SERIAL thief Raymond Scott has been found dead in prison.

Scott was found guilty of handling stolen goods after he was found with a priceless first folio of Shakespeare's plays taken from Durham University.

Scott, 55, was pronounced dead after being found unconscious in his cell at HMP Acklington - a Category C prison for adult male offenders, in Northumberland - at about 8.40am today.

A Prison Service spokeswoman said: "HMP Northumberland prisoner Raymond Scott was pronounced dead at approximately 8.40am on Wednesday March 14 after being found unconscious in his cell.

"As with all deaths in custody, the independent Prisons and Probation Ombudsman will conduct an investigation."

A Northumbria Police spokesman said: "At 8.41am today, police received a report from the prison service of the death of a prisoner at Acklington Prison in Northumberland.

"Enquiries are currently being carried out into the death. At this moment, there is believed to be no third party involvement."

HMP Northumberland, in Morpeth, was formed by the merger of Castington and Acklington prisons.

In January 2011 Scott compared prison to an expensive health club.

He was jailed for eight years in August 2010 and was in Castington, Northumberland, where he spent his time completing a motor mechanics course, reading, exercising, playing chess and watching TV.

The 55-year-old, of Wingate, County Durham, was cleared of stealing the 380-year-old folio from Durham University's Palace Green Library, but was jailed for handling stolen goods and removing stolen property from the UK.

Scott led a bizarre double life -parading as a wealthy international businessman but, in reality, living on benefits in the former council house he shared with his mother in Washington, Wearside.

The man famed for drinking vintage champagne and smoking fine Cuban cigars said it took him a while to get used to life without the luxuries, but said it was doing him good.

He added: "I am looking at my time as extensive rehab. I was given a course of librium (a drug used to combat alcohol withdrawal symptoms) at first to get over my drinking, and I have never felt so fit.

"I was on Prozac (an anti-depressant) too, but not any more. The excessive drinking of the past few years, especially those two awful years on bail, were beyond enjoying alcohol and all to do with decline and failure.

January 2009: Raymond Scott talks to the media after being formally charged with the theft of the folio

"There are people who pay thousands to go to places for the treatment I have received inside which I, of course, get for nothing."

Scott was accused of stealing the 1623 folio and concealing it for nearly a decade before producing it at the Folger Shakespeare Library, in Washington DC, in the US, in June 2008, when he ran out of money.

He said he had acquired it in Cuba, the home of his fiancée, Heidi Garcia Rios, a 23-year-old nightclub dancer.

But, despite the book being "damaged, brutalised and mutilated", experts at the Folger recognised it as the stolen copy and called in the FBI.

August 2009: One of Raymond Scott's many themed appearances at court. This time based on the Bard's 'Scottish play' - Macbeth.

After he was sentenced at Newcastle Crown Court, he briefly spent time in Durham Prison before he was transferred to Acklington, Northumberland, in September, where he started a course in bookkeeping.

He said: "I visited the library, amongst much ribaldry. For a joke, I concealed the complete works of you-know-who underneath my prison jumper and made off before I was apprehended by one of the guards, who got in the spirit of it."

He was later transferred to Castington, where he continued to work on appeals against his conviction and length of sentence.

His book about the case, Shakespeare and Love, is due for publication on the Bard's birthday -April 23. There have been about 200 pre-orders of it, 40 of which came from the Royal Shakespeare Company.