The House of Lords may no longer be packed with hereditary peers, but aristocratic titles are far from devalued.
Indeed, con men are marketing phoney dukedoms and baronies by the dozen, which they sell on the Internet for several thousands of pounds.
“These titles are fake and have no credence whatsoever. But they can fetch up to £50,000 each,” says the Earl of Bradford, whose own genuine title was conferred by the monarch to an ancestor some three centuries ago.
He has now set up his own website to fight the fakers ~ www.faketitles.com ~ after his son Viscount Newport, 22, was impersonated by a con man, as I revealed.
Bradford has named and shamed the fraudsters and is being threatened with legal action by a Florida-based businessman who sells titles and describes himself as Baron Chafford but is believed to be a Cuban called Anthony Boada.
“The British Embassy in Washington is so worried about Americans being misled into buying fake titles that it has posted a warning on its website,” says Bradford, 54.
“I have about 2,000 visits a week to my own site. The scams are endless. Selling English titles is illegal. You can legally buy lordships of the manor, but these are not aristocratic titles, only a semi-extinct form of landed property. One con is to sell a piece of land, say a square foot, re-name the plot Westminster, then sell a fake Duke of Westminster title to go with it.”
© 2002 The Daily Mail, London
