A DUNDEE-born conman who was jailed for funding a phony jetset lifestyle has been convicted of child porn charges and repeated fraud.
Reece Scobie, 22, was compared to fraudster Frank Abagnale Jnr from the film Catch Me If You Can when he was sentenced for 16 months in 2013 after duping travel agents out of more than £70,000 to fly around the world to stay in top hotels.
Now, Scobie has been handed a 12 month jail term at the District Court of Reykjanes in Iceland for repeated fraud violation and possession and distribution of child pornography.
He was arrested on arrival in the country on June 16 last year and found to have a significant amount of child pornography on computer equipment that he had with him.
He was caught with 4,750 photographs and 345 videos stored on his laptop, mobile phone and tablet.
Scobie was later found to have fraudulently used a number of credit cards too. He is said to have bought plane tickets to the United States and Iceland with the fake cards as well as staying in guest houses.
Scobie booked plane tickets costing £3,526.95 that took him from Scotland to Iceland and on to Seattle in the United States on June 16 last year and tickets to return on the same route the following day.
He was arrested by police in Iceland before he could fly to the United States after claims of illegally obtaining a credit card but released from custody on July 27.
But it soon became apparent that he had committed further fraud after he was released.
The Icelandic court’s judgment for Scobie was made in late January but not published on the website of the district courts until yesterday. As well as the prison sentence, he was ordered to pay more than 3.3 million Icelandic Krona in legal costs, which equates to about £18,000.
His laptop, phone and tablet were also confiscated.
When facing his first fraud charges in 2013 at Perth Sheriff Court, Scobie, who was living in Rait, Perthshire, was described as a technology expert who was a borderline genius and had manipulated his expertise to carry out the fraud.
He was also compared by his own solicitor to Abagnale Jnr, whose life story was turned into the Hollywood blockbuster Catch Me If You Can, with the role of Abagnale Jnr played by Leonardo DiCaprio.
In the film, Abagnale Jnr poses as an airline pilot to travel the world while escaping the clutches of the chasing authorities.
At the time, solicitor Jim Laverty told the court: “People may jot down their dream journeys on a blank piece of paper but unfortunately Mr Scobie had the wherewithal to book those in real time in the real world.”
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