News Of The World Article

News Of The World Article

January 19th, 1992 EXCLUSIVE by MARK CHRISTY

Michael The Pirate Michael The Policeman

Sailors beware! A new nautical menace has appeared on the horizon - a con man Michael Clarke has set up a scam to keep himself supplied with booze and birds on a paradise beach.

He has ripped off scores of unsuspecting British yachting folk by offering them jobs in an epic sailing movie he claims is being made in Thailand.

Clarke’s ad in Yachting Monthly magazine promises free return airfares and £40 a day for a five-day week. All he wants is a £55 insurance fee from applicants.

But there is No film and punters NEVER hear from him again.

Former Watford market trader Clarke reckons four square rigged sailing ships are going to be used in the movie ‘Invasion of Thailand’, set 200 years ago.

He calls himself Peter Timberlake and operates his con from the “Paradise Suite” in the Thai City of Patiya.

But his “Office Suite” is a seat in one of Patiya’s hundreds of girlie bars. And his firm “Paradise Movies” Inc. Does not exist - though he does have a home movie video camera in a local pawnshop.

The slogan of “Paradise Movies” is “A cut above the rest”. And when the News of the World found Clarke he was half-cut above the rest.

An investigator confronted him at Jan’s Bar. “Yes I am Paradise Movies”, he slurred. “But I’ve been up boozing all night and need to think before I speak to you.”