A CAREER conman with more than 100 previous convictions has been jailed for abusing a boy he wanted to be his “sexual plaything”.

Carl Hoban, of Potter Hill, Pickering, North Yorkshire, lured the 15-year-old teenager to the Grand Hotel in Scarborough with a tale of him getting involved in his itinerant gold and silver business.

The 65-year-old bought the boy women’s underwear while on a trip to Ireland and deceived the youth’s mother into thinking he was offering him work, York Crown Court heard.

During their three-month association, as well as sexually assaulting the boy at the pensioner’s home, Hoban also booked rooms at the hotel so he could abuse him there.

A guest at the hotel, Deborah Steele, told the jury she was concerned about the boy when she saw him alone and wearing school uniform. She took him to his room where Hoban said he was the boy’s uncle.

Hotel staff called police when receptionist Reece Holmes realised Hoban and the boy were sharing a double bed. Hoban claimed to be the boy’s grandad, but the boy said he was with his uncle.

“You were no more and no less than a dirty old man,” the Honorary Recorder of York, Judge Paul Batty QC said to Hoban as he jailed him for four years and put him on the Sex Offenders’ Register for life.

“You evidently wanted this boy for your sexual plaything. You even had the brass neck to attend the school play where he was performing. You sat with his mother and pretended for all the world that you were the father of the boy’s best friend.

“I have no doubt that the sexual activity that occurred between you (and the boy) was extensive.”

He also made him subject to a sexual harm prevention order, again for life, banning him from ever contacting the boy or any other boy under 16 or staying in the same house as any boy aged under 16.

Hoban was convicted by a jury of three counts of sexual activity with a child and three counts of grooming the child by booking hotel rooms. He had denied the charges.

The judge accepted Hoban had not used threats towards the boy and that the boy had not been unwilling to take part in the sexual activity.

Tamara Pawson, prosecuting, said Hoban had been on a four-month suspended prison sentence at the time for spitting at a traffic warden who had given him a parking ticket and theft. He had 102 previous convictions, mostly for dishonesty.

For Hoban, Kirstie Watson said he wanted to apologise to the boy and to the mother and was “very, very sorry”. The judge pointed out the best way to show his remorse would have been to plead guilty.

Miss Watson said Hoban would lose his gold and silver business.