A Perthshire conman likened to Leonardo Di Caprio’s character in the film Catch Me If You Can has been jailed for eight months for cheating hotels and rail firms.
Reece Scobie, 20, from Rait, between Dundee and Perth, admitted a number of fraud charges at Southwark Crown Court.
He is currently serving a 16-month sentence imposed at Perth Sheriff Court for similar offences.
Judge John Price told Scobie, who has Asperger’s Syndrome and obsessive compulsive disorder: “If you don’t learn now, you never will.”
Scobie admitted three charges of fraud, two of possessing articles for use in fraud and four of unlawful interception of emails.
He also admitted an additional count of fraud by false representation and a single count of possessing an article for use in fraud.
The court heard how he used popular websites to obtain customer card details, intercepting online bookings as they were sent out to hotels and venues.
Prosecutor Miranda Jollie told the court: “These were online frauds. They would find compromised credit cards and use them for high-value train tickets.
“The companies involved notified the British Transport Police.”
She said the police were able to track him down because he was using a council internet account at a library to make the transactions.
He was also picked up on CCTV collecting the tickets.
Ms Jollie said: “What he was doing was hacking into the emails sent from booking websites to hotels and taking the customer details and using these to make purchases of tickets. On one occasion, he had
made a complaint about a delay and had been awarded compensation.”
When officers searched Scobie, they found scores of train booking confirmations and “details of fraudulent credit cards”.
However, rather than selling the tickets for profit, Scobie retained them until they expired, which was a symptom of his Asperger’s, said Kieran Moroney, defending.
He said: “This was planned but not professionally planned. Many of the tickets were duplicates, many of them were expired.”
Judge Price jailed him for eight months to be served consecutive to his current prison term in Scotland, which is due to be completed in June.