Jewellery conman admits scamming customers out of £1m

A scammer has admitted conning customers out of £1 million by selling their valuable jewellery, watches and gold and failing to pass on the proceeds.

Jamie Goatley, 49, initially denied four counts of fraudulent trading and two counts of money laundering.

But after hearing evidence from five of the 20 alleged victims in the case, he changed his plea to guilty to the fraudulent trading charges.

He is now in custody awaiting sentencing at Southwark Crown Court next month.

Goatley, who was tried under his new name James Charles, was typically found by customers via Google. He would often visit them at their home and then take their valuable item away with him.

Some items were sold quickly at less than the value he had agreed with customers and without their knowledge. They would then only be given a fraction of what Goatley had told them he would sell it for, or nothing at all.

Detective Constable Graham Gray, the officer in charge of the investigation, said: “Charles’ offending was prolific, premeditated and unremorseful.

“The scale of his deception was vast and the impact on victims cannot be underestimated.

“As this case moves into the final stages of court proceedings, I’d like to thank everyone who supported this extensive and complex investigation.”

Before his guilty plea, the jury was told that Goatley was initially arrested in February last year – which was reported by Brighton and Hove News, who could not include his name because of recently developed UK privacy law.

But despite this, he carried on with the same modus operandi, scamming yet more victims. He was arrested again in August, and has been in custody ever since.

Goatley, of Roman Crescent, Southwick, was originally charged with 24 counts of fraud relating to each of the victims in this trial.

But the indictment was later amended to fraudulent trading, the first two covering two different time periods in relation to one of his companies, Olympia Mayfair Ltd and the second two relating to two different companies, Olympia Mayfair Holdings Ltd and National Gold Buyers Ltd.

He was also charged with two counts of converting criminal property – or money laundering – which referred to how he converted the items he had taken into cash by selling them, and by paying this cash into bank accounts.

Most of the charges date from between September 2022, shortly after he set up a company called Olympia Mayfair Ltd, and 11 February, when he was first arrested.

But a few weeks after that, he changed his name from Jamie Goatley to James Charles and set up a new company, National Gold Buyers Ltd. Some of the charges relate to that period.