Home > SurreyComet.co.uk

'Homeless' HSBC beggar exposed as fraudster living in Surbiton flat

Surbiton.com: December 17, 2013 - 3:00pm

A ‘homeless’ man who begged outside HSBC in Surbiton for years has been exposed as a fraudster living in a flat on the Alpha Road estate and receiving benefits.

Christopher Turner, 51, who lives in King Charles Road, conned generous passers-by in the town centre with hand-drawn cardboard signs and a bedraggled dog. One sign, decorated with a Christian cross and a star of David, said: “Homeless. Please help me in this time of need. Thank you and God bless u all.” Turner, who was born on Christmas Eve in 1961, was convicted last Wednesday at Wimbledon Magistrates’ Court after admitting begging and fraud.

When the Surrey Comet visited Turner at his first-floor flat he admitted it was not his first offence. He said his benefits had been stopped for some time but had been sorted out since his arrest. He declined to comment further. Posters on local web forum surbiton.com have been warning for years Turner was not genuinely homeless.

As long as three years ago one person posted: “When he packs up at the end of each day and goes home he hides his fake luggage behind the estate agents near the bins and slides his homeless signs behind the green telecoms cabinet next to HSBC.”

Another said six weeks ago: “He was having an argument with what appeared to be a girlfriend when he said ‘You can stop complaining, I am the one who has to go out to work all day’.”

He was ordered to pay a total of £113 in fines and costs, which will be deducted from his benefits.

Turner, who was arrested in October, has several previous convictions for similar offences. He was convicted in September and December 2010 at Kingston Magistrates’ Court for begging in St James’ Road and Victoria Road, and in August 2011 at Wimbledon for begging in Fife Road, Kingston.

Read more: 
Daily Mail
Read more: 
Surrey Comet

Comments

Rob London's picture
Rob London, 10 years ago...

BAN THIS PATHETIC CRIMINAL FROM SURBITON AND KINGSTON!!!

Give this pathetic beggar an ASBO and ban the scumbag from Surbiton and Kingston Town Centres!
Teach this Convicted Criminal a lesson he will never forget!
Post his photo and Criminal Convictions everywhere!
Make sure he gets the message that he is UNWANTED IN OUR TOWNS!!!

Good Riddance!

Post new comment

  • Web page addresses and email addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd> <p>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Filtered words will be replaced with the filtered version of the word.

More information about formatting options

CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.

By posting content on Surbiton.com, you agree to adhere to the following guidelines.

  • Your username and password must only be used by you, keep them safe. If a posting is made using your username and password it will be considered to have been posted by you. If you have a friend who wants to use our site and post messages on the site, show them how to register.
  • Be courteous at all times, inciting racial hatred, posting abusive, obscene, threatening, harassing, defamatory, libellous or sexually explicit material or any material that is found to be offensive is not acceptable and we may suspend your username and password.
  • Retaliating to offensive posts causes more problems for other users on the discussion boards. Just report such messages to us using the Feedback link which is available at the top of every page or the 'report this' link associated with individual postings. We will act on every report we receive.
  • Please respect other people's work and do not post material that infringes copyright.
  • Do not post information that you know to be confidential or sensitive or otherwise in breach of the law. You should only post material that you know to be public knowledge. If you have any doubts do not post it on the site.
  • Never attempt to gain unauthorised access to any area of the site. This is known as hacking and is illegal.
  • Content posted represents the opinions of the author, and does not represent the opinions of Surbiton.com or its affiliates and has not been approved or issued by Surbiton.com. You should be aware that the other participants are strangers to you and may make statements which may be misleading, deceptive or wrong.
  • Spoofing or posing as another user is unacceptable. Anonymous users' postings should always be considered with suspicion.
  • Help keep Surbiton.com a safe place for information and opinion. Please alert us of any anti-social behaviour as described above.
Please note that Surbiton.com does not monitor the comments posted and we are therefore reliant upon users reporting antisocial behaviour.