22 Oct 2014

Man fakes coma for two years – and other great deceivers

A conman has faked being in a coma for more than two years to avoid punishment for defrauding his elderly neighbour. Channel 4 News looks at others who have gone to great lengths to deceive people.

Coma man

Alan Knight, 47, from Swansea, claimed he was quadriplegic and was unable to move from the neck down.

He was caught out after police discovered he had been going on shopping trips and doctors spotted him wiping his face and writing in his hospital room.

Knight admitted theft and forgery at Swansea Crown Court on Tuesday and will be sentenced in November.

The court was told that Knight systematically “drained” his next-door neighbour’s accounts. Ivor Richards, 85, was suffering from dementia whilst Knight stole £41,000 to spend on holidays and a caravan in Dorset.

Couple in shopping centre

Officers tried “at least twice” to bring Knight to court, but each time he admitted himself to hospital claiming his condition had worsened. Swansea Crown Court was told that he had been able to “pull the wool” over his GP’s eyes but he was unable to fool doctors at the hospital.

DC Paul Harry, the lead officer in the case, said: “There’s nothing wrong with him. He has wasted thousands of pounds of NHS money going to places like Singleton and Morriston hospitals claiming variously to be quadriplegic, having seizures and going into a coma.

“Time after time they observe him and do tests and release him after a few days diagnosing nothing. I know there is nothing wrong with him because I obtained CCTV footage of him shopping with his wife and driving himself across the Seven tolls, sometimes towing his caravan.”

Channel 4 News looks at some other elaborate attempts to evade officials:

The canoe couple

Canoe couple

John Darwin turned up in a London police station in 2007, claiming he was suffering from amnesia. He had apparently disappeared into the North Sea in a canoe in 2002, and said couldn’t remember anything after that. In reality, his wife Anne Darwin had dropped him off at Durham station that day as part of an elaborate death faking plan.

The couple had become overwhelmed by debt. Mrs Darwin claimed the money on John’s life insurance, thought to be around £500,000. After Mr Darwin turned up, a photo appeared of the couple smiling happily with an estate agent in Panama. John and Anne Darwin were convicted of fraud in 2008. They were sentenced to six years and ordered to repay the insurance payouts.

The ‘stressed’ shark rescue man

When Paul Marshallsea was filmed pulling a shark away from paddling children, he was hailed a hero across the world. But he and his wife Wendy, who worked for the same children’s charity, were on sick leave for work-related stress.

Instead of being at home recovering, they were on a two-month holiday in Australia. When the trustees of Pant and Dowlais Boys & Girls Club saw the footage, they sacked the couple.

A letter to them read: “Whilst unfit to work you were well enough to travel to Australia and, according to recent news footage of yourself in Queensland, you allegedly grabbed a shark by the tail and narrowly missed being bitten by quickly jumping out of the way.”

Chris Huhne’s speeding points

Chris Huhne

In 2003, Chris Huhne, then a Liberal Democrat government minister, was caught speeding on his way home from Stansted Airport. In order to avoid a six-month driving ban, his then wife Vicky Pryce claimed that it had been her driving the car.

Seven years later, after Huhne and Pryce had split up, rumours began of the speeding points arrangement. Both were found guilty of perverting the course of justice in 2013 and served two months in prison.

Grayson Perry’s latest exhibition, Who Are You, includes a smashed pot dedicated to the man.