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[Jan Klimkowski]

Convicted crook and fraudster Darius Guppy was a member of the Bullingdon Club, as well as being Best Man to Princess Diana's brother, the Earl Spencer.

Source: a Daily Telegraph article about the trashing of an Oxford pub:

During the melee the group had claimed they were members of the Bullingdon Club, a notorious secret drinking society made up of some of Oxford University's wealthiest undergraduates.

The 100-year-old club, whose previous members have included such hellraisers as Lord Bath, Darius Guppy, Earl Spencer's best man, and the diarist Alan Clark, has a history of drunken vandalism.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1...a-pub.html

An article about Guppy's fraud, proposing an inane rationale for his crime:

HOW ROYALS, ARISTOS AND TARTS FELL UNDER THE SPELL OF ...

SOCIALITE fraudster Darius Guppy had all life's privileges - money, good looks and a brilliant brain.

He was also close pals with Princess Diana's brother Earl Spencer, even standing as best man at the young aristocrat's 1989 wedding.

But there was one fatal flaw in the Old Etonian's make-up. He found trying to make an honest living boring.

Instead he had the arrogance to believe he could commit the perfect crime and get away with it.

Even after his arrest, and in the face of overwhelming evidence, he was convinced he could fool a jury - just like he had fooled New York police and insurers Lloyds of London.

A friend said: '"Darius wanted to go against the odds to see if he could win.""

He planned his spectacular sting after setting up a jewellery business called Inca Gemstones in 1988 with business partner and former school mate Dominic Marsh.

Champagne

The pair jetted to New York in March 1990 where they told police they had been being "robbed" of precious stones in their hotel room.

In fact, the gems were safely tucked away in a secret deposit box somewhere in the Big Apple. Guppy and Marsh drank champagne before staging the faked hold- up. Then accomplice Peter Risdon fired a shot into a mattress before tying them both up in the bathroom and leaving the room's safe door open.

In what was described as a ""brilliant performance"', Guppy was discovered by hotel staff "sobbing like a baby.

The pair then convinced street-wise New York police they had been robbed by two masked raiders. Within five weeks, they had a cheque from Lloyds for pounds 1.8million.

Meanwhile they had flown back to New York to pick up the gems they claimed were stolen.

Only greed brought Guppy's downfall which ended with him and Marsh being jailed for five years in 1993.

Risdon was paid pounds 10,000 to carry out the "theft" and angrily confronted Guppy when he realised the huge scale of the sting.

Guppy's attitude infuriated Risdon who later went to police and turned prosecution witness.

Raising

Believing himself invincible, Guppy also tried to sell the stones in London's Hatton Garden while they were still 'hot, raising the suspicions of a jeweller.

In addition to jailing Guppy, Judge Andrew Brooks also fined him pounds 533,000 for conspiracy to steal - later changed to a compensation order.

Marsh handed over money but Guppy did not. The judge said he believed Guppy still had access to " ill-gotten gains" even though the fallen businessman denied it.

Judge Brooks told him: ""I take the clear view you should not profit from your acts."

But Guppy was freed from jail in February this year after a mystery benefactor paid pounds 156,000 to Lloyds.

Guppy, who declared himself bankrupt in 1994, was let out of Ford Open Prison late at night to be re-united with wife Patricia, 29, and two-year-old daughter Isabella. Patricia was carrying the child when her husband was convicted.

Her background couldn't have been more different from Guppy's privileged upbringing.

He is the son of writer and explorer Nicholas Guppy His mother Shusha was an Iranian folk singer and writer who had influential pals in the "Chelsea Set".

But Guppy's parents split after 12 years together and his mother sang in clubs to help pay his school fees.

Patricia, maiden name Holder, was born into a working class family in Sunderland and married at 18, divorcing two years later. The beautiful blonde worked as a presser in a clothing factory where she told a colleague she felt there must be more to life than a dead-end job.

Patricia uprooted to London in 1989 and met Guppy at trendy Soho club Groucho's. While he awaited trial, she was mixing with vice queen Zoe Bowman who was running an escort agency.

Bowman charged distinguished clients up to pounds 1,000 a night for high-class hookers on the books of her agency, named Diplomat.

Bowman, who claimed Guppy knew about her business, did not work as a prostitute herself but hand-picked girls and fixed up appointments.

Charming

The London Madam had been a guest at Patricia's society wedding to Guppy in July 1991 and her daughter Natasha, eight, was a bridesmaid.

Bowman rubbed shoulders with Princess Di, Earl Spencer and his wife Victoria at the wedding.

Later she said: "I chatted to all the guests and found them charming, especially Earl Spencer and his wife, who of course had no idea what I did for a living.""

Patricia blamed the stress of waiting for the trial for the loss of one twin she was expecting.

At this point, Princess Di's brother was a great help to the Guppys, lodging pounds 250,000 surety to keep him out of jail as he awaited trail.

The Earl also promised to look after Patricia and the surviving baby while his pal did his time.

Guppy had befriended Earl Spencer, then young Charlie Althorp, when they were at Eton and then Oxford together.

It was said Guppy harboured a secret and unfulfilled infatuation for his friend's sister, Princess Diana.

When Guppy was finally put behind bars, he whined that he had been hard- done-by.

In an interview with Hello! magazine sold for a reported pounds 75,000 he moaned about missing the birth of Isabella and watching her grow up.

It was certainly a far cry from his days at Oxford when Guppy swanned around the cloisters in spats, a waistcoat and monocle, introducing himself at parties as 'published poet and socialite".

He belonged to outrageous student societies which required members to have pounds 10,000 available to cover damages at binges where one meal included half a hippopotamus. Guppy also founded the Ranulph Flambard Society, a drinking club named after an alcoholic, homosexual bishop.

But he graduated from Magdalen College with the joint top honours degree in his year for modern history and French.

He tried his hand at various banking jobs but kept on being sacked because he refused to do jobs he thought beneath him, like photocopying.

Blasting

Before his arrest, he would cruise London's most fashionable spots in his black Mercedes, with the James Bond theme blasting from his stereo.

The pounds 1.8million proceeds of the robbery have never been found. He claims he handed them to a Middle Eastern businessman named only as Mr X.

Only last month he gave a newspaper a self-serving version of his prison "ordeal" and future plans.

It made no reference to a proposed career in video piracy.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn...ntent;col1