Conman posing as defence secretary Michael Fallon tried to dupe Richard Branson out of £3.8m in kidnap plot

Richard Branson has told of being targeted by fraudsters
REUTERS
Chris Baynes18 October 2017
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A conman posing as defence secretary Michael Fallon tried to dupe Sir Richard Branson out of $5 million (£3.8m) by faking a kidnapping, the Virgin boss has revealed.

The businessman said he spoke to a man who "sounded exactly like Sir Michael" who claimed a British diplomat was being held hostage by terrorists.

Writing on his blog, Sir Richard said his assistant received a message on what appeared to be official notepaper with a request to call the defence secretary.

The 67-year-old said: "He told me that British laws prevented the Government from paying out ransoms, which he normally completely concurred with. But he said on this occasion there was a particular, very sensitive, reason why they had to get this diplomat back.

"So they were extremely confidentially asking a syndicate of British businesspersons to step in.

"I was asked to contribute 5 million dollars of the ransom money, which he assured me the British Government would find a way of paying back."

Sir Richard said he was "sympathetic" to the request, but wanted to carry out checks.

After he rang Downing Street and asked to be put through to Sir Michael's office, he realised the truth.

He wrote: "His secretary assured me that Sir Michael hadn't spoken to me and that nobody had been kidnapped. It was clearly a scam. I told them what had happened and we passed the matter over to the police."

The coman posed as defence secretary Michael Fallon
EPA

The tycoon also wrote of a similar incident where a fraudster impersonated him and was able to con $2 million (£1.5m) of money destined to help victims of Hurricane Irma in the British Virgin Islands.

He wrote: "They told me that they had received an email from somebody claiming they were my assistant, to arrange a call with me.

"When the call happened the conman did an extremely accurate impression of me and spun a big lie about urgently needing a loan while I was trying to mobilise aid in the BVI.

"They claimed I couldn't get hold of my bank in the UK because I didn't have any communications going to Europe and I'd only just managed to make a satellite call to the businessman in America. The business person, incredibly graciously, gave 2 million, which promptly disappeared."

He added: "People used to raid banks and trains for smaller amounts - it's frightening to think how easy it is becoming to pull off these crimes for larger amounts."

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