Conman jailed after veterans lose thousands in battlefield tours scam

John Lennox, 48, from Clydebank, admitted stealing £27,855 in payments for the bogus trips to commemorate anniversaries of events such as the Battle of Arnhem and the Normandy D-Day landings.

At Glasgow Sheriff Court yesterday he was sentenced to 25 months in prison.

One group targeted by Lennox was Fife Parachute Regiment Association, which said it paid a £3,400 deposit to the conman.

It made a booking with his firm, European Battlefield Tours, but members “smelled a rat” two days before they were due to travel to the Netherlands for the 65th anniversary of the Battle of Arnhem.

Russell Cameron, 77, a former paratrooper from Kennoway, Fife, said: “There were 24 of us booked up in total, including another group from Dundee.

“We should have twigged, because the first meeting we were due to have with him, he never turned up.

“Arnhem is a special place in our history. It was supposed to be a spiritual tour for the men of the Parachute Association and their wives.

“We’d received a lottery funding grant of £10,000. Luckily, we didn’t spend it all, but now we have to go back to the lottery and tell them what’s happened. [Lennox] deserves exactly what he gets.”

Lennox’s defence lawyer, Peter Mullen, said his client had set up the company “with the best intentions” and at first took the money in good faith. “He was running a business and trying his best. It didn’t succeed, far from it,” he said.

Some of the battlefield tour trips did go ahead successfully, which was not disputed by the Crown.

Sheriff John Beckett said Lennox’s conduct was “despicable”.

He said: “You have stolen from a large number of people, some of whom were vulnerable by reason of their age and their emotional connection with the site of the D-Day landings, war graves and battle sites.

“All of these people made the honest but fateful mistake of trusting you with not only their money but also their hopes and plans. You left many of them all packed up and ready to go on holiday, standing around waiting for buses that never came. In some cases you said that you would make a refund but more than two years on, you have not done so.

“You have stolen from people who served this country going as far back as the Second World War. Through your dishonesty, many people have been deprived of an opportunity to mark a special occasion which will not come again for them.”

The sheriff said his sentence could even begin to compensate Lennox’s victims. “I do, however, require to punish you, to protect the public from you, to deter you and others from committing such crimes of dishonesty and to express society’s outrage at your conduct and the court’s disapproval of it.”