Andrew John Harper

Last updated

Andrew John Harper (born 1971), dubbed the "Heartbreak Bandit" by the Australian media, was arrested in Glenroy, Victoria, on 16 November 2010. He pleaded guilty to 13 charges of fraud, deception and identity theft on 2 February 2011, at Frankston Magistrate's Court, Victoria. [1] [2] He was sentenced to a total of 9 months in prison and ordered to repay victims a total of $22,000.

Contents

Aliases

Dr Ryan Reece DuPont, Dr Andrew Karlsson.

Early life

Andrew John Harper was born on 12 July 1971 in Wagga Wagga, New South Wales. He was adopted at two weeks old and has several siblings who still live in the area. [3]

He attended Eastwood Marist Brothers High School but left after only completing Year 10. His nickname at school was "Chameleon" because he so easily adapted to each social group. He married a local Wagga Wagga woman in 1995.

Alleged crimes

Harper's history of defrauding and deceiving women and business people out of hundreds of thousands of dollars has been traced back 10 years. It started with a Swedish woman, Anna Johansson, to whom he became engaged. It was her bank manager who eventually alerted her to the con and she was left with over $20,000 worth of debt. [4]

She became a crucial part of his scam – most of his subsequent victims were told that he and Anna were engaged, and that she had died in a car accident three weeks before their wedding, instantly playing on their sympathy. [5]

His female victims number over 20 and the number of businesses he has affected is countless. He has scammed women and business people in Europe, the US and five Australian states out of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

He finally came to the attention of the police after he duped his last victim, on the Mornington Peninsula, Victoria, out of more than $60,000. [2]

Arrest

Two of his victims, Diana Mors and Rebecca Bell, set up a blog [6] in 2009 to alert people to his con tactics and methods, which eventually led to his arrest in Glenroy, Victoria, on 16 November 2010. [5] The two women, along with victims Tony Low and Rochelle Fisher, went public with the story, appearing on A Current Affair , Today Tonight , and various newspapers and magazines including Women's Weekly .

There are warrants for his arrest in South Australia and Queensland and he is wanted for questioning in Western Australia and New South Wales.

He pleaded guilty to 13 charges of fraud, identity theft and deception in Frankston on 2 February 2011 and was sentenced to a total of 9 months in jail.

Some of his victims have created a blog [7] and Facebook group to support other con victims.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Farah Damji</span> Ugandan charged with financial and stalking crimes

Farah Damji, also known as Farah Dan, is a Uganda-born writer, magazine editor, and convicted criminal with multiple convictions pertaining to fraud and stalking in the United States, South Africa, and United Kingdom.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Brian Keith Jones</span> Australian convicted sex offender and burglar

Brian Keith Jones, formerly known as Brendan John Megson and Whispen, is an Australian sex offender who was convicted of the abduction and sexual assault of six male children between 1979 and 1980. Jones was given the nickname Mr Baldy for shaving his victims' hair and dressing them in female clothing during the attacks.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Andrew O'Keefe</span> Australian television presenter

Andrew Patrick O'Keefe AM is an Australian former television presenter and lawyer. He co-hosted the weekend edition of breakfast program Weekend Sunrise from 2005 until 2017 as well as the localised versions of game shows Deal or No Deal and The Chase Australia. Since 2021, he has been arrested several times for drug and domestic violence offences.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paul Denyer</span> Australian serial killer

Paul Charles Denyer is an Australian serial killer currently serving three consecutive sentences of life imprisonment with a non-parole period of 30 years for the murders of three young women in Melbourne, in 1993. Denyer became known in the media as the Frankston Serial Killer as his crimes occurred in the neighbouring suburbs of Frankston.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gina Marks</span> American psychic and convicted fraudster (born 1973)

Gina Marie Marks is an American psychic and convicted fraudster. Using the pseudonym of Regina Milbourne, she co-authored Miami Psychic: Confessions of a Confidante, a memoir published by HarperCollins in 2006.

<i>Miami Psychic</i> 2006 memoir by Gina Marie Marks

Miami Psychic: Confessions of a Confidante is a 2006 memoir published by the Regan Books division of HarperCollins. The authors are listed as Regina Milbourne and Yvonne Carey-Lederer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fullerton Police Department</span> Police department in Fullerton, California

The Fullerton Police Department of Fullerton, California, was established in 1904 when the city incorporated. The Fullerton Police Department currently employs 153 sworn officers and 78 civilian employees. It has a budget of about $35 million. The current chief is David Hendricks. The department has a Uniform Division, a Service Division and a Detective Division all commanded by officers in the rank of captain.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Edward Davenport (fraudster)</span> English socialite, property developer and fraudster (born 1966)

Edward Ormus Sharrington Davenport is a convicted English fraudster, socialite, and property developer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Craig Thomson (politician)</span> Australian former politician

Craig Robert Thomson is an Australian former trade union official and a former politician implicated in the Health Services Union expenses affair.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Crawford family murder</span> 1970 murder of the Crawford family in Australia

The Crawford family murder was the killing of pregnant mother Therese Crawford and her three children at their home in Glenroy, Victoria, Australia, in July 1970. The family car was located at the bottom of a cliff at Loch Ard Gorge in Port Campbell on 2 July with the bodies of the four victims still inside. The husband and father of the decedents, Elmer Kyle Crawford, is the prime suspect in the murders and has not been seen since.

Catholic sexual abuse cases in Australia, like Catholic Church sexual abuse cases elsewhere, have involved convictions, trials and ongoing investigations into allegations of sex crimes committed by Catholic priests, members of religious orders and other personnel which have come to light in recent decades, along with the growing awareness of sexual abuse within other religious and secular institutions.

Richard Allen Minsky, also known as Richard Alan Minsky, is an American former used car salesman who was convicted of multiple charges of rape, assault, battery, extortion, grand theft, larceny, lewd and lascivious behavior, oral copulation, sexual assault, sexual battery, sodomy, and escape. He was charged over 80 times and convicted in more than a dozen trials over a series of scams committed in the states of California, Florida, Georgia, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania.

Rape by deception is a situation in which the perpetrator deceives the victim into participating in a sexual act to which they would otherwise not have consented, had they not been deceived. Deception can occur in many forms, such as illusory perceptions, false statements, and false actions.

Ashley Anne Kirilow is a Canadian woman who raised money to aid cancer patients while pretending to have cancer herself. When Kirilow's fraud was made public, her story was republished around the world.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Murder of Kylie Maybury</span> 1984 child murder in Melbourne, Australia

Kylie Maria Antonia Maybury was an Australian schoolgirl from Preston, an inner-city suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Maybury was kidnapped, raped, and murdered on 6 November 1984, the date of the 1984 Melbourne Cup Day; and she was nicknamed in the Melbourne tabloid newspaper The Sun News-Pictorial as the Cup Day Girl.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bob Nygaard</span> Private detective specializing in psychic fraud

Bob Nygaard is an American private investigator (PI) specializing in the investigation of confidence crimes, most notably psychic fraud. He has been instrumental in the arrest and conviction of numerous psychics, helping their victims obtain justice including financial restitution amounting to millions of dollars. He has consulted for ABC News and 20/20 as a specialist in psychic fraud. Nygaard previously was a member of the New York City Transit Police and Nassau County Police Department, retiring from service in 2008.

<i>Love Fraud</i> American true crime documentary miniseries

Love Fraud is an American true crime documentary miniseries, directed by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, about the hunt for a serial romance scammer. It premiered on August 30, 2020, on Showtime.

Samantha Lyndell Azzopardi is an Australian con artist who has been accused of many instances of conning families and authorities, not only in her native Australia but also in Ireland and Canada. In May 2021, the Melbourne Magistrates Court sentenced her to two years imprisonment.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fertility fraud</span> Non-consensual fertility treatments

Fertility fraud is the failure on the part of a fertility doctor to obtain consent from a patient before inseminating her with his own sperm. This normally occurs in the context of people using assisted reproductive technology (ART) to address fertility issues.

References

  1. ↑ Pinner, Alecia. "Romancing conman jailed" [ permanent dead link ], Peninsula Weekly, 9 February 2011.
  2. 1 2 Kaila, Jon. "Cruel love cheat Andrew John Harper jailed", Sunday Herald Sun, 6 February 2011.
  3. ↑ Adshead, Gary (2005). "Harper's con still weaves its magic", West Australian. Republished 2010 on victim's blog.
  4. ↑ Adshead, Gary (2005). "Life of smoke and mirrors", West Australian. Republished 2010 on victim's blog.
  5. 1 2 Baker, Jordan "Love, betrayal, and revenge" Archived 28 December 2010 at the Wayback Machine , Woman's Weekly, January 2011, page 62.
  6. ↑ Victims of Andrew Harper blog
  7. ↑ Conned Down Under blog

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.