In
a strange twist in the tale of notorious conman Kenner Elias Jones,
he is now being sought not by police but by his first wife who
divorced him many years ago.
Having
been deported from Canada and the United States, Ken Jones has
managed to outwit police forces across Europe, including Portugal,
while on the run and continuing his life of fantasy and fraud.
As
exposed in the past by the BBC and in this blog, Jones has had a
prolific criminal career spanning more than 40 years in which he has
chalked up more than 60 convictions and plenty of imprisonments.
A
highly intelligent and likeable Welshman, his skills are such that a senior American immigration officer who described him as “the
best conman I have ever encountered in my entire career.”
An
arrest warrant was issued in Britain in 2003 when he failed to turn
up for a trial. Since then, police in the UK and countries in
mainland Europe have been informed from time to time about his
whereabouts and various alleged fraudulent activities, but they have taken no action
against him.
His
first wife, a Canadian, is not aiming to have him arrested; she wants
to return some of his personal belongings and talk to him about a
book she is writing. Donna Lee Mackenzie, a former TV journalist, has
been trying without success to locate Jones via the internet.
He
was last reported in Sweden, posing as a doctor and a priest, seeking
political asylum as a refugee from Kenya.
The
BBC reported that after fleeing from the UK twelve years ago, Jones spent
seven years in Kenya pretending to be a doctor and a priest,
although he had no qualifications in either of these fields. He is
believed to be still married to his third wife, a Kenyan living in
her homeland.
Jones
set up a charity in Kenya called Luke's Fund, but left Africa in 2010
with unpaid debts of over $100,000. A warrant for his arrest exists
in Kenya as well the UK, but not in mainland Europe.
He
turned up in Portugal in 2011. A property agent in the town of
Palmela, south of Lisbon, said Jones expressed interest in buying a
house in the €400,000 to €600,000 price range. The property agent
said Jones conned him into ‘lending’ hundreds of euros by
claiming he needed the money urgently for medicine and other vital
expenses, but that his foreign credit card was not compatible with
the Portuguese system.
A
Palmela travel agent said she handed over air tickets worth €2,500
on the understanding that Jones was transferring money from an
overseas bank account so that his Kenyan wife and two adopted
children could fly from Nairobi to Lisbon.
On
realising she had been defrauded, the travel agent reported Jones to
the criminal investigation police (PJ), but she never got paid for
the tickets. The Cáritas charitable organisation in Sétubal
is said to have paid for the Kenyan wife and adopted children to fly
back to Nairobi at the end of their Portugal visit.
Jones’
next stop was in southeastern Spain where this picture was taken. His
alleged behaviour included running up an unpaid bill of some €26,000
for a six-week stay and unnecessary medical tests in a district
hospital.
In
2013 he turned up in Sweden. In a statement to the BBC in April this
year police in Sweden confirmed they had received information about
Ken Jones, but that it did not form the basis for investigating any
suspected crimes he had committed in the country. The statement added
that Jones was the subject of a police investigation in the UK, but
because the police in Britain had not issued a European arrest
warrant, they could not intervene.
We
can now reveal that it was his estranged wife Donna Lee Mackenzie who
posted a comment on Portugal Newswatch last month saying: “As
someone who knew Kenner very well many years ago, I have some
personal items I would like to return to him. Does anyone know how I
could contact him to arrange this? I will keep any such
information confidential. If you can help, please reply
to doncalonlan@gmail.com”.
