A Hove fraudster who invited friends over to parties where he would secretly write down their card details to use in online spending sprees has been jailed for a year.
Diego Grand, 38, of Coniston Court, used the stolen card details for a year-long splurge, starting small with posh grocery shops, takeaways and mobile phone bills, before escalating to flights, Foo Fighter concert tickets and Airbnb stays.
In total, he spent £8,941.47 on his friends cards. He also told one friend he had lost his job and couldn’t pay his rent, so she lent him almost £2,500 which he never paid back.
Today at Lewes Crown Court, he was ordered to pay back that friend £2,000 and another £993.16 to the card providers. All the card victims got their money back from their banks.
Judge Christine Laing said: “You say that you don’t know why you committed these offences, but when I see the things that the money you had obtained was being spent on, you were clearly using it to fund a lifestyle you rather aspired to.
“The offences took place over a substantial amount of time and value, to a substantial number of victims and were a breach of trust.
“You were pretending to be these people’s friends, inviting them round to parties at your place where you would then note their card details and use them.
“I have no doubt that you are remorseful but I can find no reason to suspend the sentence.”
Prosecuting, Sarah Lindop said the frauds were first discovered in June when one of the victims, Sabrina Watson, received two authorisation texts from American Express and Halifax while on holiday in Bosnia.
She ended up spending £48 in phonecalls to her banks to sort it out. But meanwhile, she also told her friend Sue Grant what had happened – and Ms Grant told her she had also been the victim, with more than £3,000 spent on holidays, concert tickets and car rental.
She had also been abroad when she found out, and had had to borrow money.
She said: “The defendant would arrange birthday parties, house parties and invite work colleagues, Facebook friends, people he didn’t know particularly well.
“He would make a note of their card details, including the expiry date and security code.”
Defending, James Yates said Grand had entered guilty pleas to his “unimaginably stupid” crimes at the first opportunity and showed great and genuine remorse for what he had done.
He said: “These were opportunistic matters – they were straightforward, he was presented an opportunity whereby these cards were unattended and used them to purchase things online.
“These purchases online were in his own name and so his criminal genius was somewhat limited.”
He said that Grand, who shares custody of his five-year-old son with his ex-partner, had last week been promoted to global account director with an advertising agency.
The first time he used filched card details was in January 2018 when he used Julie Carney’s card to pay £403.15 to Three Mobile and Ocado.
That month, Kelly Clark also lent him £2,496.57 after he told her he had lost his job and couldn’t pay the rent. He said he would pay the money back but never did.
He went on to use her cards to pay bills for Ocado and Dominos Pizza for 11 months before being finally caught in December 2018, by which time he’d spent £467.44.
In February, he used Afsin Khalessi’s card to pay a £90.99 phone bill.
Piru Chandani’s card was used to pay £126.49 to Three Mobile and Dominos Pizza in February 2018.
He tried to use Tasleem Ahmed’s card to pay Three Mobile bill in April 2018 – although this didn’t work.
But later the same month, he successfully used S Thomaidis’s card to pay Three Mobile £99.
In April, he also used Sarah Keeping’s card to pay for phone bills, pizzas and Ocado shops, spending £421.56.
And in May, he used Stuart Willis’s card to spend £458.28 on pizzas, phone bills, concert tickets and phone accessories.
Then in June, the spending escalated. He used Erika Svobutaite’s card to pay £496.19 for flights and concert tickets.
He bought an Airbnb stay, concert tickets and car rental for £3,145.60 using Sue Grant’s card and he used Sabrina Watson’s card to book £207.20 worth of train tickets via GoEuro.
Joanna Babbayan’s card was used to pay for a stay at an Airbnb and a ThreeMobile bill totalling £694.85.
Between June and July Anne Davenport’s card was used to make payments for concert tickets on ViaGogo, ThreeMobile, Airbnb and Universal Orlando, totalling £2,798.16.
A question: how did he get to see these cards? Were they being used “recreationally” at these parties perchance?
He’d go into bags while people used the toilet/were elsewhere (it was mostly women he targeted) and write down the relevant details – then use the cards online at later dates.