Nigerian Fraudster Caught With 128 Identities in the UK

A CONMAN used 128 fake IDs to steal £636,000 in a series of scams, a court heard yesterday.
David Peters, 30, fleeced banks, mortgage lenders and Government agencies.

Stunned cops called his identity theft the biggest they had ever discovered. He obtained 74 bogus driving licences after applying for them at a string of rural post offices.

Nigerian Peters also stole £168,575 in benefits from three London councils by claiming to be both tenant and landlord at the same address, the Old Bailey was told. Peters got a £250,000 mortgage for a house in Edgware, North London, a second mortgage on a flat in Essex worth £157,495 and took more than £60,000 from Lloyds TSB in a series of frauds.

Police said he had run his cons from 2002 until December last year.

Peters, who was also named as Oluseyi Jeremiah Adebayo on court documents, admitted 29 charges including fraud and possession of false identification documents. He will be sentenced tomorrow.

Detective Inspector Richard Fisher, of City of London Police, said after the hearing: "This is the biggest case of identity theft we have ever investigated.


"The sheer number of the fake identities we discovered are evidence of how Peters was a full-time fraudster funding a life of excess at the expense of others."