Feature film also being made about notorious conman Robert Hendy-Freegard

Robert Hendy-Freegard

A conman who worked in a car salesroom in Chiswick and managed to convince people he worked for MI5 is the subject of a new Netflix documentary.

The Puppet Master: Hunting The Ultimate Conman tells the story of Robert Hendy-Freegard and how he managed to take coercive control of his victims’ lives, in some cases persuading them to go into hiding for years because their safety was in question.

He was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2005 following an eight-month trial after being found guilty of two charges of kidnap, ten of theft and other financial crimes.

The court had heard how he had deprived some of his victims out of many years of their lives using a variety of tactics to deceive them.

Originally from Derbyshire, Hendy-Freegard had spent most of his adult life conning people but his downfall came while he was working as a salesman at the former Normand Volkswagen dealership near the junction of King Street and Chiswick High Road.

In 2004, Chiswick-based legal adviser, Caroline Cowper, reported him to police after he had threatened her with violence. She had become involved with Hendy-Freegard when she had given him money to set up a car lease scheme which turned out to be bogus.

When the police began their enquiries they discovered a trail of deception by Hendy-Freegard going back for over a decade. Ms. Cowper was just one of a large number of victims who he had met through his work at the car showroom. Their relationship started after she bought a car from him and not long afterwards Hendy-Freegard offered her a £6,500 engagement ring. What she didn't know at the time was that the ring had been bought with the proceeds of the sale of the car and he was simultaneously engaged to several other women.

When she asked for the money for the car Hendy-Freegard initially told her that he was due a six-figure some for work that he had carried out for MI5. It was a year after the affair began that she discovered he had taken £14,000 out of her building society account bringing the total amount he extracted from her to over £40,000.

At that point she took him to the small claims court which led to him being declared bankrupt and she discovered that she wasn't the only woman being targeted by him. At this point she went to Hammersmith Police station and gave the details she had learnt to the police.

The resulting investigation became a joint operation with the FBI who were also on Hendy-Freegard's trail because of suspicions about his engagement to Kim Adams, an American child psychologist whose family had just won the lottery and were being forced to send money to Hendy-Freegard.

In another case, police found that Sarah Smith, who Hendy-Freegard had first approached when she was a student in 1993 at Harper Adams Agricultural College in Shropshire, had been convinced by him for ten years that she was in danger of assassination by the IRA. She was found by police working as a domestic cleaner in Chiswick for a woman named Renata who was also a victim of Hendy-Freegard's schemes.

Sarah Smith being interviewed in the Netflix documentary. Picture: Netflix

Sarah had believed she was in a witness protection scheme under the control of Hendy-Freegard. He had persuaded her to hand over all of her money including wages in order to finance 'the mission' and she was told that the police would repay it in full when the danger was over. As a result, she was forced to work in hotels, fish shops, pubs, hotels, as well as a cleaner and was only permitted to contact her family only when further funds were needed to "pay the police". Sarah had received a £300,000 inheritance which Hendy-Freegard forced her to give to him. She had also been made to sleep rough and devise various scenarios to extract more money out of her family.

She was one of three students at the college who Hendy-Freegard managed to convince that their lives were in danger conning hundreds of thousands of pounds from them over many years. One of them, Maria Hendy, became his girlfriend and suffered emotional and physical abuse from him for nine years while also having two children with him.

With the proceeds of his deceptions, Hendy-Freegard lived what was described as a 'James Bond' lifestyle, buying Rolex watches, top of the range BMWs, handmade suits and shoes.

When John Atkinson, one of the students taken in by the MI5 plot, returned home after nine years in 2002, he soon realised he had been duped when MI5 didn't contact him or the IRA didn't try to kill him. He reported Hendy-Freegard's web of lies to Sarah Smith's family and her father employed private investigators to investigate what had happened to his daughter. At this point the police were reluctant to investigate because they had interviewed Sarah and because she was an adult and she had appeared to be with Hendy-Freegard consensually.

Hendy-Freegard's was finally arrested in May 2003 at Heathrow Airport after arranging to meet Kim Adam's mother who had told him she was bringing more money that he had demanded. Hendy-Freegard made no comment in his initial police interview but a search of a hotel room he had booked in France discovered dozens of passports, credit cards and bills belonging to more women.

He had to be tried three times because his first two legal teams had reported they were 'professionally embarrassed' in representing him.

Sarah Smith, who was totally unaware of the deception until Hendy-Freegard was arrested, is interviewed in the Netflix documentary. She said she had reunited with her fellow victims during the trial, including Atkinson, Renata Kim and Maria, to watch the verdict.

"All of us were united in the feeling that actually the legal system worked," she said. However, there was soon to be disappointment as Hendy-Freegard made a successful appeal in 2007 against his conviction with a new trial determining that Sarah and Maria had not been kidnapped. Hendy-Freegard was freed in May 2009.

In 2012, mum-of-two Sandra Clifton started dating a man called David Hendy who she met on a dating site. It was actually Hendy-Freegard who had adopted a new name.

Within a year and a half of the start of the relationship both her children, Jake and Sophie, had been forced out of their home. 'David' had told their father, Mark, that Jake was gay before locking him out of the house. Sophie was told to distance herself from her father and handed over £10,000 to Hendy-Freegard while paying him £300 a month in rent. Eventually she left to live with her brother and father.

Sandra and "David" left the family home in 2014 leaving a trail of unpaid bills. The police tracked them down in 2015 and Sandra told them she was aware of Hendy-Freegard's past and wanted to stay with him.

In 2017 a beagle seller claimed she had been conned by Hendy-Freegard saying that she had transferred money to Sandra's account in France for services relating to her dogs that were never delivered.

Hendy-Freegard and Sandra declined to be interviewed for the documentary.

January 22, 2022