Edward Davenport (born 1966)
English fraudster
Edward Ormus Sharrington Davenport (born 11 July 1966) is a convicted English fraudster, socialite, and property developer.
The self-styled "Lord", nicknamed "Fast Eddie", came to prominence in the late 1980s as the organiser of the controversial Gatecrasher Balls for wealthy teenagers. After being convicted for tax offences in 1990, he began a second career as a property developer. He claimed to have acquired a substantial fortune, but also attracted controversy for his business practices such as the way he acquired the former High Commission building of Sierra Leone in London, during the country's civil war.
From 2005 to 2009 he was the "ringmaster" of a series of advance-fee fraud schemes that defrauded dozens of individuals out of millions of pounds. He was arrested and charged in December 2009 and was convicted in September 2011 along with five other defendants, receiving a jail sentence of seven years and eight months.
Early life
Davenport was born in Kensington, London, to Dublin-born Ormus Neville Talbot Davenport, a Magdalen College, Oxford-educated director and general manager of pharmaceutical products company Benefax, and his second wife, Jean (née Gorrie). His father's first wife was Elizabeth Aurora, daughter of the soldier Sir Hugh Tudor. The Davenport family claimed descent from 'Ormus de Davenport', alleged to have lived at the time of the Norman Conquest; mainly vicars and soldiers, they were subsequently listed in Burke's Landed Gentry.
Gatecrasher Balls
At age 15, Davenport began selling clothes on Portobello Road.
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