Dodgiest person you ever knew?

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Somebody called Big Janner - keeps posting extremely dodgy claims about being a winner!😉🤣
 
Later that evening I learnt that he was one of the Brinks-Mat armed robbers, and had a personal vendetta against those he described as "petty thieves" :eek:

I've met a few dodgy people over the years but your Brink's-Mat reference reminded me that during the '80s I met John "Goldfinger" Palmer on several occasions. He was always polite with a good sense of humour, although not likely to be appreciated by those ordinary families he defrauded during his time-share scam. Dodgy he certainly was but never threatening. I suspect that might have changed as his criminal activities expanded in the late '80s/90s.
 
About 25 years ago when our lads started playing football for the village youngsters team they were friendly with 2 other lads of the same ages & in the same class at school. SWMBO & myself spent many cold Sunday mornings (at different locations as they were 2 different age groups) on the touchline shouting encouragement. Socialised occasionally with the other lads parents.
Got on well with their mother but the father was a bit of a jack the lad, always had flash cars and other parents used to fawn around him, impressed with his tales. At the time he ran the local car lot.
Roll on a year & I was buying a plot of land next to the car lot. In discussions with solicitor, he advised that there had been a problem with the neighbour trying to expand his car lot on to the land I was buying - but not to worry the motor trader is currently in prison for arranging loans on cars for fictitious customers, making a couple of payments and pocketing the rest.
He came out of prison & promptly moved house from a £100,000 house to a £300,000+ house (wonder how he earned that money in prison?). He also set up a finance company supplying vehicles & equipment on finance. How does someone who has just come out of prison for financial fraud set up in business as a finance company?
He got into seeing another lady & they set up a home nearby & he split his time between the 2 women. Turned out the new woman was a senior local bank employee (possibly a manager or assistant manager). She soon became pregnant & his wife kicked him out.
At that time it came to light that he was back to his fraudulent ways & was arranging a scam to buy lorries on finance, defrauding the lorry supplier. The local press reported that he owed the lorry supplier £700,000 but there were rumours that there was over £1m owed in total.
Shortly after that he died of heart failure outside a local gym in his late 40's/early 50's
His name was still on the deeds of the £300,000 house (probably worth well over £500,000 now). Lorry supplier took a charge on the house so that when it is sold lorry supplier gets some of his money back. So the ex wife can't afford to sell & has to work all hours to pay the bills.
 
I love the word Dodgy!!
Non moreso than in the business of selling cars!
For short while I worked for dealership in Homestead Florida.
One day an Hispanic young woman with limited English skills, came into buy a Pontaic Grand Am.
Normally the car came with a std build 4 cylinder engine, but with a V6 variant which was in very special order supply status at the time .
Not wanting to lose a sale because she insisted on the V6 or nothing, one of the sales guys sold her a 4 cyinder model quote "And we will put the other two cylinders on order for you delivery in 90 days".
She bought the car in green as I re-call.
Suffice to state that three months later she was back "looking for her two extra cylinders"! (whoops):eek:
I interpreted her remarks & comments to Pete, the sales manager .
Then got laughed out of the place !

BUT SHE GOT THE LAST LAUGH!!
She came back with two Florida bi-lingual fraud gorillas from the Attorney Generals office!
Oh Me Gawd! :D
Tuercas viejas


,
 
I love the word Dodgy!!
Non moreso than in the business of selling cars!
For short while I worked for dealership in Homestead Florida.
One day an Hispanic young woman with limited English skills, came into buy a Pontaic Grand Am.
Normally the car came with a std build 4 cylinder engine, but with a V6 variant which was in very special order supply status at the time .
Not wanting to lose a sale because she insisted on the V6 or nothing, one of the sales guys sold her a 4 cyinder model quote "And we will put the other two cylinders on order for you delivery in 90 days".
She bought the car in green as I re-call.
Suffice to state that three months later she was back "looking for her two extra cylinders"! (whoops):eek:
I interpreted her remarks & comments to Pete, the sales manager .
Then got laughed out of the place !

BUT SHE GOT THE LAST LAUGH!!
She came back with two Florida bi-lingual fraud gorillas from the Attorney Generals office!
Oh Me Gawd! :D
Tuercas viejas


,
Homestead brings back memories! Been there twice - first time I met Janis Ian in a diner. The second time we stayed in a B&B whose hosts were the most flamboyant gay couple ever. One graduated from Julliard and was lead dancer on the Tina Turner "Private Dancer" tour. I also remember that stay for a different reason - we left there early morning to drive to Sarasota and heard all the 9/11 events unfolding real time on the car radio. Surreal journey! (We arrived in Sarasota just as a hurricane set in - but that's another story!)
 
Homestead brings back memories! Been there twice - first time I met Janis Ian in a diner. The second time we stayed in a B&B whose hosts were the most flamboyant gay couple ever. One graduated from Julliard and was lead dancer on the Tina Turner "Private Dancer" tour. I also remember that stay for a different reason - we left there early morning to drive to Sarasota and heard all the 9/11 events unfolding real time on the car radio. Surreal journey! (We arrived in Sarasota just as a hurricane set in - but that's another story!)
Life in Florida then!
Never a dull moment.
I see you are in Preston.
I lived for a short while in Tarleton when I worked for Leyland Motors, which seems like a far off place , of several centuries ago nowadays .
You know its a small world, and you can rub shoulders with all sorts of people .
To emphasise, I was sent to Bolivia with a crew to do altitude trials on big trucks.
In Cochabamba we needed to rent a car. The business owner presented us with his son's friend who had just arrived from the UK .
He sat beside me when were in grammar school together !

Tuercas Viejas
 
Whilst there have been a number of dodgy geezers in motorsport, I've managed to be protected from them rather than known them.
One good example is in 2007 when we had a former Brazilian F1 driver join us too drive at the Interlargos sportscar event. After the event we had a day to spare prior to the return flight and we were asked if we would like to see a 'few classic cars' that his father and uncle had. Early the next day 3 sinister 'murdered out ' black SUV's rolled up to our hotel. I jumped in an ML in the middle of the convoy with our Brazilian driver. I noticed there was slightly more wind noise than standard and then that the windows were all about 20mm thick. Turned out the car was also armoured and bulletproof. As the son of a family with money, they took precautions on his safety (yeah, I know he's a former F1 driver!) Had kidnapping ever been attempted? Not on him but he had friends who had been!
The few 'classic cars' tuned out to be 6 large halls full of beautiful restored cars in a huge estate in the middle of the jungle....with some considerable security.
This was the hall for European cars, others were for American, racing, Brazilian, vintage etc. IMGP5211.JPG

How did the family become so wealthy? They had the contract to supply packaging (the most expensive bit!) to Philip Morris (Marlboro) for the whole of Brazil.....
Some would regard that as dodgy, but then I used to dress up as a cigarette packet for a living. :rolleyes: The Papal Purple trousers for Silk Cut were something to beholdo_O
 
In the early 90's I worked for an Italian oil services firm in the Niger Delta where I was exposed to all sorts of ways of doing business and lubricating the wheels of capitalism. I then moved to the Russian Federation where I worked for a large respectable international company. I can report that business was exactly the same as in Nigeria. I'm no competition winner, but I did see a lot of dodgy financial stuff, and have extracted my employers from situations and extracted money and saved losses.
 
Whilst there have been a number of dodgy geezers in motorsport, I've managed to be protected from them rather than known them.
One good example is in 2007 when we had a former Brazilian F1 driver join us too drive at the Interlargos sportscar event. After the event we had a day to spare prior to the return flight and we were asked if we would like to see a 'few classic cars' that his father and uncle had. Early the next day 3 sinister 'murdered out ' black SUV's rolled up to our hotel. I jumped in an ML in the middle of the convoy with our Brazilian driver. I noticed there was slightly more wind noise than standard and then that the windows were all about 20mm thick. Turned out the car was also armoured and bulletproof. As the son of a family with money, they took precautions on his safety (yeah, I know he's a former F1 driver!) Had kidnapping ever been attempted? Not on him but he had friends who had been!
The few 'classic cars' tuned out to be 6 large halls full of beautiful restored cars in a huge estate in the middle of the jungle....with some considerable security.
This was the hall for European cars, others were for American, racing, Brazilian, vintage etc. View attachment 110116

How did the family become so wealthy? They had the contract to supply packaging (the most expensive bit!) to Philip Morris (Marlboro) for the whole of Brazil.....
Some would regard that as dodgy, but then I used to dress up as a cigarette packet for a living. :rolleyes: The Papal Purple trousers for Silk Cut were something to beholdo_O
Rubens Barrachello??

Thats an incredible collection and surely must rival that of Jay Leno.
 
Rubens Barrachello??

Thats an incredible collection and surely must rival that of Jay Leno.
No, It wasn't Rubens and for security reasons (!) I won't say who it was.
But the American car section may well rival Jay Leno's collection.Yanktanks.jpg

...but a bigger surprise was finding this in the middle of a jungle in Brazil...

220Brazil.jpg

Even more of a surprise was that they knew of 4 collections in Brazil which were considerably larger!:eek:
 
No, It wasn't Rubens and for security reasons (!) I won't say who it was.
But the American car section may well rival Jay Leno's collection.View attachment 110315

...but a bigger surprise was finding this in the middle of a jungle in Brazil...

View attachment 110316

Even more of a surprise was that they knew of 4 collections in Brazil which were considerably larger!:eek:
Fair enough although with a little bit of digging it would be easy enough to find out.

The Marx family from San Paulo are a family that own a sizeable collection. They’re well known in classic car circles so that might be on of the collections that happen to be bigger than the one that you saw. There’s plenty of info about them on the web.
 

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