"Dr." Paul Bint: The Fake Physician | Conmen Case Files | Real Crime

paper was light gold in medieval times [Music] oh no tobacco sugar [Music] that everything we thought we knew about the world might turn out to be completely wrong [Music] [Applause] [Music] con men the most devious of all criminals charming cool and calculating they betray trust and devastate lives it remain a complete enigma we are about to explore the mysterious world of these master criminals giving an unprecedented insight into the workings of the complex minds of some of the world's most cunning con men we will reveal the detail and the intricacies of their elaborate crimes and to uncover how they were brought dramatically to justice in this show the incredible tale of one of britain's most prolific and compulsive con men whose criminal career spans more than a quarter of a century and who has adopted at least 24 known aliases his cons not only robbed people of their money but they also put people's lives in grave danger paul bint is a traveling serial con man [Music] he is a 41 year old man who has been appearing before the courts from the age of 16. he's a man who lives in a fantasy world sort of people that paul bintv impersonated were all figures of authority very clever people who professional people who are looked up to and admired that's obviously something he felt he couldn't have in his normal life and he needed it and craved it [Music] i've never ever come across a con man like paul bintz he's very much a one-off paul bint has committed more than 100 offenses and audaciously posed as doctors in hospitals an aristocrat a playboy a property magnet and even masqueraded as orlando powell qc the barrister who worked on the infamous gil dando murder trial in the uk such a relentless confidence trickster the british press has crowned him king khan he's so deeply involved in playing these characters and the the temporary status and success that he achieves through them that he can't kind of give them up i guess he's kind of addicted to them the thing that i guess makes him unusual and that various forensic and criminal psychiatrists have concluded is that he doesn't there's no salvation in the story he doesn't really seem to be coming to his senses at all and hospitals it would seem are the backdrop for his fantasy world a hospital to him would be like disney world to a six-year-old and it was in hospitals that paul bint's first known con began incredibly this man with no medical or surgical training whatsoever walked into a hospital in kettering northants england in 1983 posing as a locum doctor paul bint stole a white coat and stethoscope and set to work plundering from the sick and the dying and stealing from his so-called colleagues a year later paul bint was pulling exactly the same disturbing con in the capital at the whittington hospital north london england on the a e ward of the royal whittington hospital bint assumed the identity of dr dominic york binter discovered that dr york had gone to work in the usa and so simply claimed he had returned to the uk sooner than expected the man who coolly strolled into whittington using it as his hunting ground cruelly took his con even further when wearing his white coat he perilously set to work as a doctor on the wards while at the north london hospital despite no training paul bint relished and performed a variety of tasks he arranged x-rays attended to a patient with a collapsed lung and administered 12 stitches to a man with a head injury he'd managed to sneak his way into various hospitals mostly in london it seemed during that period steal a doctor's coat often steal a stethoscope or other equipment or a pager well as soon as he put on the white code he was instantly if you like short-circuiting people's doubt and mistrust reaction they are automatically inclined to trust him because they thought he was a doctor so they're therefore going to put a lot more weight than things that he says now how he was able to carry it on from there i think it speaks a lot to his con man characteristics he's obviously able to improvise and to talk a good game who's able to sound convincing classic characteristics of con man when talking about infiltrating the royal whittington hospital in london england paul bint dubiously claims he studied medical books for six months went through an interview process and won the position over 23 qualified doctors when i put to him that he was playing god with people's lives that he was putting life at risk he said that no he'd studied the medical books if there was something he wasn't sure of he'd always refer it um and he claimed that he acted responsibly i mean that again just shows you the level of self-deception that's going on with such an individual the reality was he was an unremarkable man who had strolled in off the street and terrifyingly consulted with patients and administered treatments to seriously ill people from whittington hospital bint did shifts at st bartholomew's hospital in east london and the hammersmith hospital at these british hospitals his disturbing dangerous and reckless behavior continued fairly well documented that he did do a number of very alarming things such as putting stitches in a man who came into accident emergency with a head wound and he changed the drip on somebody i think come round after surgery there was even a claim that he was present during emergency heart surgery in one hospital in london so he he was involved in some very serious medical situations he was putting lives potentially at risk by doing that and he was manipulating them of time when they were at their most vulnerable by arrogantly assuming the role of doctor paul bint had found the perfect con and playground to support an extravagant lifestyle and to also fulfill his own warped fantasies of self-importance and grandeur by putting on a doctor's code you're taking advantage of what you might call the authority effect or the white coat effect because doctors are a class of society who automatically command a lot of trust and and that's something that common often do they often pose as an authority figure and of course people would respond to him very differently as dr bint than mr bint so he would gain respect he would have the trust of other people which of course would allow him to exploit them i think paul bint obviously became a little bit of a walter mitty type character he believed he was a doctor he believed he had power over these patients and that he was giving them care and attention in the way that a doctor would a good question is whether or not he realized that he was endangering people's health or maybe even their lives let alone their emotional state and again you have to ask whether he may he may have realized it i don't know but he probably didn't care even if he did realize it because he just he probably didn't have the same emotional processes that normal people have so he didn't have a conscience in the same way that you and i would and this was just the beginning of a notorious and compulsive con man career no one could predict the audacity and extremes paul bint would go to his crimes only limited by his own imagination and fantasies when off duty from his surgical scam nightclubs were bent's prowling ground of choice he would use his false identities to seduce women but he wouldn't just steal their hearts he would steal their cash i mean it's anything from him claiming to have slept with a thousand women and countless aliases i think from kind of aristocrats to kind of double-barrelled barristers and even one of his defense councils actually said he makes walter mitty look like a nine o'clock news reader paul bint is a serial conman whose career has spanned three decades of shocking and unsettling scams in the early 1980s he infiltrated hospitals posing as a doctor and dangerously administered treatments to unsuspecting patients waiting for the care and attention from professional medical staff he often justified it by saying he was there on the front line he probably saved a few lives he poured over medical books he'd done his research he was responsible if there was something he didn't know he described as a kind of sequential process being in an accident emergency you would pass on a particular problem it's easy to get side tracked by the fact that he'd taken on this persona of a doctor and was in the environment of hospitals he was just a con man in in the basic sense the term using that environment in order to get money from people but it wasn't just wish fulfillment and money on paul vince mind he used his fake status to practice his bedside manner outside the hospital when not putting patients lives at risk with his scandalous surgical scam he compulsively scoured nightclubs in search of women bint claims to have slept with a thousand women he would take them to bed and then take their money [Music] paul bint reportedly attempted to seduce women in nightclubs with the immortal line trust me i'm a doctor supposedly one of his girlfriends said that was one of his pickup lines where they're in a nightclub he supposedly was foddling her breasts and says okay trust me i'm a doctor the reality of it is that paul bint would have been treated quite differently by females if they believed that he had the power and status that go with being a doctor but crucially he would have had more confidence when he was playing out those roles so he wouldn't be able to impress women maybe on a normal day-to-day basis as himself but as dr bint or barrister bint then of course he's going to have more charm more confidence and he's going to be more able to woo the ladies in all of my cases women featured it's part of of his game yes it's kind of interesting that he seems to have managed to con women of a certain age and education and career women who are very very successful in in their lives enjoying their good careers and doing very well and perhaps they kind of buy in just a little bit too much to the idea of who he is some of the women that i spoke to said that he can be a very kind of caring lover and because he'd managed to i guess obtain certain amount of money through other criminal work he would often spend quite a lot of money on his win but it would always be with the idea that he was going to con them out of much greater sum of money at the end whilst serially calling women paul bint could not keep away from hospitals but his first run of success as a con man could not last forever in 1983 and 1984 when bint was posing as an a e doctor his life-threatening lies caught up with him and he was arrested in the 80s he received a couple of sentences the first one was about 18 months of stealing doctors coats and equipment and posing as a doctor it's been claimed on many occasions by various defense councils that he's suffering from some kind of mental illness or psychosis in 84 and the judge didn't accept it for one minute because she could see that he'd been operating in a very irresponsible and potentially life-threatening way and gave him a very stiff sentence of five years not of course he learned anything from it after being released from prison paul bin quickly returned to his walter mitty ways but this time he adopted a brand new tag he decided that the best way to con his way to richness status and into women's bedrooms was to adopt the personas of a string of wealthy eminent and successful individuals he stole the tools necessary to create the illusion of wealth and status although no one can tell if he stole to convince people he was successful and wealthy or if he convinced people he was successful and powerful in order to help him steal he seemed to need both equally he claimed to be the duke of arundel and invented the persona of a wealthy aristocrat called piers oppenheimer in order to successfully scam and seduce but the police were always on his tail they arrested him several times and in 1988 he found himself back behind bars serving a four-year sentence if he believes he is piers oppenheimer or he is you know a double-barreled surnamed uh leading barrister that's enough for him and he'll ride it for as long as he can so um i think you probably need to have on a deeper psychological level you need to have extremely low self-esteem uh and you need to have a commitment to see it through even though you know it's going to catch catch up with you eventually sort of people that paul bint sort of impersonated or took on personas of were all figures of authority very clever people who professional people who are looked up to and admired that's obviously something he felt he couldn't have in his normal life and he needed it and craved it in 1993 released from prison paul bent reverted to his old hunting ground of hospitals once again he would put seriously ill patients lives at risk by posing as a doctor in a bid to feed his ego and his wife in 1993 he infiltrated st james's hospital in leeds england before breaching security at the nearby york district hospital where the cold-hearted khan reached new heights in terms of its cruelty towards bint's victims he told the parents of a 17 year old girl who'd just been involved in a in an accident that um that their daughter would live and six hours later she died now you could say that's emotionally reckless i mean again you wouldn't expect a con man to have any consideration of their actions i mean he was kind of cold and calculating in that in that process so there's that kind of emotional cruelty but there's clearly the very serious matter of him being in a position where potentially someone could have died because he could have made the wrong diagnosis or performed the wrong emergency operation i mean to tell the parents of a child that they're going to live only to find out a short while later that that's just not true is is treating people's emotions with such disdain it's horrible [Music] after causing this devastation on heart ache paul bint was briefly held at a psychiatric hospital in yorkshire but once released in 1993 he headed to lancashire england and walked into the royal preston hospital ready to continue his compulsive surgical scam [Music] preston general hospital he offered to act as an anaesthetist and with one case so again very serious life-threatening [Music] decisions that he was making in the instance when i dealt with him at royal preston hospital which was actually on boxing day of 1993 he'd gone to royal preston hospital and claimed he was a locum covering for the surgical registrar he knows the layout of hospitals he went to the telephonics room he obtained the surgical registrar's pager and had all his calls diverted to to himself one of the great dangers with this was that the surgical registrar was on the major incident team so if over that christmas new year period there had been a major incident obviously he wouldn't have been able to be contacted because paul bent had the pager when paul bint was playing the role of dr vince he would have been very deeply immersed in his fantasy life and so actually the people who he was applying treatment to to him would just be like extras in a tv production and there would just be tools for him really to act out his fantasies he probably didn't see them as real people at all i believe that his basic multi for entering hospitals was to steal he would go in knowing that there were good pickings if he could get into the consultant surgeons changing rooms near to the operating theatres and then would steal wallets containing credit cards and then he would use those credit cards to obtain money to live off for some time i view paul bint as a compensatory narcissist so what that means is that the reality of himself is so inadequate that he wants to escape from that so he retreats into a fantasy world he'll be preoccupied with fantasies of himself as brilliant as successful as confident and everything that he would wish to be but it's also got to be about control and about power and potentially also always lead you to the women by posing as a doctor he often would meet people in that environment that he would then form relationships with a woman he was seeing in preston england began to see through his white coat and stethoscope he spoke so often about his work at royal preston his work as a doctor it was basically his sole topic of conversation and if they were out socially continually referred to the fact he was a doctor because he was in her company for a few weeks she eventually thought that this just cannot be genuine she was an intelligent girl and and her mother as well began to feel that there was something not right about paul vince the woman contacted the police and the truth unfolded but even in custody poor bint's lies kept coming unarrested given false details it indicated it was dr david watkin who whose details he'd obtained from a walleted stolen from leicester oil in infirmary he went through an interview claiming to be this person and then we indicated near the end of the interview that we knew where we was from his fingerprint records that we knew he was poor bent and we knew his past record he then wanted to be my best friend because he wanted bail he wanted to get out again and there was no realistic hope of him getting bail because it was obvious that he'd re-offend and he dubscond paul bint was refused bail and when he faced trial in october 1994 was once again sent to prison this time for five years however michael tomine put into action a plan that was intended to prevent paul bint ever repeating his hospital scam in the future [Music] on his release in 1996 i arranged through the health service to have an early warning system when paul was released from prison i informed all the hospitals nationally and we did a circulation to all police forces uh informing people that he was out and about and i understand that that system still continues to this day but why does paul bint continue to revert to his surgical scam when exploring his past there are clues to help uncover and understand why bint fixates upon and relentlessly targets hospitals in his cons his reason was that he says that he when he was the age of 12 he went into hospital to have an appendix operation he says because of his parents splitting up and because of a difficult family background he says it was the first time that he'd experienced unconditional care and love and a kind of safe environment i think that is the point where this session started and he seems to have made no secret of that by saying the incident of him having his appendix out that was clearly a catalyst for his behavior in the future it is possible that when paul went to hospital and had his appendix out that the treatment he received from hospital staff was the best treatment that he'd actually had as a child so far so that's very sad and that tells you where the roots of his fantasy life started but of course that's not a whole explanation for his behavior his behavior is complex and it's bizarre and it's probably wrong to try and explain a whole lifetime of pathological behavior with one incident like that but it does give us a clue i think as his motivations which is that he obviously associated being a doctor and being in that medical environment with a lot of things that were positive attributions for him so he obviously felt kind of happy and safe and cared for in the hospital environment and then later on by posing a doctor he could presumably get all those things you get when you put on a white coat respect admiration people listening to you people paying attention to you so you can see how that would drive him for reasons of escape and control i think from a very early age he pretended to be other people and found that that was a way of wiping those kind of problems clean and so by claiming that he was actually helping people he's trying to justify his own actions um in a pretty feeble way but you know his psychology in that sense is pretty feeble so he's able to convince himself i mean one of his former girlfriends said to me that uh the thing about paul bin is he's never come to terms with his own ordinariness by 1996 paul bint was once again out of prison and his compulsion to live out his conran fantasies were stronger than ever this time the serial confidence trickster had a new destination and target in mind he was heading north to scotland and i looked out and he was gone and the car was gone because i thought that's a bit odd because i still had the car keys since the early eighties paul binter spent time in and out of prison over 25 years he has made a career of adopting aliases to dupe the public on an eclectic and extraordinary collection of levels but his primary focus has always been infiltrating hospitals and posing as doctors administering dangerous life-threatening treatments and stealing from the staff and patients [Music] by putting on that identity maybe in his own twitter psychology he was somehow short cutting straight to all those attributes that he valued so much you know respect status without actually having to work for it after serving time for the northwest of england's surgical scam it wasn't long before paul bint once again set to work conning and his legacy of cons are not always of the medical variety by 2000 paul bint was in court after tricking rail chiefs into putting him up in a luxury hotel in edinburgh scotland after posing as lachlan campbell biryan the qc involved in the lockerbie bombing trial and this would not be the last time he would pose as an esteemed lawyer however upon release paul bint returned to scotland and the cons continued in 2001 he was passing himself off as a millionaire property magnate bent under another alias made an appointment at a luxury car dealership and appeared to be in the market to acquire a sporty number he introduced himself as paul blenheim says he was a property agent or a property dealer he was in glasgow that day looking at our nightclub in a city centre that was for sale and had actually seen the cars advertised here so he made a phone call to us he was masquerading as a as a wealthy millionaire not a famous named person but somebody with a great deal of money and he had the air to carry it off and indeed the expensive clothes well he was very well dressed and his mannerism was like well educated well spoken for english spoken just like an educated businessman his mo his modus operandi is to it's the first of all look the part so he'd have on his 3 000 versace suit which obviously turns out to be a jumble sales suit he'd carry a copy of the ft he'd have a state-of-the-art mobile phone and organizer and blackberry or whatever he said that he was um you shouldn't really laugh i guess although there is a kind of comical side to it um he he said he owned a hotel in mauritius i think a nightclub in london he had property in edinburgh in london um and on the face of it i guess you look like a kind of cast-iron prospect you imagine the kind of pound signs registering in the salesman's eyes he says he was the market for a very expensive sports car so we looked at a few and asked if we could take a test drive in a ferrari he would drop into the conversation various information that he gathered about the cars because i mean it's true that he has driven a number of porsches and bentleys and aston martins in the past so he has actually got some experience of driving obviously not at all in a legal way mostly through having stolen them common quite often use elements of truth in their lives because it's so much easier to make yourself believe that you're telling the truth if some of what you're saying is actually the truth so i took on my test drive in the ferrari it was maybe just a wee bit too sporty noisy for him so he decided to suit his image he would go for the aston martin because it was more as you would see a gentleman's sports car [Music] normally a customer wants to drive a car to see the light you feel a bit so because i'd rover ferrari i just took him out and just let him drive they asked martin and i was in the passenger seat then he decided basically he was going to buy the car made a few phone calls organized with his bank to pick up a bank draft with everything appearing above board ross campbell and his customer mr blenheim aka paul bint had time to kill until the bankers draft will be cleared and the sale completed so we stopped for lunch so i said well this bob here is just open we went there and he parked the car i took the key and locked the car then went into probably right away he was using his phone soldered up a couple of drinks and sandwiches and he says i'm just going to pop out to use my phone they thought he'd popped out for a moment to make a phone call he in fact popped out and stole the car and off he went filled it up with petrol and didn't even pay for that the drinks arrived the sandwich has arrived so i thought i'll just see where he has got my shot and i looked out and he was gone and the car was gone which i thought that's a bit odd because i still had the car keys conned and carlos it had all been lies there was no bank draft and now there was no car unbeknownst to ross campbell mint had surreptitiously pocketed the spare keys to the aston martin back at the showroom when he was viewing the car's service history file he had struck again all ross campbell could do was wait and see if the 55 000 pound sports car would ever be seen again the aston martin was recovered um four days later um he had 900 miles on the clock i think he'd used it uh to drive around various girlfriends that he was duping at the time and he'd managed to do 15 000 pounds worth of damage then when the cid came to interview me then they basically took a description showed me photographs then told me basically this chap is a corn man he's got a lot of convictions he's one of britain's most wanted corn men in a developing pattern the police again caught up with bint and he found himself back behind bars but on his release from prison in 2002 paul bent lost little time in getting started on his next scam a scam that shrewdly drew together many of the key elements of his past crimes creating his most comprehensive con yet he was released on the 11th of december he's in london by the 12th of december and he's certainly a man who just cannot stop people who are compulsive liars are very difficult to treat psychologists say that you know quite often they think they're normal it's everyone else that's not quite right and once again hospitals were on the agenda although this time he wasn't masquerading as a doctor this time he was a patient like in 2000 paul bint was once again presenting himself as a high-profile british barrister this time he was claiming to be orlando pound or qc he was impersonating orlando pam on queen's council who is an eminent lawyer a name probably well known um to to a number of people he had prosecuted the case involving the murder of gildando the defendant barry george he was also involved around the time in a high-profile murder case of danielle jones which was up in chelmsford someone like orlando pound all the qc and the gildando murder trial would have been in the public eye at the time this was going on he'd been in the papers and paul bint would have seen his name and seen him as a character that people were reading about and that's probably why he picked up on his identity and used it released from prison in scotland just two days earlier paul bint had a new alias and with new identity came a convincing and inspired backstory to execute his most ambitious scam yet what he did do was arrive in london with no money as far as we're aware and nowhere to stay and so he did attend local hospitals three in total he gave the same story at all three that he was orlando powell qc he had crashed his aston martin he believed that he had received internal injuries he was in pain and he then submitted himself to certain hospital tests although he did indicate he was allergic to iodine which i understand meant that certain tests couldn't be carried out of the tests that were carried out in his urine was a concerning amount of blood sufficient for the doctors to want to keep him in for observation for some time and i had no doubt that that blood was was put in by him he had not been in a car accident he had got off the train like many of vince audacious cons of the past this continued to feed his ego and his bizarre fantasy life well he would give a medical history and he just can't resist adding exciting bits and part of the medical history on one of his notes um one of his sets of hospital notes that i saw was that he indicated that he had some shrapnel um as a result of being involved or being involved in the the hyde park bombings simply part of his medical history but but something of nothing's ever straightforward with him at all someone who becomes a walter mitty type character actually takes on the persona of that character and almost completely believes themselves to be that person and this con combined elements of his most notorious scams he has a love of fast cars none of which ever belonged to him legitimately but it's something that certainly he had stolen when he was masquerading as a millionaire up in scotland the irony is that he comes down to london and professes to have crushed one and uses that in his scam right from the outset the fact that he'd actually been arrested for stealing an aston martin using that in the story when he pretended to be orlando powell allowed him to to create a much more effective and plausible lie because some of it was in fact true he'd been in an aston martin [Music] the trappings like the aston martin or a smart suit they are absolutely essential to cons particularly the type of con that he was trying to pull and in compilots that's called pudding on the dog which is basically where you act apart and that's based on um some very important victim psychology so if you're trying to pretend to be rich for instance but you don't look rich you don't look wealthy you don't look sophisticated then the people you're trying to harden up with will automatically suspect you and they'll have an instant barrier of mistrust but that works against them because they think they're protected against people trying to rip them off for instance because they think they can spot those people but they not they automatically are more likely to accept people that seem like them that seem well to do that that have a convincing air about [Music] them clearly it wasn't enough for him just to sort of try and pretend to be these people he needed those extra trappings the fast cars and the girlfriends and the nice houses he needed all that other stuff as well to bolster his feeling of being powerful there is some continuity between his stories in that he may adapt a theme and continue it certainly in this case it was interrupted by some years in prison between the two instances straight out of prison paul binted found a unique way to cope with the fact he didn't have a bed of his own to sleep in and that bed ensured he had constant care and attention well in the hospital he's taking a bed away from another patient but he is being he has a roof over his head a nice warm roof over the christmas period he has dinner bed and breakfast and he has somebody somebody's as far as the nurses and doctors are concerned who in effect cater to his every need [Music] con artists a lot of what drives them is they do get a thrill out of proving to themselves somehow that they're cut above the the common herd and that they're a step ahead and that they're you know that they're that they put one over on you um and i suspect that paul bin probably did get a big thrill out of that and that's probably part of what motivates him because i think it's part of what motivates a lot of con artists so it's all about having put one over on someone and proving that you are smarter and faster and better than they are settled into university college hospital london england paul bint knew his scam had a shelf life so from his sick bed he spotted a female doctor who was to become his next unsuspecting victim his charm offensive began and she believed his lies he was orlando pound or qc they met an exchange number so i understand whilst on hospital premises but she didn't and wasn't involved in his treatment at all and contact was made by him after he had left the hospital and as i understand it they met up and she um he indicated that there was a problem with his accommodation he said his father lived in millionaire's row and but for some reason that he couldn't stay there and he persuaded her to to use a room which is what he did just used a room in her house for a short period of time but that gave him access to her belongings her money and such like and bint took advantage of her generosity he took the laptop computer he took checks he took money both from her person indeed by apparently borrowing it and of course never never returning it and more than one credit card all of which were used to buy in the main extremely expensive suits he would fully clothe himself in top designer where but it wasn't long before she became suspicious they went to a party and he didn't even have any money on him he'd have forgotten his wallet and so he'd ask just to borrow some money from her and it became increasingly apparent over those and it was a very few days that this was a man who said a lot but did very little and she also caught him going through items of hers at home and became increasingly suspicious about that and that resulted in her finally asking him to leave on christmas eve it was shortly after she had asked him to leave that the trusting female doctor heard some spine chilling news that orlando panel qc was actually on holiday in barbados with his family and the man she had been sharing her home with was in fact an imposter she immediately called the police orlando panel queen's council was not in the country at the time in fact he was overseas on holiday with his family so once that was discovered the police were notified and the police were in an incredibly short period of time linked it immediately to being mr bend once more the hunt for poor bent king khan was on [Applause] paul bint has been working as a con man for over 25 years adopting many aliases there is a recurring theme in vince conrad career whether posing as a doctor or a patient he seems obsessed with hospitals but are his actions those of an opportunist con man someone who is clinically ill or is he suffering from some sort of psychological disorder such as munchausen syndrome whereby the subject tries to get attention by feigning illness in bin's case experts believe his motivations are much more complicated part of the psychology of munch health and syndrome sufferers is that they're really seeking attention they're willing to go through painful or invasive medical procedures if it means they can be the center of attention and you can see the same psychology at work in bin's case in that he relished the attention munch housing syndrome is a label that you could apply to paul bint this is when people contrive symptoms of physical illness so that they can receive care and attention but also paul was willing to play the role of doctor not just the role of patient so it seems to me that the important thing is access to this environment where he can play out his fantasies and so i would think that maybe a label that's best applied to him would be narcissist narcissists are people who are very preoccupied with fantasies of themselves as somebody who's special who has power and importance and status and receives special attention in 2002 two weeks after being released from prison in scotland for stealing an aston martin mint was touring hospitals in london england this time as a patient instead of a doctor he was posing as eminent qc orlando powell claiming he had crashed his fictitious ass to martin and now had internal injuries after successfully using the scam to get free bed and board at university college hospital london england paul bent conned a female doctor into letting him stay with her after she discovered he'd been sitting from her she asked him to leave she then discovered he was not who he claimed to be and she told the police unaware the police were again hunting for him paul bint was once again homeless and pulled his scam again this time audaciously turning up at hemel hempstead hospital near london by ambulance christmas eve he's homeless again and he attends another hospital at hemel hempstead he as i recall arrived by ambulance on that particular occasion so how he did that i don't know but once he arrived it was the same story eminent qc aston martin internal injuries blood in the urine oblivious that the police had been alerted to his crimes and were looking for him paul bint continued to go about his business using hospitals as his hunting ground money went missing from patients the gentleman in the bed next to him lost some money so did mr bint mr bin lost i think three or four times the amount of money apparently mr bint blamed the staff in the hospital um so money was clearly obtained and the gentleman in the bed next door his daughter was taken in by mr bint if someone really targets you and gets to know you very well and manipulates you to a large degree and you're a basically trustful person it's very difficult not to be conned paul bint was discharged from hamel hampstead near london england but with nowhere to stay headed to a third hospital with exactly the same story when he was released from that hospital he went to the whittington hospital and did the same story again and he stayed in the whittington hospital up until new year's eve whilst he's there he and this is the one of the not so nice sides of mr ben's character he steals a credit card from a man who was dying is now dead mr lewis in the adjoining bed and uses that to wine and dine the female that he met um in the second hospital he's reasonably good looking though again you look closely he kind of dyes his hair and he's certainly not as young as he claims that he is but you know if he comes in in the flash suit and he's he's often got a wallet full of money i think when i was spending time with him in edinburgh he was carrying around 2 000 pounds worth of cash so perhaps superficially you can see why it might fool some people it might look the kind of part and you might believe who he is and you might think well here's an interesting individual with lots of money you can show me a good time you're also taking advantage of what in psychology called the halo effect which is if you come across well if because you're good-looking or because you're charming or or personable or whatever you're more likely to be attributed with characteristics that you don't have such as trustworthiness or intelligence he preys on certain people either by flattery or by taking advantage of them for example with the woman that he took away for the night with the stolen credit card her father had been admitted to hospital after a serious emergency on christmas eve and she clearly was not herself when she met this man who was larger than life could look at it that he gets a certain amount of financial sexual and kind of status validation from doing it i mean by pretending to be a leading barrister or a ballet dancer or whoever he clearly um enjoys the way people respond to that money isn't always the only motive i think sometimes it's the emotional bolstering to feel important and uh and clever and to be admired by others that is often the payback for these lies on the second of january just over three weeks after his release from prison and a hat-trick of hospitals later the police once again caught up with paul bint by playing on one of his key weaknesses women while in hospital binter pursued a woman who had spurned his advances which he agreed to help the police and arranged a date with the con man only their romantic evening would be crashed by the constabulary as i understand it it was a range that one of the women who he had been trying to take out who had refused him in fact contacted him and she encouraged the future meeting which the police attended when he was arrested paul bint as a con man is actually not that effective he's been caught almost every time he's done anything to try and get money or property what he's successfully achieved is to create personas for himself to give himself moments in time where he can be respected and loved by other people so he's a fantasist and in that respect he's been successful but as a con man he's a bit of a disaster in october 2003 paul bint pleaded guilty to charges including theft and attaining properties by deception the judge said to bint you have caused anguish embarrassment loss and difficulty to your victims the judge also said a psychiatric report had concluded that bint suffered from a currently untreatable psychopathic disorder and so his case would not be dealt with under the mental health act paul bint was sentenced to four years and four months in prison paul bint has obviously created something like 25 different aliases different personas of his own personality um and it is you have to wonder whether he still knows who paul bent and whether paul bent exists today or is still that little boy in the hospital bed having his appendix out poor bint's con man career creates a fascinating case file not simply because of the audacity and perseverance he has exhibited because of the way he seems to thrive on his notoriety unlike other con men who by definition attempt to live anonymously bint has courted the press and even been interviewed by glossy magazines i'm sure paul bint does enjoy people writing about him and the attention that he gets from being a con artist people tend to view con artists as chances as rogues rather than actually the criminals that they are and so this would probably be quite an attractive identity for a man who has a very fragile sense of himself in the kind of the the colorful annals of of british criminal history he certainly stands out he was dubbed by the police at one time king kong and because the tabloids have written about him as britain's cruelest con man paul bint has committed over 100 offenses appeared in court over 20 times and spent almost a decade of his 25-year con man career in custody now released our fierce poor bent will never stop i wouldn't be at all surprised if paul been re-offended on release the way that he's unable to go straight if you like for even a day is quite telling but hon artists often find it hard to go straight because they're just not used to doing anything else what could paul bin have done for a real job would he have been equipped for a normal life he probably felt not i personally don't think he will have learned anything i don't think he'll even have learnt from his mistakes i think he'll do it again and i think he'll be caught again as much as you might think he's lovable rome as much as there's been some humorous things written about him about him being this walter mitty character there's a very dangerous and sinister side to him and the safest place for paul bend quite frankly is in jail

Channel: Real Crime

Views: 281,131

Keywords: crime documentary channel, true crime, real crime, true crime documentary, TV Shows - Topic, hd documentary, channel 4, hd crime documentary, documentary movies - topic, full length documentary 2022, murder documentary, true crime documentary usa, real crime channel, best documentaries on youtube, full documentary 2022, conviction, con man documentary, con man documentary uk, crime documentary, conman, scam, con man, health scams, health scammer, fake doctor, Paul Bint

Id: U8BeUWWKsNM

Length: 49min 4sec (2944 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 12 2022