‘CALL ME MAC’ SAYS REBORN INTERNATIONAL CON MAN IN PIPER CHEROKEE
Brian Goldie, also known as Goudie, a serial Scots con man convicted in both Australia and Thailand has been exposed again by a newspaper in Scotland which found him running an aviation company out of the country’s Prestwick airport.
Goldie who has conned his way through Australia and Thailand, posing as a British barrister and former Royal Marines officer, was earlier this month exposed in the Sunday Mail and Daily Record newspapers after allegedly fleecing a pilot out of £50,000 in one of his watertight investments.
Goldie fled Scotland for Australia more than twenty years ago after an arrest warrant was issued for fraud while he was working for the Bank of Scotland. (The warrant was later cancelled, due to the time lapse and expense of extradition).
In Australia he defrauded a Perth mining company out of hundreds of thousands of Aussie dollars and was jailed for six years. Having studied immigration law in jail he led the Australian authorities a merry dance bringing many cases and appeals against deportation. Former Australian girlfriends were happy to testify him.
And in Thailand posing as a lawyer, he cheated an elderly woman out of the equivalent of £190,000 after offering to get her son freed from child abuse charges.
He was subsequently charged with fraud, convicted, and jailed for three years, but was given bail to appeal and subsequently fled. The elderly mother of the victim said she had lost all faith in Thai justice.
He was also accused of defrauding another client who was dying of necrotising fasciitis – a flesh eating disease – in Nong Plalai jail near Pattaya. He acquired the man’s hotel and guest house and apartment.
Now he has been found posing as Gerald ‘Mac’ Petersen running GMK Aviation out of Prestwick airport. The company has gone bankrupt and its only plane a Piper PA-28-140 Cherokee has been sold.
The news was broken to me while I was in Cambodia at the end of last month – from a well-wisher in Thailand.
According to the Sunday Mail, Goldie’s pilot Neil Hawkyard had lodged a complaint with the police that Petersen, (whom he later found out was also Goldie and Goudie) had cheated him out of over £50,000 which he had been persuaded to invest.
Petersen, or Goldie, or Goudie had told him that he engaged in mining minerals in Zambia and was a friend of the President of Guinea.
“He told me: ‘I have been involved with these people in Africa and this investment has so much potential, you can make a massive return if you want to get involved.’ I feel so stupid now.”
Last month Goldie, going by the name Gerald Paterson, appeared at Ayr Sheriff Court accused of threatening and abusive behaviour towards Adnan Soojeri, an engineer based at the Prestwick Flight Centre, reported the Sunday Mail.
“The court heard there had been a dispute over unpaid invoices. He was found not guilty of the charge.”
Do not hold your breath waiting for Goldie/Goudie to go to jail. U.K. police are notoriously bad at bringing fraud cases. Although Police Scotland are saying they are investigating a complaint of fraud the ‘Scot Squad’ may just give up and refer to it as a civil matter.
Police will not be able to bring up his past until conviction but most of those records are in Thailand and Australia anyway.
At the time he was active conning people in Thailand I flooded the internet with warnings about him. He had no choice but to change his name.
While involved in a TV production in Cambodia when the news broke I did suggest that company might accept his case. Well, not seriously. This is too low life. Despite all the harm he has caused and the hundreds of thousand he has taken from victims; he is reduced to living in a caravan pictured here by the Sunday Mail.
There is an upside. Sunday Mail chief reporter Hannah Rodger messaged: “He really does not like you.”
I wonder if Gerald ‘Mac’ Paterson has voting rights in the U.K. There’s one for the Scot Squad.
