Airport conman Andrew Gradon on the run

Feb 7 2010 by Coreena Ford, Sunday Sun

“He had just missed his flight and needed some money for a supplement to go back on the next flight.

“I asked him for an address, he said it was somewhere near Newcastle, and there was an email address. I gave him some money and went to get my plane. Later I tried this e-mail address and got an undeliverable response.

“It’s obviously wrong, it’s fraud, but how you get rid of him I don’t know.”

Gradon, believed to be 37 and a trained chef, also gives out an address in Sacriston, County Durham, but this turns out to be an old address where he hasn’t lived since 2000.

The new homeowners have been plagued by hundreds of letters over the years from Gradon’s duped victims asking for their money back, yet they do not know where he lives now.

Little is known of Gradon, yet it is believed he trained to be a chef but has never held down a job for long.

Those who have been targeted by him say he is around 5ft 10ins tall, wears glasses, is a smoker and he has a tattoo on one finger.

He used to lived in Prague with a jazz musician, but returned to County Durham for a short time at Christmas in 2008, after telling family members he had been beaten and mugged in Germany.

However, he soon quit his job in a pub kitchen and left the country once more.

He allowed one of his victims to photocopy his passport as proof of identity, and a forensic artist has now used the photo to put together an artist’s impression of Gradon.

In a last ditch bid to track him down, Chris Jackson has pinned copies of the artist’s picture in airports he is known to frequent, but he has yet to resurface.

V Inside Out, North East and Cumbria, will be shown on BBC One at 7.30pm tomorrow.