Scam Tip Report #20503 - Conman Dermont Nottingham Onehunga Hillsborough Auckland
| Scam Reporter | Scam Tips Received | ||||||
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  | Caroline Ruth White Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand 2014-07-24 04:55:51 Blackmail, Extortion, threats |  Conman Dermont Nottingham Onehunga Hillsborough Auckland
THE DOMINION, 12 MAY 2001, Edition 2, Page 12. Investigator\'s Criminal Past Revealed By: KITCHIN Phil DERMOT NOTTINGHAM, the self-styled investigator who plastered the name of the policeman who killed Steven Wallace on the Internet, is a Convicted Thief and a Brawler. Mr Nottingham, who was dumped as an investigator by the Wallace family soon after he began his inquiries into the police shooting of Steven Wallace in Waitara on April 30 last year, also has a conviction for discharging a firearm in public. Mr Nottingham said he had nothing to hide and was prepared to discuss his history with The Dominion, but he had an exclusive agreement to speak to another newspaper and he would not speak till after that paper was published. [Yeah Right!] He said if The Dominion was prepared to print his conviction list, \"why don\'t you print the name of a man who shot a guy in the back . . . is it because you are gutless?\" Mr Nottingham, now of Auckland, was raised as one of five children in a well-off Christchurch family but his life changed when his father died in a road accident and he went to a tough boys\' home. Dominion files show that he was for a time at a private school and then had another stay at another boys\' home, but that by the 1980s, Mr Nottingham was a wealthy young man aged 22. The mission to make money still drove Mr Nottingham in the late 1980s when he moved with his family to Gisborne, leaving a somewhat controversial past in Christchurch behind. He arrived as a white knight but became known colloquially as the \"Sheriff of Nottingham\", and Dermot Nottingham did not like the name calling. He asked for an official police investigation and report after an incident at a central city roundabout in 1989 when Gisborne detective Hemi Hikawai called out as Mr Nottingham and one of his brothers drove past: \"It\'s the Beagle Boys.\" Mr Nottingham has a colourful history with police. It is a past that Mr Nottingham prefers not to talk about. But Gisborne people and police officers who dealt with Mr Nottingham and his brothers Phillip and Mark, remember the family well. So, probably, do judges who have frequently seen the Nottinghams in their courts -- either being charged or alternatively prosecuting in generally failed attempts to charge people ranging from detectives to repossession agents. After a long-running case arising in Gisborne, Dermot was convicted in Auckland District Court on November 1, 1991, of the theft of more than $5000. The charge arose from allegations that the brothers secured a $1.7-million loan from former finance company RSL with furniture and fittings not fully paid for. According to ACT NZ MP Owen Jennings, Dermot Nottingham has a history of run-ins with the police. In 1997, when Mr Nottingham featured in a television current affairs programme as an undercover investigator trying to stop car importers from tampering with odometers, Mr Jennings told Parliament Dermot Nottingham had been apprehended for theft, unlawful interference and burglary in 1978. \"In 1980 he was arrested for wilful damage. \"In 1983 he was arrested for fighting in a public place. \"In 1985 he was arrested for refusing to accompany an officer, using insulting language and assaulting a traffic officer. \"He has been arrested for common assault and the discharge of a firearm in a public place. The list goes on and on,\" Mr Jennings said. \"If the evidence comes from that person, then I have to say it is pretty questionable,\" Mr Jennings told Parliament. Ironically, for a crusader who wanted car dealers who tampered with odometers exposed, Mr Nottingham has a conviction for unlawfully interfering with a motor vehicle. In one High Court case 11 years ago, Justice Robertson said the evidence that Dermot and Philip Nottingham gave on oath was unreal. The brothers were in court because they had not paid a Gisborne glazier, John McLaughlin, $13,000 for window work he did at their Gisborne nightclub, Nottinghams. In contrast to the \"distinct air of unreality\" that Justice Robertson said he felt after hearing the Nottinghams evidence, the judge said he preferred Mr McLaughlin\'s evidence because \"he was transparently honest\". The Nottinghams came to Gisborne brimming with promises of the amount of business they were going to bring to a city flailing under a sea of economic doom. Driving a Porsche when he arrived, Dermot Nottingham often featured in the Gisborne press with his high-flying plans. But it all turned to custard for the Nottinghams as their rest home and nightclub businesses failed and they became involved in a string of court cases and a mud-slinging match with the local police. \"We are basically trying to be honest, straight people . . . Gisborne\'s a horrible town,\" Dermot\'s brother Mark said in 1988 as his brothers were being chased by Gisborne tradesmen for hundreds of thousands of dollars. But it was Mark\'s brothers that some Gisborne people found horrid. The brothers were ordered by the Labour Court in 1989 to pay nearly $20,000 in wages, holiday pay and allowances that they owed to 24 workers at the Gladstone Park Rest Home they set up in the old IHC home at Gisborne. The year before, Gisborne District Court heard extraordinary claims during a hearing into a challenge by the Nottinghams\' mother to the Health Department\'s refusal to grant a licence for the rest home. One former rest home staff member told the court that maggots were discovered under the toenail of a particularly incontinent resident. The former staff member said that generally staff at the rest home were too busy cleaning to give residents all the attention they needed. The court case ended suddenly when the Health Department and Mrs Nottingham reached agreement that she could continue to runt he home till it was sold. In October 1988, the company used by Dermot and Philip to set up their nightclub, but later sold to a Christchurch company when it owed hundreds of thousands of dollars, was wound up. The Nottinghams\' restaurant and nightclub had finally folded after the brothers fell behind in debt repayments for a $1.7 million loan they were supposed to be paying to the failed finance company RSL. The Nottinghams fought hard to keep their businesses going but as they failed they brought unsuccessful private prosecutions against several people, including two Gisborne detectives. They wrote many letters to police bosses, using bush-lawyer language and terms, complaining of alleged police harassment or a lack of action by police officers to whom they made their complaints. At the height of their troubles in Gisborne, the Nottinghams sold their company, Property Stock Ltd, to a Christchurch company partly owned by a Christchurch man, Graeme Hirst Horner. Horner, known to police as \"The Cashmere Burglar\", has a string of convictions and was close to the Nottinghams when they lived in Christchurch and worked evicting difficult tenants for landlords. Horner was a childhood friend of Dermot Nottingham and police considered Dermot Nottingham an accomplice of Horner while they were investigating Horner\'s involvement in stealing jewellery from houses and cars in Cashmere, Christchurch, between 1983 and 1984. Many people spoken to by The Dominion who had dealings with Mr Nottingham refused to speak on the record. But Gisborne security guards, father and son Brian and Kevin McBreen, spoke of altercations they had had with the Nottinghams. Mr McBreen Snr said he and his son were guarding the Nottinghams\' Gladstone Rd rest home for an Auckland firm with a financial interest in the property when it was on the verge of being closed down. After incidents involving Mark and Dermot and the McBreens, police laid assault charges against the brothers and the trial was heard in Napier because there was a belief they would not get a fair hearing in Gisborne. The brothers were found not guilty of assault. The lead-up to the trial was bizarre. Mr McBreen Jnr said Dermot and one of his brothers arrived at the entranceway he was guarding and he claimed he was encouraged to fight. \"I didn\'t. I could see his (Dermot\'s) brother taking photographs.\" Mr McBreen said when he did not respond, Dermot Nottingham began throwing punches. He said the Nottinghams left when he failed to react and police were later given a film of the incident when a camera was found in a car repossessed from the Nottinghams. The pictures were shown at the subsequent jury trial at which the Nottingham brothers were cleared of the assault charges. Another bizarre twist to the Nottinghams\' Gisborne business sortie happened in 1988 when an Auckland firm of private investigators was given the job of investigating the Nottinghams. Investigator Lew Proctor said this week that he received an anonymous call and a $1200 advance with instructions for his firm to dig up adverse information on the Nottinghams of Gisborne. Mr Proctor said he later discovered the call came from a house owned by the Nottinghams. {They were investigating themselves to lay a false trail} Dermont Nottingham knows Nick Hager - another bullshit artist | |||||
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