would have made any difference to the sentence imposed.

Indeed. The judge did say that this would be his approach to sentencing.

I was also the subject of abuse from Crellin, who had detailed information about the ip addresses I posted some of my contributions from. He wanted to get me in trouble with my employer, which I was not concerned about.


When I posted on here asking how he was in the position to have such information I got my post deleted and a stern email from the moderator. I think it was a reasonable question.


I also got a lot of abuse from other contributors when I took contrary views to GEP/Crellin, being accused of involvement with some scam that Crellin was falsely claiming took place. Of course we now know that these false "exposes" by Crellin were probably part of some wider criminal plan.


I was disappointed that not one of those who vilified me offered the slightest hint of an apology.

There is a common theme here isn't there - Release of IP addressses and confidential posts on the moderators page, silencing of people challenging KC's behaviours.

KC may have welcomed that, but he didn't do it himself.

There has been some unwise, and arguably dishonorable behaviour behind the scenes at PPRUNE. That hasn't been acknowledged or apologised for clearly.

G

Well said Genghis :-)



I too have been waiting to hear the final sentencing. I only wish I could have been in court to see the proceedings.



coldair

I really do think that the management of pprune owe us all an explanation as to why they kept backing an obvious charlatan and banished Ghengis (and others like me) to move to the flyer forums.

I know that this is your trainset but you have lost a huge amount of credibility over your stance on this affair. I think a huge (preferably grovelling) apology to Ghengis would be in order.

Otherwise you might just as well drop the first "p" off pprune and be done with it.

+1

I rarely post on prune these days, mainly as a result of how Ghengis was treated then.

I presume the word "Professional" is seen as contentious in this case?

My apologies for arriving late to the party. I have been preoccupied on other important business against yet another conman and his newly groomed wife.

Well where do I start? It is probably best to first start by the early beginnings of goldeneaglepilot. Many will recall the famous thread here called Ferrybadexperiance.
Well, it was just that..... goldeneaglepilot seemingly appeared to be assisting a few of us victims of ginger. He seemingly appeared very well versed in law and told many that he was a solicitor. As a few months went by a few PM's were sent backwards and forwards and what he had to say sounded plausible. Later we exchanged mobile telephone numbers.
That was fatal mistake number one. From that moment he totally invaded my privacy. He would call some days up to ten to fifteen times from 08.00 until 21.00 with just mundane information. After a week or so I would just not answer my phone. It became a private joke with my children when my phone rang "not David Henderson!" Unbeknown to me [and I am nobody's fool] I was being groomed. For those that have had the displeasure of speaking with Crellin he is very very convincing. If I had not been on the receiving end myself I would also disbelieve that anybody could get duped. Without making any excuses whatsoever, I fully understand how the management here fell hook, line and sinker to Crellin.

My personal suspicions arose when I met two highly respectable forumites here from PPRuNe in London for lunch. One was a barrister, the other a JP. They both totally disbelieved that Crellin was authentic. I reserved judgement. I later met up with Crellin.
I flew up to the Midlands and he picked me up. [Many may remember the surprise rondevu I had when I confronted Ginger] From the moment I saw Crellin, the face did not match the very well spoken voice. I knew instantly that he was never a solicitor. I came home and immediately announced my findings to the wife. Something was just not quite right with him. Because of the level of intrusive phone calls, my wife considered him to be my friend.
[I have still not yet quite worked out her philosophy on that one, especially when she could see me deliberately ignoring his calls] Cut a long story short, within just a few hours of my accident they were both in touch with one another and she also fell hook, line and sinker for his pathetic stories.

Revenge is sweet and best served cold........getting on for the good bits.
Simultaneously, a very smart and articulate lady whom was also a victim of Crellin was doing some investigations alongside my own independent investigations. it soon became known that Crellin was a professional conman of the highest order. Whilst management here have been lambasted, they themselves have been conned and that has been a very bitter pill for all concerned and involved to swallow. All I'd say there guys is that it has been very embarrassing for everyone whom has had the unfortunate displeasure of coming into contact with Crellin. It has cost some more dearly than others.

The Trial

I missed the first day as I was unfortunately occupied elsewhere. Jonzarno and myself overlapped on the second day where the prosecution was still presenting its case. As Jonzarno has said, the prosecution counsel was mighty effective and very articulate in the way she presented her case. You could see the defending barrister rolling his eyes as he quietly retracted and reclined further back in to his seat looking for his tin foil hat.
The Judge, His Honour Eccles QC was absolutely magnificent. Quietly spoken yet effectively ruthless when delivering case law at various intervals throughout the trial.

On the third day it was the defense case. A major debate was going on about a former flying owner whom was a prosecution witness and had since emigrated to a Pacific island with no internet access. Whilst his statement was read out in court defending counsel wanted to cross examine him. The Judge directed that it was not possible to cross examine and the jury had to reserve judgement on that matter and convict purely on the other matters.
Crellin was then called to the witness box. Immediately he got up from the dock, he hobbled to the witness box and asked if he could sit down as he had very high blood pressure.
The prosecuting barrister mumbled "wait until I'm finished with him" the Judge heard her and smiled. The defence submission was taken from a very mitigating position.
P Counsel - Crellin "Tell us about your fascination with aircraft" Well your honour, I owned a 50% share in a Rockwell Commander a few years ago when I owned my own computer software business. Then I had a few relationship issues. My girlfriend was diagnosed with cancer and it all went downhill from there.
P Counsel - Crellin "Tell us why you wear a jacket all the time" Well your honour, I have been taking these tablets that the doctor gave me for a chest infection and I woke up in the morning and I had grown a pair.
P Counsel - Crellin "Are you embarrassed by that feature?" Well your honour, they are ok but my boyfriend still won't call me Kay. [That was a joke]
P Counsel - Crellin "Did you commit any of the offences that you have been charged with?"
Nope. They are all liars!
P Counsel - Crellin "Did you commit any of the offences that have been read out in your previous convictions?" Nope. I posted all the parcels. The postman just didn't deliver them.

D Counsel - Crellin "Mr Crellin, do you realise that for the postman to deliver the items you first must post them? Yea but, no but, yea but.........are you calling me a conman?
D Counsel - Crellin "Mr Crellin, you pleaded guilty to those offences. Are you now saying that you did not commit those offences? My Counsel said that it would be best if I pleaded
guilty. Mr Crellin, the advice was probably very sound but are you now trying to convince this jury that you are innocent? No Comment.

The trial was comical really. I genuinely expected Crellin to put on a good defense but as Jonzarno said he was on a slippery slope down and getting a good pounding at every opportunity. The jury was constantly shaking their heads in disbelief and I genuinely believe
Crellin at that stage knew that it was good night Josephine. His defence was absolutely shocking.

His bank statements and mathematics was also quite funny. All the deposits in by donations totalled about £6k. He had also listed everyone down by screen name. When he asked how did he pay the money over he said - Cash. He was asked how. He said by cash withdrawal from the cash machine. He was asked to total his direct debits, telephone, court fine of £1800 and a bailiff fee of £200. It all totalled about £4k. When he was told that only left about £2k to hand over Crellin said that he always had large denominations of cash about the house and made up the missing £4K from that. The Judge at that stage said if you had large sums of cash about the house why was it when you received one particular deposit of £2400, you then paid out £1800 within 24 hours? Crellin's answer? I don't like walking about with large amounts of cash. The Judge looked at Crellin - then looked at the jury enough to say he's not taking me for a muppet, I don't know about you. The Judge then said "very well" looked down, started writing whilst nodding his head in total disbelief.

Last night was his first night inside. Bring on Queen Bubba. :)

Once again everyone, thank you so so much for your kind generosity and support. I do partly feel responsible for some of the grievances caused here.
You are all great guys and it would be really good if we could all now unite having put this despicable piece of :mad: behind bars.

Can't say that I'm deeply impressed myself and whilst I like engaging with many of the people here, I feel little loyalty now to PPrune as an entity. I was only re-instated by a member of staff at IB on his last day before he went to a new job, and I've had no acknowledgment of fault, or apology, from any member of the PPrune moderators team who could have been party to my banning. Needless to say, there's also been no new invitation to become a moderator again either - although I happen to think that Pilot DAR, now looking after this particular parish was a very good choice and I'm not sure to what extent I'd want to be part of the moderation team for the time being, given the poor behaviour from the moderator "old guard" by and large which they've continued to compound by failing to make any kind of admission of fault.


Like JetBlu above - I'd like to see this as creating a spirit of unity amongst those of us affected, or just annoyed at what happened. But, whilst most here are pretty much beyond reproach, one or two on Pprune need to show some contrition if they are to start to be accepted by me at-least, as "one of us" again.

G

Genghis,

I have no idea the full extent of what actually went on. It's probably not my business to know what goes on behind the scenes. However, what is my business is thanking you personally for the parts that I know you was involved with. Thank you. :D

You are very welcome - I'm not sure I'm happy I did as much as I might, but insofar as I helped push towards the right outcome, and believe that I didn't back down when being bullied to do the wrong thing, I'm glad to have done so.

G

I have had no involvement with any aspect of what is being posted here other than the specific case of Crellin's latest conviction with which I was personally involved.

That said, what strikes me about this whole business is that Crellin managed to con a large number of people who would all have thought that they couldn't be fooled in the way that they were.

Couldn't have happened to you? I thought that too, but it happened to me as well!

:EThe only thing for which I will claim credit is, once I realised what he had done, was having the determination to pursue him to the bitter end regardless of commitment, effort and cost.

The point I'm trying to make is that now everyone knows for absolutely sure that he is a crook. At earlier stages in the saga, some people thought he might be, and I congratulate them on their perspicacity: it's a shame for me that I didn't realise quite how perspicacious they had been at the time! 😳

In my defence, I can well remember several people here, long after I had sent this crook money for Jerblu's family, still posting positive comments about GEP. Why on earth didn't one of those posting now about how they knew about him all the time post something then or, if they felt they couldn't do that, send me or anyone else saying positive things an email or PM?

Actually, I'm almost glad nobody did because, once he had conned me he set me on a path that would not end before I had helped to nail him regardless of cost.

I'll leave a decision on how Pprune deals with the questions raised about GTE and others to those involved, but would just say this: if we don't heal the wounds that this episode has caused, we won't have expunged the hurt that this piece of sh1t has caused to our community.

To everyone involved: please make your peace. A genuine and heartfelt apology is amazingly effective and, at the same time, remarkably therapeutic to its giver.

As I said in my earlier post: let's flush this piece of sh1t down the toilet of history where he belongs and move on!

Good to hear that he finally got what was coming to him.
I was also taken for a ride and like most people that are scammed I feel embarrassed/stupid that I fell for what I now realise was such an obvious con.
Another lesson learnt I suppose.
As one gets older one becomes more and more cynical because of things like this.
As mentioned before it is best to just move on.

Yes, and hopefully, many more shower nights to come!:}

Let's be honest - no it wasn't obvious, and he was very good at what he was doing.

I had him labelled as an unwanted and obtrusive self appointed investigator and policeman, and objected to that activity - one or more people supporting his "work" shot me down for that. But, I didn't see him as a conman.

Other people admired what he appeared to be doing, and were taken in to a greater or lesser extent.


It was the lady we've already mentioned, and her son, who identified him as a conman, and started the process which has led to his conviction and imprisonment. None of the rest of us spotted him for what he really was. Full marks to them, but they'd been taken in first too. Credit also to those who once this was pointed out to them, looked at the evidence, realised that this was true, and acted well to try and get him shut down.


Criticism now is due in certain quarters - not for being taken in: he was a conman going about his business competently. But for aggressively supporting a private individual acting as a self appointed policeman, unauthorised release of privileged information, for penalising those who just objected to what he was doing, for protecting him (presumably as a side effect of covering their own backsides) once his nature was actually known, and for failing to repair damage done. Criticism is due for those things.

But, up to a point, every damned one of us was taken in, and the con was not obvious. There is no point in beating ourselves or anybody else up about that aspect.

G