ONCE a conman, always a conman as a series of victims would realise.

Shameless William Champion, 47, told an old soldier he was the son of Sir Joseph Robinson, the mining magnate, spinning a yarn that unless he got married, he would be cut out of his father’s will.

The soldier introduced him to his daughter, who he beguiled. Within weeks they were married – but he failed to mention he was already married.

That earned him five years behind bars.

Undaunted on his release, he posed as a millionaire, enabling him to stay at top hotels and sample the good things in life.

When he realised he was in danger of being rumbled, he fled to Hampshire where he found his next victim, an honest hardworking farm foreman.

Though he was employed as a humble farm worker, Champion, 47, somehow deceived the foreman into believing he was making a fortune from the Stock Exchange and persuaded him to part with money from time to time.

Forgery “You can’t go wrong,” he insisted. “It’s a gold-mine.”

When the foreman wanted to know when his windfall would arrive, Champion wrote him an IOU for £500 and then gave him a forged certificate he was due for the not inconsiderable sum of £21,000.

To further his story, Champion said he was awaiting dividends from a venture in South Africa which would be paid into a bank in Fareham.

To substantiate the deceit, he sent a series of telegrams to the bank that a huge amount of cash was going to be transferred.

However, a bank official who could tell fact from fiction, finally unmasked him as a rogue.

So in 1921, Champion appeared at Hampshire Assizes where he admitted several frauds covering three indictments.

Jailing him for three years, Mr Justice Avory condemned him for “a cruel series of frauds perpetrated upon people who could not afford to lose the money which he had obtained.

“You have deceived them by a most elaborate system of false documents and false statements.”