Life of a chameleonic conman

Bint used supercars to lure women

Paul Bint, who is sentenced on Friday for his latest acts of deception and theft, has led the life of a chameleon.

Using at least 24 aliases, he has committed more than 100 offences stretching back more than two decades.

Dubbed "King Con" by the tabloids, he has passed himself off as a doctor, barrister, aristocrat, playboy, ballet dancer and the Duke of Arundel, among others.

He is so persuasive that a prosecutor pursuing the latest court case against him warned doctors giving him psychiatric examinations not to be duped.

Bint, 41, began his recent crime spree just after being released from jail on 11 December 2002, having served 17 months for posing as a wealthy businessman to steal an Aston Martin car.

He makes [fictional fantasist] Walter Mitty look like a newsreader Former defence lawyer for Bint

On his release, he visited University College Hospital for injuries from a make-believe car crash.

He convinced consultant Annie Park-McGuinness he was Orlando Pownall QC, who prosecuted Barry George for Jill Dando's murder.

Taking pity on Bint, who said he lived alone, Miss Park-McGuinness allowed him to "recuperate" in her Hampstead home - where he stole £60 and a gold credit card.

Using that and another credit card stolen from an elderly man in the hospital, Bint then went on a lavish spending spree which included a date with the elderly man's daughter and a night in a Knightsbridge hotel with another woman.

"I thought he was a respectable and lonely professional," said Miss Park-McGuinness.

"He said he knew many rich and famous people."

'Trust me'

Bint's penchant for role play first came to light in 1983, when it was discovered Bint had posed as a locum doctor while touring hospital wards in the north west of England including Preston and Blackburn.

During one incident he groped a woman's breast using the phrase: "Trust me, I'm a doctor."

Bint posed as a bogus doctor

He also arranged X-rays, attended a man whose lung had collapsed, put stitches into another patient's head wound and tried to bluff his way into a heart by-pass operation.

Bint also told the parents of a 17-year-old girl hurt in a road crash she would live. Six hours later she died.

By the late 1980s he had moved on to elaborate car scams, often posing as a wealthy aristocrat or businessman who was interested in top-of-the-range models.

During one incident he was once arrested on the M1 in a Mercedes which he had managed to secure for a test-drive after claiming that he was the Duke of Arundel.

In 1988, he was sentenced to four years in prison at St Albans Crown Court for conning a salesman out of an £83,000 Ferrari while using the same moniker.

He has also posed as aristocrat "Piers Oppenheimer" to steal a Porsche and brazenly sent Dom Perignon champagne to Koo Stark's table after gate-crashing a party held by Viscount Linley.

This latest case is not the first time Bint has passed himself off as a barrister.

I would like to stop pretending I am something I am not and accept I am what I am Paul Bint

In August 2000, Newcastle Crown Court heard how Bints tricked rail chiefs into putting him up in a luxury hotel after posing as a QC in the Lockerbie bombing trial.

Bint was jailed for nine months for the offence but was back in court the following April.

Some have tried to see into Bint's mind, linking his desire to escape his own identity to an unhappy youth spent in a children's home after his parents split up.

Con or confession?

Bint himself told the BBC's Everyman programme: "I would like to stop pretending I am something I am not and accept I am what I am.

"I have spent my life running away from things that are extremely painful to me. Others drink or take drugs to escape, but the way I have done it is by being other people."

But whether Bint's confession was sincere or not is another question.

He also told Everyman about another elaborate scam in which he stolen a red Ferrari from an earl.

When Everyman contacted the earl, he said he'd never heard of Bint - and he'd never owned a red Ferrari.