Best of 2023: The seven lives of the £2 million fraudster
The Story
The Times
3.9 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 30 December 2023
⏱️ 33 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In the week between Christmas and New Year, we’re listening back to some of our favourite episodes of 2023.
Jody Oliver deceived his wife, children and male fiancés while adopting a colourful array of identities, scamming those around him out of millions of pounds. Now that he’s in jail, his story can be told.
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Article: The seven lives of the £2m fraudster - https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-seven-astonishing-lives-of-the-2m-fraudster-85mdvmxvs
Guest: Megan Agnew, News Features Writer, The Sunday Times.
Host: Luke Jones.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, it's Luke Jones here. In the week between Christmas and New Year, we are having a good old |
| 0:10.3 | flick for our back catalogue to bring you some of our best episodes from |
| 0:13.4 | 2023 today the absolutely bonkers tale of one of Britain's greatest con artists. So I was driving down this lane in Monmouth shirt, this narrow lane in the |
| 0:33.0 | lane in the middle of nowhere. |
| 0:34.1 | They were literally sheep crossing the road. |
| 0:36.9 | Trying to find this woman called Laura Colvin. |
| 0:39.9 | As the lane got narrower and I got further and further away from the village and general life, |
| 0:49.6 | I just became less convinced that she would be at the end of it. |
| 0:54.2 | And I found this farmhouse and I knocked on the door |
| 0:58.2 | and she opened it. |
| 1:00.1 | And I told her that I was looking for a man called Jody Oliver and was wondering if she'd known him. |
| 1:07.8 | And she just said, I've been waiting for this moment you have no idea how much more there is to this story. |
| 1:17.0 | When Megan Agnew, a news features writer for the Sunday Times, crossed that threshold back in September last year, |
| 1:29.0 | little did she know it would start a nine-month adventure to uncover one of Britain's most brazen con men, Jody Oliver. For two decades he lived different fake lives, made up ludicrous things about himself and what he could do, |
| 1:50.0 | scanned those who grew close to him and blagged millions of pounds. |
| 1:55.1 | And every time it looked like he'd been busted and the whole scheme had collapsed around |
| 1:59.6 | him. |
| 2:00.6 | He just dusted himself off, started again, and took things up a gear. |
| 2:06.0 | You're listening to stories of our Times from The Times and the Sunday Times. |
| 2:16.6 | I'm Luke Jones. |
| 2:17.6 | Today, the Seven Lives of the 2 million pound fraudster. So Megan, you're in the middle of Royal Wales speaking to this woman, she's got a story to tell you. |
| 2:38.0 | Who is she? How she fit into this story? |
... |
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