Barclays dragged into Ritz hotel con trick

The Barclay twins, owners of the Daily Telegraph and the London Ritz Hotel, have been dragged into an elaborate fraud case, which hinged on the billionaires' notoriously reclusive nature. In 2006 two conmen approached property businessman Terry Collins with a once-in-a-lifetime offer - the chance to buy the £600m Ritz at a knockdown price of £250m, provided the deal was conducted in secret.

'Project Notting Hill', as it became known, required Collins to make a down-payment of £1m to a mysterious contractor apparently working on behalf of the brothers. As Sir David (pictured) and Sir Frederick Barclay are famously private, Collins was not fazed by the secretive nature of the negotiations, and signed a confidentiality agreement. In reality, of course, the hotel was not up for sale - and the Barclays, at home in their mock-Gothic castle on the private Channel island of Brecqhou, were completely oblivious to the ruse.

The scam was only revealed when, after Collins had handed over his £1m deposit, the conmen - one a bankrupt former lorry driver, the other an unemployed construction manager - tried to put the Ritz's sale price up to £470m. Unable to get his deposit back, a furious Collins went to see his lawyers.

At the High Court in London on Thursday, Mr Justice Henderson said the hoax had been dependent on the Barclays' demand for privacy. "The Barclay brothers were known by Mr Collins to have the reputation of being extremely secretive in the conduct of their business affairs, and it did not strike him as implausible that they would wish to structure a transaction of this sort through an intermediary."