A FORMER bricklayer who was living on benefits duped a council into selling him the Grade II listed childhood home of the ex Prime Minister Sir Anthony Eden.

In an audacious and "sophisticated" £2.9m fraud William Davenport, 60, spun a web of deceit that ensnared aristocrats and financiers on both sides of the Atlantic.

He was jailed for six years yesterday by a judge who told him: "You seek to give the appearance of wealth and standing but you have searched for a lifestyle without any means of paying for it."

The Northern Echo:

JAILED: William Davenport

In buying sprawling Windlestone Hall, the 40-bedroom boyhood home of the 1950s Conservative Prime Minister, Davenport presented himself as a Beverley Hills-based tycoon who had previously lived in the £1m Great Brampton Hall in Herefordshire.

In fact he was a near-penniless con artist, born William Green, who had hoodwinked Great Brampton's owners, Lord and Lady Pidgeon, into allowing him to register their home as his address.

Armed with the fake address, falsified documents claiming he earned £430,000-a-year and claiming he had a Barclays Wealth Account, Davenport fraudulently took a huge mortgage after tricking Durham County Council into believing he was a legitimate buyer.

Davenport, his wife Ann and daughter Meaghan, said they would restore the magnificent 25 acre 19th century manor, described by English Heritage as one of the most important buildings in the north of England, to its former glory.

However an "eagle-eyed" mortgage clerk spotted a discrepancy in a single forged P60 document and the fraud "collapsed like a pack of cards."

Ann and Meaghan, said by the prosecution at Teesside Crown Court to be complicit in the scam, "fled jurisdiction" and are believed to be in hiding in the United States.

As police probed Davenport's background they discovered he had previously;

  • Bought the lease to Egerton stud farm in Newmarket in 2002 as Bill Green, only to vanish six month later when a bankruptcy petition was filed and change his name to William Carrington.
  • In September 2004, as William Carrington, bought Middleton Hall in Midlothian, Scotland, passing himself off as a wealthy American. Four years later he and his wife disappeared leaving debts to the bank of £93,513.
  • In 2005, despite having no legitimate income, "William Carrington" bought a property in Alabama, USA, only to later be found trying to re-enter the country with a passport in the name of David Lloyd.
  • In January 2010 he approached Lord and Lady Pidgeon the owners of Great Brampton Hall and offered to buy it for £1m. Having gained their trust as an apparently legitimate buyer he set up utility accounts using their home as his address to impress future con targets and distance himself from past bankruptcies.

Despite his long history of financial sharp practice, Davenport had no previous convictions before his appearance at Teesside Crown Court yesterday, when he admitted three counts of fraud regarding four mortgage applications and six counts of forging documents to support them.

Prosecutor Joanne Kidd said: "In May 2011 William and Ann Davenport approached Durham County Council expressing an interest in buying Windlestone Hall.

"At the time of conveyance the Davenport family had no money to purchase the property but had asserted to Durham County Council that they had significant financial means, which was held off-shore and could not be realised without incurring heavy tax liabilities.

"Instead they represented that they would be taking out a mortgage with HSBC to cover the cost of the purchase. A letter purporting to be from the HSBC was presented to the council which seemingly confirmed that William Davenport was was in receipt of an annual salary of £430,000."

The council agreed a fee of £241,000 for the hall, which had fallen into disrepair, on the understanding that the Davenports would renovate it to resemble its heyday.

The Northern Echo:

WRECK: The dilapidated state of Windlestone Hall

However Ms Kidd said that in reality the family's true financial circumstances were "dire."

She said: "The defendant claimed disability living allowance, which was paid into a post office account in the name of William Carrington. Between 2008 and 2014, HMRC accounts confirm there is no record of any income or tax payment."

The family, she said, were "living hand to mouth."

Having convinced the council to hand over legal title of the hall, Davenport had to find a way of paying for it, which meant conning Barclays Bank in Bishop Auckland, near to the hamlet of Rushyford where the manor house stands.

He claimed to be head of European Operations for Veneretech, a Beverley Hills company with paid him £430,000-a-year.

To convince the bank of the lie he paid £25,000 into his account each month - but that money was a grant he had been given by the council to help with renovation of the hall. By recycling the same £25,000 every month it looked to the bank as though he really was being paid the vast salary he claimed.

Despite the £241,000 asking price Davenport persuaded the bank to pay him £500,000, a loan agreed in August 2012. He paid the council and then deposited the remaining quarter of a million in his HSBC account.

Having succeeded in his con, Davenport became greedy and made further mortgage application to the same bank, all of them supported by fake P60s, PAYE numbers and the fake bank statements showing his "wages" being paid in.

In November 2012 he applied for a £200,000 loan for the Windlestone Hall redevelopment, followed in April 2014 for a £704,464 for the same project.

Again in April 2013 Davenport made a further application for a mortgage for £1.5m, this time to buy Ayton Castle in Eyemouth, Northumberland, with a view to turning it into a venue for festivals. He claimed also to be in negotiations to buy Otterburn Hall and the Percy Arms Hotel, both in Northumberland.

However the final two applications were his undoing.

Ms Kidd said: "All good things must come to an end. As Barclays Bank looked to verify the information provided by Davenport in respect of these applications, an eagle-eyed mortgage underwriter noticed that the information provided on the P60 did not match HMRC records and raised a query."

Davenport's deceit unravelled and he was arrested on November 10 2014 at Windlestone. The following month his wife and daughter fled the UK for a new life in the States and have not been brought to justice.

In total the fraudulent mortgage applications came to £2.9m, although the final two were discovered before they were paid out.

Josh Normanton, mitigating, said: "He is a 60-year-old man stripped of his liberty and his good character, it is not the case he has always been involved in dishonest behaviour.

"For most of his life he lived a normal life, he began his career as a bricklayer, which is a far cry from where he finds himself now.

"At its heart of hearts this was not the cleverest of frauds, it took only only the briefest touch by the authorities to send this house of cards collapsing.

"Rather than planning out this succession of frauds, in my submission the frauds were a knee-jerk reaction to the fact the family were running out of funds and had no access to new funds.

"It is maybe ironic in a property designed to offer such comfort that they lived in effect in a condition of poverty with no heating in the time they lived in that property."

He said that Davenport had been seriously injured in an accident whilst leading a horse and currently requires the daily assistance of a wheelchair."

Wearing an open-necked blue shirt, white haired and bearded Davenport appeared via a video link from nearby Teesside magistrates court, which has better wheelchair access.

Addressing Davenport, Judge Simon Bourne-Arton said: "I cannot and do not overlook the background to this offending by you because it demonstrates that you are a man who purchases valuable properties without the means to do so.

"You seek to give the appearance of wealth and standing, you are someone who has searched for a lifestyle without the means of paying for it.

"You have County Court judgements against you but you strive to give the impression you are a man of stature and your greedy eyes turned in 2011 to Windlestone Hall."

The judge added: "This was a sophisticated fraud, it was well planned, well carried out, well executed and it extended over a significant period of time. Throughout you have been a thoroughly dishonest and greedy man."

He jailed Davenport for a total of six years.

Although it is his first criminal conviction, it is not the first time Davenport has appeared before a court.

In 2003 at Brighton County Court - in his original name of William Green - he was ordered to pay back £120,000 to his mother Terry, who was then 72. The cash represented her life savings.

Mrs Green described how she gave her son the money as a short-term loan to buy a French chateau on the understanding that it would be repaid from a £5 million software deal he was negotiating with Richard Branson.

But the chateau was never bought and the Branson deal did not happen. A sum of £50,000 was repaid, which left £120,000 outstanding.

At the time Green, now AKA Davenport, was described as "reprehensible."