A serial conman repeatedly jailed for pretending to do charity parachute jumps has been spared a fifth prison term after claims his crimes were a ‘cry for help.’
Mark Maskell, 26, has conned hundreds of people by asking them to sponsor him to raise money for a homeless charity in Stockport.
He has already been jailed four times for the scam.
But when the hoaxer appeared in court yet again a judge decided to give him a community punishment - a decision slammed by the Wellspring homeless charity whose name Maskell used.
Boss Jonathon Billings said: "I have no doubt at all that he will re-offend. I feel very disappointed in him being given a lenient sentence.
"The Wellspring is all for Mark turning his life around and we very much hope that he is able to do that.
"Maybe if he gets a good job he could pay us back the hundreds – if not thousands – of pounds he’s stolen from the people of Stockport.
Maskell has never completed a parachute jump and the charity has never received a penny.
He was jailed for four months in 2006, given another four-month sentence in 2007 and received a 16-month prison term in 2008.
In February this year he was jailed for another four-months – nut just days after his release in April he resumed the scam.
Maskell of Culver Road, Adswood, even knocked on doors of people he had conned before in Heaton Moor and Heaton Chapel, asking for sponsorship.
Maskell admitted fraud at Stockport magistrates’ court.
The case was sent to Manchester’s Minshull Street Crown Court for sentencing because magistrates considered the crime might warrant a sentence greater than the maximum they can give out.
But judge Adrian Smith adjourned the case for two weeks to send Maskell on a drugs rehabilitation course to address his heroin addiction.
And when the case came back, he imposed a 12-month community order, with 12 months’ supervision and six months’ drugs rehabilitation.
The court heard Maskell has been clean of heroin and was starting a course at Stockport College.
Judge Smith said he had taken a ‘gamble’ in Maskell, but it had paid off.
David Morton, defending, said: "This was an absolute cry for help, a desperate man who had been released from custody a few days before.
"He knew he had been to these two addresses and felt this would be a way he would be arrested and sent into custody.
"Then he could hope to persuade the probation service to give him some assistance."
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I give up, this convicted conman has now conned the judge. Jail him if only to protect the public.
perhaps the judge can have this sad baghead re-homed on his street.......get the lowlife locked up for 10 years.........back on the heroin and up to no good is a dead cert
My first thought was 'unbelievable' but then again.................Is there really any point in doing an honest, hard days graft any anymore. I'm at my wits end with too much month left at the end of my pay cheque. Yet people like this appear to roam free and see Courts as an 'occupational hazzard. I give up.
If this is a cry for help, then this idiot must spend all of his time crying!! .... Five times!!! .... well if this was a cry for help, why didn't the judge order him to be detained to a secure psychiatric facility indefinitely where he could get the 'help' he needs without conning decent folk out of their hard earned, and shooting it all up his arm? ...
Err his occupation is conman, how are our judges chosen and can they even tie their own shoe laces ?
Well at least he isnt a random violent offender.
I'm all for giving people a second chance but this joker has had chance after chance and has abused it every time.
What world is the judge living in that he really believes this scum will turn his life around?!
Another unbelievable case,of course he will re offend again judging on his past, a cry for help? RUBBISH.
Of course he will re offend and as a serial recidivist the judge knows that, and that the next time he's in court there will be another round of fat fees for the lawyers again.
Nothing to do with justice, and everything to do with money grubbing.
He is 26 now and heroin addiction can be a short lived life. So I would say that he better get the bull by the horns and move on to a better life. The courts won't stay lenient forever and if there is a next time it could be a biggie.
take him up to 30,000 feet and push the piece of vermin out with no parachute, end of problem and cheating people out of money.
Our legal system in britain fails on all points ,yesterday a footballer was cautioned for fraud? (paying somebody to sit his driving test) that was joke one and now we have this scum walking free because we have judges and magistrates that cannot do the job that ""WE"" pay them to do.(protect the general public from criminals) its time that we had real laws and real lawmakers to do the job we pay them to do.....
Judge is as green as grass to give him yet another chance. It would be nice to think this conman could turn his life around but what's the odds that we'll be reading about another scam by him in the near future?
Sounds like the Judge has given up, four times in prison doesn't seem to have worked, so what's the point in sending him in again. Let him do his parachute jump, ok let him have a chute, but it'll scare him enough to try another scam , which he certainly will.
I've just come off a 13 hour night shift, then I read about this serial re offender coming up with some sob story that judicial system has taken in. I give it 4 months before he relapses,..again.
Cry for help? Why not just cry help save a load of problems?
SACK THE JUDGE he is obviously not living in the real world
FFS
Give him 5 years - that'll make him cry, and if he reoffends double it for the next time
Whilst I'm not going to join the usual pitch forks and torches mob (alla Castle Frankenstein) that usually call for all manner of medieval punishments on this forum, I have to say I can understand why they get so angry about this stuff. This country is going to, if it's not already there, the dogs. What a ridiculous situation, "a cry for help" my backside! The guy should be locked up and made to work whilst he's in there i.e. sowing mailbags or whatever. Any wages he gets paid for the work should then be deposited every month with the charity he ripped off until he's earned enough to cover what he's stolen from well meaning people by preying on their feelings of wanting to help others. In fact compound interest should be added to the total sum as if it was a bank loan. So if he conned people out of £3k then he should have to work in the slammer until he's earned £4k to give to the charity. But then again, are any of us really surprised by this? Seeing as though the people who hand down these 'sentences' have probably never been the victims of any major crime at all in their lives.
It's a bad lesson for kids but it is the one they will end up learning:
Whether you come from rich background or a poor one.....crime pays, and quite handsomely too!
Welcome to the Bizzarro world aka planet Earth. Where the criminals are treated like victims and the victims are treated like criminals. I'd find it highly amusing, if I didn't have to live here as well.
A cry for help? Sounds more like a cry for money to me ! It`s the decent people, like one poster on here, whose money isn`t enough to last a month till next payday who deserve help, not crooks.My Dad fought in the First World War, was in the trenches, brought up five of us and lost a son at age 3, did two jobs to make ends meet for years. Funny, I never heard him crying for help ! He had too mucn pride to stoop to crime.
All decent people were they to cry for help would be ignored.
Make him do the parachute jump as his community service, Without the parachute but with a noose around his neck just to stop him landing on some unlucky passer by
The Vermin Slayer, Everywhere (05/06/2010 at 10:07)
Who do you want jailed...the offender or the judge???Perhaps both!!!
i think there are more important issues in life right now .. i agree what he did was wrong but we do not know him, we only know what we read of him.. for people to say 'push the vermin 30,000 feet off a cliff' is harsh.. he has not killed, raped or tortured..
maybe he has had chance after chance but who are we to judge him..
Some of these magistrates are so far out to lunch, they have lost touch with reality! what a joke, not even a suspended sentence! How long before the jerk is at it again! His defence council should join him ib the jug. Rock on Mr Morton!
They should make him do the parachute jump - WITHOUT THE PARACHUTE!
HEEELLLP!!!!!
A public cry for help!
Can we please have some judges with the wit to pass realistic sentences?