A PAEDOPHILE who aged 17 duped aviation bosses in a scam likened to the blockbuster movie Catch Me If You Can, has been jailed for two-and-a-half years for breaching a ban on him contacting children.

While living a secret Walter Mitty-style life, Adam Hathaway, 22, also known as Adam Bentley and Adam Barraclough, several times defied a lifelong court order aimed at protecting children from him. Nicholas Rooke, prosecuting, told York Crown Court Hathaway:

*Posed as a talent scout to lure children to fake auditions for the West End show Matilda

*Flew to Thailand without telling police, from where he was deported, and on to Cambodia

*Tried to persuade airline crew he was cabin staff and related to a UN worker

*Got a front-of-house job at the Phoenix Theatre, in London to meet youngsters attending rehearsals

*Worked in the scenery section of a stage production firm and persuaded a worker to bring her children, aged four years and seven months, into his office.

Hathaway was on parole at the time from a sentence of nearly four years imposed in 2011 for sex attacks against girls in North Yorkshire and setting up a bogus modelling company so he could touch girls under the guise of measuring them.

The court heard he had committed frauds since he was 12 and, aged 17, persuaded aviation bosses he was the boss of a £4.5bn turnover holding company, which owned dozens of airlines and stores such as Top Shop and JJB in a bid to get their backing to operate flights to Jersey.

Hathaway also negotiated contracts with property firms and design agencies while posing as model agency boss and a property developer, creating bogus websites to support his imaginary business interests.

Hathaway, of Earswick Close, York, admitted four breaches of a sexual offences prevention order.

Jailing Hathaway, Recorder Benjamin Nolan QC told him: “For a man of 22, you have the previous convictions of an elderly paedophile.”

In mitigation, Maria Temkow said Hathaway was desperate to be accepted by others and loved the theatre because it had been the scene of his happiest childhood days.

Miss Temkow said Hathaway had not sexually abused any of the children involved and was still a young man who was learning he had to abide by the court order.