A serial conman was jailed yesterday for swindling thousands of pounds from vulnerable women he met through internet dating sites.

John Keady posed as a successful businessman, world- class kayaker and international yachtsman to lure victims into his web of lies.

He targeted professional women aged in their 30s and 40s and went through the pretence of house-hunting as he took them to view huge homes costing several million pounds.

He used different aliases to meet women through Facebook, dating sites, dating agencies and newspaper adverts and would be in several relationships at once.

Keady, 44, even conned his adoptive mother out of almost £100,000 by applying for and using credit cards and loans in her name.

He persuaded his internet girlfriends to lend him money through bizarre stories, including claiming that friends were trapped on a mountain in the Himalayas and he needed to raise £11,000 to organise a rescue.

Detectives believe there may be many more women all over Britain who are too embarrassed to come forward and have appealed for further victims to contact them.

He was charged with offences totalling £80,000 but police believe the true amounts are several times higher.

Keady called himself Icarus Boy on the dating website PlentyofFish.com, named after the mythological character who flew too close to the sun.

He was brought down to earth yesterday when Judge Christopher Elwyn jailed him for a total of five years and three months.

Keady had even tried conning the judge, sending him a letter claiming he was a decorated lifeboat hero when in reality he had only been out on routine rescues.

Keady, from Callington, Cornwall, admitted three deceptions, five thefts and 11 frauds at Truro Crown Court.

Judge Elwyn told him: "It strikes me that the prospects of you ever leading an honest life are nil. Lies are woven into the fabric of your being.

"I don't believe your expressions of remorse and regret. They are all part of a pattern of lying and deceit which is the hallmark of your life.

"You constructed an elaborate web of false stories and obtained substantial sums of money to support yourself. There was nothing impulsive about what you did. It was mean and calculated.

"The distress, unhappiness, anxiety and depression caused to the victims was palpable and has left them burdened with debts.

"Your campaign of cruel, mean and underhand deceit spread from Hampshire across the South coast down to the South West peninsula.

"The aggravating features are significant breach of trust of a number of vulnerable victims spread over a significant period of time and the lasting effect of your offending on the victims."

Philip Lee, prosecuting, said there were eight victims, including Keady's 75-year-old mother Elizabeth Berry, who lost over £80,000.

Keady, who has one previous conviction for deception, was exposed in the media in 2001 after swindling a woman in Cornwall. He escaped prosecution and three years later started conning women again.

He befriended Mabel Arnill, aged 35, at a canoe club at Saltash, Cornwall, and then conned her out of cash, claiming he was organising a rescue in the Himalayas. He went on to spend £4,700 on her credit card after learning the details from her.

He met several other victims from the PlentyofFish website and told them he had businesses or homes in Scotland, France or Cornwall. He hacked into one of their bank accounts after obtaining their date of birth by claiming to be preparing an astrological chart. In every case he ran up credit card bill or took out loans without the victims knowing it, and many are still thousands of pounds in debt.

Keady was caught when one victim, divorcee Sara Terry, 42, from Hampshire, met him on an internet dating site and was later conned out of £35,000.

She said Berry first sent her a message on a dating website, and after exchanging emails she thought she had found her perfect match.

Keady said he shared her love of labradors and was full of ''charm, wit, impeccable manners and soft green-blue eyes" which "melted her heart".

She also said he told her he loved sailing and horse riding and she had expected someone "sport" but when he arrived he looked like the cartoon character Shrek.

She said: ''I joined a dating site called Fitness Singles in 2008. Pete emailed that he was 40 – he was actually three years older – a very successful business consultant and interested in the same sports as me.

''He was 6ft 2in, weighed about 20 stone and looked like the cartoon character Shrek. But we had so much to talk about, and he was so interested in me that, to my surprise, I found him very attractive."

Sara said he gained her trust and after he moved in he proposed in December 2008 – and then borrowed her credit card to buy himself a ''Christmas present'' while she was away.

But she later discovered he had used the card to take out an annual subscription to Zoosk, another online dating site. She said: ''He also managed to work out details of my two bank accounts. He phoned the bank while I was away, pretending to be me, and put up my credit limit.

''Because I use direct debit as much as possible, I wasn't in the habit of checking my bank statements, something I now realise was quite wrong.

''He also took out a loan application to the bank for £15,000 without me knowing. Now I'm paying £400 a month for 47 weeks."

In 2009 her purse and credit cards went missing and she became suspicious and rang to check the balance on her current accounts and credit cards. She said: ''I was told that each of my two bank accounts was about £1,000 overdrawn and that I owed about £9,000 on my credit cards."

Sara immediately called police and contacted all of Keady's friends on Facebook.

She said: ''I told them what had happened and arranged to call 999 when he next showed up. When he did, they came to arrest him and all he said when they marched him off was to ask me to look after his dog."

The only male victim was a photographer who Keady conned out of £8,500 claiming he knew of a sure-fire, high return business opportunity in France. Keady continued tricking women even after he was arrested and bailed and got engaged to a fresh internet girlfriend on New Year's Eve last year, just days after he met her.

Barrie van den Berg, defending, said Keady had been diagnosed with dissocial personality disorder, which caused his behaviour.

After the case, three of the victims who sat in court said they were pleased with the sentence, but all warned he would try the same thing again when he is released.

Mother-of-three Sara Terry said: "I am pleased with the sentence but it does not make things better for me personally. I'm glad he wasn't able to pull the wool over the judge's eyes.

"At least this protects other people for some time but there is no question he will do it again."

Laura Hudson, 35, from Southampton, said she was left so distressed by her experience she lost her job.

She is also an aspiring opera singer and said her attempts to launch her career had also suffered.

She said: "I knew he was still active on the web after I reported him to the police. I tried to get them to take him off but they didn't.

"I feel sorry for all the other people out there who have been hurt. Thank God he has been sent to jail and the judge wasn't conned.

"He is very clever. When I met him he claimed to have a PhD and he did just enough research to spin the web. If he applied his mind to anything honest, he would be very talented.

"He is a professional conman who will say whatever he needs to get whatever he wants. It has cost me my job because I lost focus for a month as a result of what he did to me and so my contract was not renewed.

"At the time I had just moved to Southampton for my work and I didn't know anyone, which was why I was vulnerable to him."

Plymouth City Council manager Mabel Arnill, 34, said: "I was the person who set the ball rolling with the first complaint to the police.

"I will never forget him being at my house on Boxing Day and suddenly getting very agitated over this e-mail which claimed his friends were stranded on a mountain in the Himalayas.

"I think there must be more women out there who are too embarrassed to come forward. When I told him I was going to the police he said it would look bad for me as a professional woman."

After the case Detective Constable Rachel Stewart said: "Without a shadow of a doubt, we expect to hear from more victims."

I was the nail in his coffin: Mabel

THE woman whose evidence helped put serial fraudster Pete Berry behind bars has told of how she spent two years fighting to be "the nail in his coffin".

Mabel Arnill, from Saltash, was one of three victims to watch Berry jailed.

The courageous 34-year-old lost about £15,000 when her six-week relationship with Berry turned sour.

Along with fellow victims Laura Hudson and Sara Terry, she decided to speak out to protect other women.

Ms Arnill said: "I'm the mistake he made: now I've got to stop him. I suspect there are an awful lot of victims out there."

A manager for Plymouth City Council, she met Dr John "Taz" Keady, as he appeared in court, at the Tamar Canoe Association in November 2007, soon after the breakdown of her marriage.

He told her he was a successful businessman who had graduated in America with a doctorate in science, boasting of a personal assistant and swish ten-bedroom house near Launceston.

With his Gucci clothing and £3,000 watch, she had no reason to suspect he was actually an unemployed con-artist using a fake name.

"He was the most popular person around," she said. "He was a good laugh, very charming. The perception was always that he had money; that stopped me worrying."

The pair immediately struck up a friendship, kayaking and walking their dogs together and, five days after meeting, he declared "undying love".

"Taz" began spending more and more time at the four-bedroom house she shared with the two children she cares for, then aged 10 and 11, and in the lead-up to Christmas told Ms Arnill he was bidding for the "perfect" kayak as a gift on auction website eBay.

When she refused to accept it, she handed over her credit card details so he could pay the £350 on her behalf.

Two days before Christmas, having claimed to have lost his wallet, and therefore unable to withdraw the millions in his offshore accounts, he received a fictitious e-mail about a friend being "missing in the Himalayas". Ms Arnill lent him £1,000 that week to help launch an £11,000 "rescue mission".

"It was all so believable," she said. "Now I realise that right from the minute he decided he was going to lose his bank cards, I became a pawn in his game."

When cash started disappearing from her kitchen, Berry blamed it on the children, she said, and she soon ended the relationship. But it was not until March, when a hefty phone bill dropped through her letterbox, that Ms Arnill discovered her accounts and cards had been used to buy luxury goods and a membership to the China Fleet Golf and Country Club.

She later discovered Berry had been using her house while she worked, and believes he even adopted her surname to create a further fake identity. Her evidence was what prosecutors had been waiting for.

Ms Arnill, who was running a dog-grooming business at the time, rejects claims that he preyed only on vulnerable women. "I wasn't vulnerable and I wasn't naive," she said. "I was generous and trusting, perhaps, but mainly I was really busy. But in the end, I didn't need him, and that's where it fell apart for him.

"I hope he thinks about me in prison and wonders what went wrong. I'd like to think I'm the nail in his coffin."

She has long since given up hope of getting her money back, and is unable to calculate exactly how much she lost.

"He's just a complete scumbag," said Ms Arnill. "He is more convincing with lies than anyone can be with the truth.

"He plays Mr Nice Guy, but really it's just his cash signs lighting up and him thinking, 'You're my next moneybag'. Hopefully, this will put a stop to it."

Mother-of-three Sara, 42, who travelled from Hampshire to see Berry sent down, said she felt "numb" after leaving court. "I'm glad to see him go to prison," she said. "But I'll still be paying off my debts when he's released."

Laura, from Bournemouth, said: "It makes me feel ill to wonder how many are still out there."

The Herald understands another woman, believed to be from the Launceston area, contacted police last night to report losing more than £3,000.

Family's anger as son targeted his own mother

PETE Berry's elderly mother is perhaps the most tragic of all his victims.

Elizabeth Berry, a 75-year-old widow, was hounded by ruthless debt collectors after her beloved son siphoned off her life savings.

Now, eight years after his sister first became suspicious, Berry has finally been disowned by his Callington-based family.

A close relative has spoken exclusively to The Herald in a desperate bid to bring the 44-year-old's reign of terror to an end.

The woman, who wishes to remain anonymous, said: "He's caused a lot of damage to this family.

"To do that to your own mother, who loves you and trusts you and would do anything for you, is just disgusting.

"I feel terribly sad for her — angry with Peter, but mostly just extremely sad. He's not got a conscience. I believe he'll come out of prison and do it all again."

Berry's family are convinced he has scammed far more than the £80,000 he was yesterday convicted for: £2million since leaving home as a 19-year-old, they estimate.

Adopted by a loving couple at six weeks old, Berry grew up in a happy Callington home alongside an adopted sister two years his senior.

Although never close, the pair joined Saltash Sailing Club together — a hobby Berry would later flourish at.

His father, a Petty Officer in the Royal Navy, and his equally hard-working mother always provided the children with food, clothes and exciting Christmas presents.

The young Peter appeared to struggle to manage his finances even as a child with pocket money, the family remembers.

He attended Saltash Community College, gaining a smattering of GCE O-levels from Callington Community College before becoming an apprentice fitter at Devonport Dockyard.

His first girlfriend, the family believe, was a Plymouth lady named Gillian, though Berry ended the relationship six weeks before their wedding.

Jobs in Wilcove, near Torpoint, and at Plympton-based hose-maker Pirtek followed, but he seemed unable to hold down work.

Berry later co-owned a garage in Newton Ferrers, where he had another girlfriend but, when the venture failed, his business partner was left with nothing.

He married his first wife as a young man, but the relationship was short-lived, his family said. They first became aware of his darker side when a mutual friend let slip that he had taken time off work after the "death" of his sister. That story, and pretending to have cancer himself, was something he would use regularly in subsequent years.

A two-year volunteering job on the Plymouth Lifeboat from 1998 ended in a volunteer losing his car.

Berry then married his second wife, from Steyning, in Sussex, in a whirlwind six-month relationship.

The couple had a child together but soon split when his wife, a pharmaceuticals professional, grew suspicious of his claims to own property all over the world.

He is rumoured to have left her bankrupt, after escaping with more than £30,000 from his first marriage.

By 1999, he was a well-known figure in the sailing community and used his contacts to scam an American sail-making company out of thousands of pounds.

A genuine talent and acquaintance of legendary Pete Goss, he set a new world record in May 2001, skippering the Netergy.com trimaran from Plymouth to La Rochelle, in France, ten hours faster than anyone before him.

A year later, he helped smash his own record by sailing the route with late American adventurer Steve Fossett on the entrepreneur's £8million PlayStation maxi-catamaran. That record still stands.

Berry moved to Edinburgh in 2001, where he proposed to dental practice owner Elaine Goldsmith.

Becoming managing director of the business, he used his new-found job title to impress women on internet dating sites and embarked on several relationships. Elaine's brother lost £5,000 when Berry disappeared, while she ended up giving up the business and moving abroad.

In May 2001, Berry, claiming to be an investment banker for Temple Bar International, met a science graduate from Dundee named Lynne through the Match website.

She had known him for less than two months when he proposed by e-mail, but nine months later was allowing him to borrow her credit card and live at her flat.

Lynne, now 40, returned from a business trip in March 2002 to find her flat ransacked and her car — and Berry — missing. She painstakingly pasted together shredded phone bills and credit card statements, then called unrecognisable numbers in a bid to track her fiancé down.

She says those calls unearthed about 15 other love interests, some as far afield as Singapore, Holland and the Czech Republic.

One of those women, divorcee Julie Cumberland, then 39, had been working in Scotland when she met Berry on the Dating Direct website. He proposed after two weeks.

Julie, from Woking, Surrey, confronted him after hearing from Lynne and he confessed to everything. She said she paid for him to see a psychologist, but never saw him again.

The furious pair launched an awareness website entitled Personal Safety Online and even appeared on GMTV to warn other women.

With his reputation beginning to catch him up and his father diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease, Berry returned to Cornwall.

His sister, aware of his cons after pregnant and suicidal women contacted her, began an eight-year struggle to warn the family.

After his father's death, Berry moved in with his mother and began using the name John "Taz" Keady — the alias he was yesterday sentenced under.

His angry family member said: "I remember looking at him at the funeral and thinking, 'His mother is his next victim'."

Berry took control of his mother's spare room, garage and finances, then sold her car.

"She told me she slept with her purse under her pillow," his relative added. "If it wasn't for her pension, he would have left her with nothing; she's only just got her phone back."

By 2006, he had persuaded bosses at Plymouth Pavilions he was a professional photographer and, with his designer clothes, expensive gadgets and BMW 5 Series, he oozed wealth.

The car, it later turned out, was parked outside his home without an engine, and the "business trips" were jaunts to see his women.

Berry took some around multi-million-pound houses in exclusive areas like Sandbanks in Dorset, sometimes even putting in offers. But in reality, he never owned a property.

"He's like a chameleon," said Berry's relative. "Everything he does is to create image he can sell to people. He actually never had to scam anything in his life. He has more talent in his little finger than most people will ever have."

Even after his initial arrest, Berry met divorced Hampshire mother Sara Terry, 42, on dating site Fitness Singles.

Claiming to be a business consultant, they bonded over a love of dogs and within two weeks, he had proposed and moved in.

Berry asked her to sign an insurance document for a surprise adventure holiday, which later turned out to be a loan application she is still paying off.

When she took her children away on a family holiday just before Christmas, leaving her credit cards with Berry, £35,000 disappeared from her accounts.

She contacted the police, then lured Berry back to her home where he was arrested once more.

When Sara, like Lynne, began contacting friends on Berry's Facebook account, men and women alike wrote to her with similar stories.

Berry's family are pleased to see him locked up, but fear the sentence will not deter him.