Conman who scammed Shropshire students out of £1 million in bizarre IRA plot hoax is jailed for injuring French police

A spokesperson for the French Ministry of Justice told the PA news agency that Robert Hendy-Freegard, also known as David Hendy, was found guilty after a trial and sentenced for voluntarily causing injury to national police personnel during an incident on August 25, 2022, at his home address in isolated Creuse in central France.

The trial at the court of Gueret near Limoges heard on Thursday (February 6) that Hendy-Freegard, who was addressed in court as David Hendy, rammed two police officers as he fled a police check-up at his home in the village of Vidaillat, where he had been illegally breeding dogs, local radio Ici Creuse reported.

The conman, who posed as a spy for Britain’s domestic intelligence service MI5 to defraud his victims, is the central figure in the documentary The Puppet Master: Hunting The Ultimate Conman available on Netflix.

In 2005, a London court sentenced him to life in prison for 20 offences of theft, deception and “kidnapping by fraud”.

An eight-month trial heard at the time Hendy-Freegard commandeered the lives of a string of unsuspecting men and women during a decade-long charade that began when he worked as a barman at the Swan pub in Newport, Shropshire, in 1993.

There, he befriended a number of students from Harper Adams agricultural college and, following the suicide of an Irish student, began to pretend that he was a policeman or agent sent to investigate an IRA cell at the college.

He duped his victims out of more than £1 million over the course of a decade. But more than that, he scarred them for life, coercing them into years of virtual house arrest, isolating them from their friends and family, and subjecting them to humiliating tests to prove their loyalty.

Among his eight victims was student John Atkinson, who handed over more than £300,000 to pay for so-called “protection” from IRA terrorists.

Fellow student Sarah Smith parted with more than £200,000.

But in 2009, Hendy-Freegard was released from prison after an appeals court overturned his conviction for the offences of kidnapping by fraud, which alleged two of his victims were effectively deprived of their liberty by his deception and brainwashing.

Hendy-Freegard, who represented himself during his trial in Gueret, has also been disqualified from driving for five years, and banned from residing in Creuse for the same period of time, the spokesperson for the French Ministry of Justice said.

He was also sentenced to pay damages to the victims.

The conman now has 10 days to appeal against the court’s decision.