What lifts the case out of the ordinary is not just the property – one of the rarest books in the world – but Scott himself, a man who has committed a crime so iconic that even a classic Ealing comedy couldn’t do justice to its daring, its eccentricity and its downright silliness.
The champagne-drinking, cigar-smoking, Ferrari-driving 53 year old was found guilty at Newcastle Crown Court on July 9 of handling stolen goods and smuggling a stolen copy of Shakespeare’s First Folio, reportedly worth £3 million, to the US.
He was warned by Judge Richard Lowden that he faces an “inevitable substantial custodial sentence”, having already been branded by the chief prosecutor as a “dishonest conman and serial thief”.
The colourful case has drawn in the FBI, rare book experts in America, the world-renowned Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington DC, the British Embassy in the city ... oh, and a humble Pot Noodle.
This is a man who thinks he’s James Bond.
Durham detective
It began when Scott, a man who favours Tiffany sunglasses even indoors, walked into the Folger unannounced one morning in June 2008 and told chief librarian Richard Kuhta that he would like them to examine an “old Shakespeare book”.
He had come to the right place. The Folger has no fewer than 79 copies of the First Folio, which dates from 1623 and includes the Bard’s complete works. Of the 700-plus copies originally printed, only 231 are known to exist. Of these 231, nine are unaccounted for.
“I met Mr Scott at the security desk,” Kuhta says. “I was greeted by a gentleman in very tropical gear.He had an oversized T-shirt on with large fish on the chest, lightweight summer pants, loafers with no socks, and sunglasses which he never removed the entire time we were together that morning.”
Scott produced a First Folio which he said he had acquired in Cuba and which he wanted the Folger to authenticate. Kuhta, aware that First Folios, the most documented book in the world, were not in the habit of walking in off the street, looked at it and quickly deduced that it had been mutilated.
He told Scott that he would like to retain the book for 48 hours to examine it. What he did not know at the time was that the First Folio had been stolen from Bishop Cosin’s Library, part of Durham University Library, 10 years earlier in an incident that had shocked scholars all over the world.
Scott was happy to oblige, and returned to his room at DC’s plush, five-star Mayflower Hotel. He then took it upon himself to inform the Washington Post that he had found an “unrecorded”First Folio.
But alarm bells had already begun to ring in Kuhla’s mind. Was this book really one of the missing nine folios?
He contacted Daniel De Simone, from the Library of Congress, who saw that the book had been stripped of some of its leaves. He knew it had been cleaned and prepared, rather than having lain in a dusty attic.
“From my perspective there was a problem with the situation,” he said.
The Folger then consulted rare book expert Stephen Massey who, using data published by Anthony James West, a world expert on First Folios, realised that the book had come from Durham. But Scott had already left DC. Kuhta alerted the FBI, and Durham police in turn were alerted by the British Embassy in Washington.
The force was given details of the story that Scott had spun in Washington: that he was a millionaire who was selling the family heavy plant machinery business in Scotland. His mother lived in Monte Carlo, and he also had connections with Lichtenstein. The truth, as police found when they traced Scott in Wingate, County Durham, was more prosaic: he was unemployed, and lived in a three-bed semi with his mum, who was in her 80s.
“He’s an eccentric character,” says one Durham detective. “This is a man who thinks he’s James Bond.”
Scott has maintained all along that when he was in Cuba he had met, and fallen for, a 21-year-old dancer. He said he acquired the Folio from a Cuban man who, he claimed, used to be a personal bodyguard to Fidel Castro. The book, he explained, was simply this man’s family heirloom.
But police discovered that he was in the UK, indulging himself in a spending spree, in the dates he claimed he was in Cuba. When questioned by police about the discrepancy, he had no answer. He also maintained he had flown from Cuba to Washington DC via the Bahamas, but police found he had actually flown to DC from Heathrow. The net was closing in.
On one occasion Scott arrived at the police station to answer police bail in a Hummer, clutching champagne, a cigar and, for reasons best known by himself, an opened Pot Noodle.
He was subsequently charged with theft and handling stolen goods. The trial heard he had never worked and had piled up £90,000 in maxed-out credit-card debts.
In court he exercised his right not to give evidence, but he had earlier told police that the academics had conspired against him. He was acquitted of theft but convicted of handling stolen goods and removing stolen property from the UK.
Police have speculated that Scott tried to sell the First Folio in order to wipe out his debts and also allow him to marry his Cuban girlfriend, to whom he sent £10,000 in one five-month spell.
The First Folio itself, now back at Durham University library, will be the centrepiece of an exhibition of University treasures starting in January.
In this respect at least, it’s true that all’s well that ends well.
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