Bogus charity bucket conman Jaimie Monteiro jailed
DEVON AND CORNWALL POLICEA man has been jailed for swindling shoppers out of tens of thousands of pounds with bogus charity collections.
Jaimie Monteiro, 27, of Oaklands Road, Newton Abbot sent teams across the south west pretending to raise cash for children and the homeless.
He denied five counts of fraud but was found guilty and jailed for four-and-a-half years at Exeter Crown Court.
Judge David Evans said Monteiro carried out "camouflaged begging" in an operation "saturated in dishonesty".
His right-hand man Jordan Fletcher, 24, of Bladon Close, Newton Abbot admitted three counts of fraud and was jailed for eight months.
The court heard how Monteiro's collections damaged real charities by diverting money away from them.
'Hoodwinking'
He took on collectors - some of them homeless and vulnerable - who carried buckets and claimed to be raising cash for bogus charities with names such as Save a Heart, Kids at Christmas and Hungry and Homeless Kids.
His teams also used the names of real charities including Shelter, Great Ormond Street Hospital, the British Legion, and Meningitis Help.
The judge told Monteiro: "You operated fraudulently for your own benefit by hoodwinking well-intentioned members of the public into thinking they were making a genuine contribution to charity."
Monteiro set up the Youth Recruit charity in 2013 but his frauds took place in 2014 and 2015 in Somerset, Devon and Cornwall.
The only concrete evidence of how much he made was the £44,000 that passed through his bank account at the time of the offences.
