Cruise fraudster jailed after 10-year investigation
A former restaurateur who often called himself a Lord, lived the high life by profiting from selling fake cruises to victims across the globe.
Earlier this month, Richard Lester was jailed for five years for fraudulent trading and concealing criminal property, as well as being disqualified from acting as the Director of any company for nine years.
Operating in a similar way to a Ponzi scheme, Lester actually did sell some cruises in the early years, and his firm Cruise Direct UK Ltd actually received a prestigious World Travel Award in 2012.
However, this was merely a ploy to entice other would-be cruisers at a later date. Between 2009 and 2014, 184 people were persuaded to part with cash to the tune of £406,856.39 to “buy” cruise miles, only realising that they had been scammed when they were turned away at ports by cruise operators, the money they had spent having gone straight to Lester, who used it to gamble and generally live the high life.
Lester finally ended up in court after a 10-year investigation by Essex Police, who had been contacted by 324 potential victims. They were helped in this by the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau after the victims came forward.
The investigation found that Lester had used various aliases in the perpetration of his scheme, including Lord Lester and Barry Williams.
When Cruise Direct UK Ltd was finally struck off by Companies House in 2014, victims across the globe, including from France, Australia and Japan, were left with up to millions of cruise miles, but with no way to use them.
Passing sentence, the Judge said that Lester not only took from his victims and caused them great distress, as well as financial loss, but also “gaslit” them by claiming it was their fault that holidays had been cancelled.
Commenting on the case, Roger Isaacs, National Technical Director of NIFA, said “Richard Lester’s scheme highlights the challenges involved in tracking financial fraud, especially when it operates across borders.
“His use of aliases and deceptive practices is not unusual and happens to have been a prominent feature in the extraordinary recently reported case of Bains v Irshad and Curdworth Limited [2025] EWHC 491 (Ch).
In that case, which was a complex partnership dispute the judge found that the alias used by claimant was his alleged twin but that no such person had never existed despite the claimant having produced to the court a passport, death certificate, a copy of HMRC form P60 and even a photograph all of which were shown to have been forged.”
Source: BBC News
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