Four years' jail for gem scam man

Dlodlo had also been caught selling the gems in Leicester 18 months before

A man who conned people into spending tens of thousands of pounds on fake gemstones made of concrete and glass has been jailed for four years.

Patrick Dlodlo, 58, whose last known address was in Tilbury, Essex, denied charges of conspiracy to commit fraud between January and May last year.

Dlodlo had been convicted of the same scam 18 months earlier.

He was sentenced in his absence after a one-day trial at Northampton Crown Court.

The court heard Dlodlo was a "confidence trickster" who organised the deception only 18 months after being jailed for exactly the same crime in Leicester in January 2006.

'Memories'

Dlodlo and Ryan Iannou, 21, of Lansdowne Road, Chesham, Buckinghamshire, were arrested in May last year when they were seen driving the wrong way down a one-way street.

Officers who searched the car found two fake stones, a laptop and paraphernalia including jewellers' tools for measuring gems' size and hardness.

Dlodlo said the stones found when he was arrested were kept as "memories" of his previous scam, the court was told.

Iannou pleaded guilty earlier this week to conspiracy to commit fraud.

He was sentenced to 10 months in jail, which he had already served in custody.

The scam the pair were involved in comprised three people - a "frontman", a fake gemstone dealer, and a gemmologist - a gem expert.

A statement from one victim, Amarjit Sahota, told how she and her husband were duped into handing over £29,000 of their savings in the same scam in Leicester in 2005.