'Truly despicable' con man duped Taylor Swift fans in Leeds and Wakefield out of thousands of pounds
A shameless trickster duped desperate people out of thousands of pounds, including a mother wanting to get her treatment for her son and pop music fans wanting concert tickets.
Mark McCreadie was labelled a “serial liar” and a “practised fraudster” by a judge at Leeds Crown Court this week who jailed him for leaving a trail of scams across Yorkshire.
This included swindling thousands from music fans in Wakefield and Leeds with the promise of VIP tickets for gigs of Taylor Swift, ACDC and Liam Gallagher.
Prosecutor Heather Gilmore said McCreadie’s offending began in 2019 when he was approached by a desperate woman wanting drug-addiction treatment for her son.
McCreadie told her he was a mental health nurse in Doncaster, and could help. He then claimed he had got her son into a centre, and extracted more than £12,500 from the woman for the alleged treatment over the next few months as he spun a web of lies.
McCreadie even lied about his credentials at magistrates’ court on behalf of the woman’s son, who was jailed for a brief period.
The woman eventually contacted the police and arrested McCreadie. He later skipped bail when he was due to appear in court.
He then went on to fail to pay for hotels in East Yorkshire, owing more than £500, and then began conning people with his promise of concert tickets.
The first victims had initially come across McCreadie in the Priory Bar in Wakefield, where he would regularly drink, and told them his brother worked in the music business as a lighting engineer, which was a lie.
The 49-year-old would also offer them cheaper travel and hotel deals to extract more money. He kept the pretence up between March 2023 and July 2024 and pocketed more than £6,500 from several people after word spread about his ability to secure tickets.
Finally, he conned £1,500 from a woman after he pretended to secure her a job at the Royal Hallamshire Hospital in Sheffield using his bogus role as a senior mental-health worker. He told her the money was for a laptop and uniform.
McCreadie, of no fixed address, was finally arrested by West Yorkshire Police and held on remand at HMP Leeds until his court appearance this week.
He admitted multiple counts of fraud.
Mitigating, Stephen Welford said McCreadie said he “wished to apologise” and would pay compensation “if he could”.
He said he was making use of his time in jail, helping inmates learn to read and write.
But Judge Richard Mansell KC refuted claims that he was remorseful, pointing to a probation report that suggested McCreadie had little empathy and “failed to offer any form of apology”.
He said of McCreadie’s actions towards the mother wanting help for her son as a “truly despicable deception”.
He said: “You are a practised fraudster, scamming people out of money in a serial fashion. You are a serial liar.”
He jailed him for three years.