Truck Driver Is Puttin' On the Ritz

Truck driver guilty of 'selling' the Ritz
By QMI Agency

LONDON — An unemployed truck driver has been found guilty of scamming two real estate developers out of about $1.6 million (CAN) by claiming he could sell them London's famed Ritz Hotel.

Trucker Anthony Lee, 49, pretended to be an associate of the landmark hotel's reclusive owners, the billionaire Barclay brothers, and convinced businessmen Terence Collins and Marcel Boerkhoorn that he could arrange the sale of the Ritz to them for the "bargain" price of £250 million — more than $400 million (CAN), according to The Guardian newspaper.

Lee was found guilty of obtaining money by deception Friday and warned that he faces a "quite substantial custodial sentence" later this month.

"The deal that sounded too good to be true was a complete fantasy," Crown prosecutor Anuja Dhir told court.

The Ritz London — sister hotel to the Ritz Paris — set a new standard for opulence when it was opened by Cesar Ritz in 1906. The hotel had fallen on hard times when the Barclay brothers bought it in 1995 and restored it to its former grandeur.

The Ritz, sitting on some of the most expensive real estate in the world in the heart of Piccadilly, is estimated to be worth more than double the "bargain" price at which Lee was offering it.

Dhir said Lee sucked his "victims in with more false promises and frustrated them with unnecessary requests until he managed to extract from them a payment of £1m ($1.6 million)" in 2007.

I'm sorry but if you're gullable enough to get swindled out of $1.6 million by a trucker then I don't have any sympathy for you. Did the buyers not stop for one second and think to actually call the Ritz to confirm the guy's story? No, they just thought one of the most famous hotels in the world was so strapped for cash that they'd sell for half their worth. Well played. I don't even think the trucker should get punished here. They should just make him give them money back and then should send him to Russia as a spy because he most be the most convincing bastard in the world. One thing is for sure - he knows how to put on the ritz.