Two professional conmen 'murdered millionairess and amateur escort and paid women to impersonate her to strip her wealth'

Two conmen murdered a wealthy businesswoman and amateur escort then recruited a string of impersonators to ‘take her to the cleaners’, the Old Bailey heard on Friday.

Nicholas Kutner, 48, and Rakesh Bhayani, 41, allegedly killed 49 year-old Carole Waugh so they could fund their gambling habits and their taste for the high life. She had been stabbed in the neck.
The prosecution argued that an unpaid £40,000 debt Mr Bhayani owed Ms Waugh was one possible motive for the murder.

In court: Artist's impression of Elie Khoury (left), Nicholas Kutner (middle) and Rakesh Bhayani (right) in the dock today. Kutney and Bhayani admit defrauding Ms Waugh by deny murder

Ms Waugh, who lived alone at a £600,000 flat in Marylebone, west London, was reported missing by her family in May last year.
But it was not until August 2 that her body was found in a lockup garage in New Malden, south London.

Kutner and Bhayani admit defrauding Ms Waugh but deny murder.

Prosecutor Patrick Gibbs QC said that Ms Waugh was ‘on the lookout for male company’ when she was targeted by the two men.
She was a wealthy woman, having worked as an accounts clerk in the oil industry in Libya, and owned shares and expensive jewellery.

Ms Waugh also had an income from working as an amateur escort, the court heard.

Bhayani and Kutner on the other hand have a history of fraud and first met in prison, the court heard.

Mr Gibbs said: ‘They were professional conmen and lifelong gamblers. They have a long history of tricking people and defrauding people to get their hands on large sums of money which they require in order to feed their gambling habits.

Trial: Carole Waugh, 49, a wealthy woman who was allegedly murdered by two professional conmen with gambling habits

‘They both had a taste for grand and expensive things but above all both were gripped by the same compulsion - the compulsion to gamble.

‘As soon as Carole Waugh was dead a number of women were paid by them to impersonate her. These women pretended to be Carole Waugh on the telephone, to the banks, in the shops buying things. They were usually accompanied by Mr Bhayani around London stripping Carole Waugh’s assets.’

A third man, Elie Khoury, 40, is said to have helped to recruit the women who impersonated Carole Waugh.
‘He was a close associate of Mr Bhayani and he knew even before Carole Waugh was killed that Mr Bhayani intended to take her to the cleaners,’ said Mr Gibbs.

Kutner, of no fixed address, and Bhayani, of Wembley, northwest London, both deny murder and perverting the course of justice. They have both admitted conspiracy to defraud. Khoury, of Paddington, west London, denies one count of conspiracy to defraud.

Carole Waugh was stabbed in the neck on her bed at home and her body was hidden in the boot of former lover Bhayani's car for nearly four months, the court heard.

Mr Gibbs said she is thought to have died on the night of April 16-17, when her phone stopped being answered, she failed to contact her mother and brother in Durham and her use of online dating websites ceased.

Her decomposing body was found on August 2 last year in the boot of a car belonging to Bhayani near garages in New Malden, south London.

'Her bodily remains were obviously examined, and the examination suggests that whatever else happened to her, she was stabbed in the neck', said Mr Gibbs.

'The evidence strongly suggests she died during the night of April 16-17.

Relatives: Carole's sister-in-law Karan Waugh and right, her brother Chris Waugh outside the Old Bailey today

'Certainly it seems there was no reliable evidence of her being seen or heard from in any way that can be confirmed to be her after that time. Contact with her family ceased, all incoming calls to her telephone were no longer answered in person by her.'

Mr Gibbs said under Bhayani and Kutner's direction, outgoing calls on Miss Waugh's phone began being made, and unusual transactions were made for items like gold bullion and gold coins.

He said blood stains in the bedroom of her Marylebone flat indicated she was killed 'on or by her bed'. Whoever struck the fatal blow or blows, Mr Bhayani and Mr Kutner planned it and were responsible for it', he said.

  'She [Ms Waugh] thought that he was her friend, but Mr Bhayani doesn't really do friends' - Prosecutor Patrick Gibbs QC

'Having taken her life, they then systematically took all her worldly goods as well.'

Bhayani plotted to murder Miss Waugh and plunder her fortune while behind bars, even as she came to visit him in prison, the court heard.

The conman probably met her when she was working as an escort and pretended to be her friend to learn how much money she had, it is alleged.

Mr Gibbs said Miss Waugh loaned Bhayani £40,000 in February 2011, before he was sent to prison, and supported him in court when his sentence was passed.

'She had known Mr Bhayani for quite a while, she knew him before his last prison sentence', he said.

'When he turned up at court to be sentenced before his last prison sentence, she supported him - she went there. While in prison serving that sentence, she visited him four times. Like anyone else who has met Mr Bhayani, she was taken in by him. She thought that he was her friend, but Mr Bhayani doesn't really do friends.

'For her money, once he had been released from prison, knowing she had it and how much she had and wanting it, he planned that she should die.'

Mr Gibbs said there is evidence Miss Waugh 'may first have met him through an advertisement of herself as an escort on the internet, that may be how they first met. It seems she had been intimate with him, at one time or another in the past.'

He said Kutner is not thought to have had a sexual relationship with Miss Waugh, but also knew her at the time she died.

'She knew him as Nick, wasn't intimate with him and was probably unaware of the extent to which he was shadowing her in the days before her death.

'But Mr Bhayani and Mr Kutner knew each other very well by April 2012 when Carole Waugh died, they spent a lot of time together and they were in frequent physical contact and frequent telephone contact.'

Miss Waugh's body was wrapped in bed sheets and 'crammed' into a holdall after she had been stabbed through the neck, the court heard.

'In all likelihood, she was killed in her bedroom, her body wrapped in whatever was to hand, whatever was on the floor or the bedclothes, and then later she was crammed into a large holdall and lifted into the boot of an old car which had been bought for the purpose', said Mr Gibbs.

'It looks as though the killers were hoping to dispose of the body in a secluded spot in the Cotswolds. They seem then to have thought better of it, choosing to use that garage, an anonymous garage rented for the purpose.'

Mr Gibbs said a post mortem revealed the stab wound to Miss Waugh had gone through to her spine and punctured one of her lungs.

He added: 'The expert was able to give a formal cause of death because of the extent of decomposition, it was impossible to be certain the stab wound in the neck down to the spine had been fatal. But it was certainly a potential cause of death.'

Ms Waugh was fully-dressed when she died, the court heard, and was wearing two treasured gold bracelets that needed a screwdriver to undo.

Mr Gibbs said she was still wearing those bracelets where her body was discovered on August 2 last year.

'Her jewellery was never found, her favourite necklace had gone', he told the jury. 'Her expensive watch was never found, and her rings and jewellery given to her over the years. All that remained was the two Cartier bracelets on her dead body. They were hard to remove, needing a screwdriver - probably they were a bit squeamish about removing those from the corpse.' 

Mr Gibbs said transfers in and out of Miss Waugh's bank accounts started on April 17, including from a Barclays branch in Kingsland Road, Dalston, east London.
Tens of thousands of gold bullion and jewellery was purchased over the following days from a gold exchange in Charing Cross Road, it is said.
The prosecutor said: 'On April 19 Mr Bhayani bought the holdall that her (Waugh) body was put in.

'Also on that day the dark blue W-reg Golf was bought. Mr Bhayani was so desperate to get her body out of the flat that he bought two cars. How they got Ms Waugh's bank passwords and pins we cannot be sure of.

'Whether Waugh was tricked into handing her details over in life or trusted Mr Bhayani that she gave them or they were forced out of her before she was killed we cannot say.

'But by the time her body was finally found and they were arrested, they were arrested for the frauds before her body was found and arrested again for murder when it was, they had taken hundreds of thousands of pounds. Because she was dead she couldn't stop them.

'Carole Waugh was described by one person as having fanciful notions and notions of grandeur.

'She was keen to be thought of as a success and wanted others to think her life was better than it really was or her past was prone to exaggeration about her jobs in the past or future - disguising her disappointment that things didn't as well as she hoped.

'She was good company but lonely and looking for love. She advertised on dating websites and met people that way.

'At least one turned into a lengthy romantic relationship. She also advertised as an escort and for adult work on sites including Craig's List.

'She met a lot of men through adult work, calling herself Sarah and with the user name 'poshtottyfun' and described herself as "not a professional but with girlfriend experience interested in lots of good clean adult fun".

'Some of those she met she had sexual intercourse with, many of them paid her for that. One witness described her as less interested in the money than in the company. Her last outgoing message was on the 15 April in the afternoon.

'Her mobile phone was receiving calls and messages after her death from people who had seen her advertisements, men who were looking to meet up with her.

'The police followed up on the men who she had met on those websites, none of the messages contained any hint of violence or aggression. This internet escort activity must have been a significant part of her life but played no part in her death. That maybe how she first met Mr Bhayani.
Carole Waugh wrote a letter in support of Bhayani before he was jailed describing him as 'one of the good guys', the court heard.

Discovered: Ms Waugh's decomposed body was found in a lock-up in New Malden, south-west London

In the email read to the court, Miss Waugh gives a glowing reference to the conman saying she had been his colleague and friend for nearly a year.
'In the year we have been friends, he had always been kind, considerate, and always wanting to help people', she wrote.
'He is such a family man, he adores being a father and husband and loved to have his extended family around him.'
She added: 'He is one of the good guys.'
Mr Gibbs said: 'Whatever she thought she knew about him and his associates, she certainly didn't know she was about to be killed.
'She had stood up for him when he was in trouble. The reality is she, like so many others, had fallen for his lies.
'He is a brilliant liar, and like all brilliant liars, he could take a bit of truth and sew it in with the lies to make the lies appear more real and believable.

Lock-up: The body was found three months after Ms Waugh was reported as missing

'He is a very plausible and charming man, and those fragments of the truth wove into a tapestry of lies, enough to fool most people and enough to fool Carole Waugh.'
Mr Gibbs said one possible motive for the murder was the unpaid £40,000 debt Bhayani had with Miss Waugh.
He said evidence will be presented that Miss Waugh had been threatening him if he did not pay back the money, to expose his double life to his wife and children.
He said Bhayani was engaged in a scam on the day Miss Waugh is believed to have died, April 16, trying to buy a £45,000 diamond ring with counterfeit cash.
He went with a woman to a jewellery store in Bond Street near Claridges claiming to be a heart surgeon at St Mary's Hospital called Ricky Patel.
'The jeweller wouldn't take cash, which may have been just as well as any cash Bhayani had would counterfeit', said Mr Gibbs.
'He was very charming and when he left the shop, there was a security man he gave him a fake Rolex as a reward for keeping an eye on the car.'
Mr Gibbs added: 'That was a man off Bond Street rather desperately trying to get his hands on a £45,000 diamond ring by pretending to be someone completely different with money he didn't have.
'That is a man plainly not on residential rehab for gambling.'
Bhayani claimed to police that Miss Waugh had 'signed up' to the idea of him stealing her identity as an insurance scam, the court heard.
'He explained that she would go abroad and while she was abroad he would seize her identity, use her cards, run down her estate and sell her flat and take all her money', he said.
'She would come back and say someone stole all my money and sold my flat, and the insurance company would say bad luck and pay her out.'
Mr Gibbs said on reflection, this was 'an utterly fanciful idea'.
'He had plenty of time to think about how to get out of his debts but no way of repaying, he owed £40,000 to Ms Waugh and £12,000 to another man.
'She was threatening too expose Mr Bhayani and his life to his wife and daughter.
'They appear to have been in the dark about the life he was living when he came out of prison.
'He was swanning around in a Range Rover but they thought he was in a residential rehabilitation centre addressing his gambling issues.

Trial: Miss Waugh's body was wrapped in bed sheets and 'crammed' into a holdall after she'd been stabbed in the neck, the Old Bailey heard. The stab wound went through her spine and punctured one of her lungs

'He was leading a completely double life and had hone to extreme lengths to deceive his wife.
'He used the flat to make it up as a gambling rehabilitation centre and pressured Mr Kutner and others to pretend that they worked there so that when his wife came round she would think he really was at a residential rehabilitation centre when of course he was doing this.
'A witness described him as hanging on to his relationship with is wife by his fingernails.
'He was routinely unfaithful to the long-suffering Mrs Bhayani.
'He would have lost his young daughter if they had separated and losing his only child may have filled him with some despair.
'Mr Kutner was released from prison the same day and around the same time. They were both desperately addicted gamblers.
'Gambling was an addiction which controlled their lives, it ruined their relationships with their families because they stole from them and ran up debts in their names and got into scams and frauds and lies and deceptions which took them again and again back to prison.
'It was in prison that they met. When they met they would have found that they had much in common, both in their past, characters and in their expertise as conmen.
'In different ways and with different skills both were rather brilliant conmen. They often got caught but there's a theme if you look at the crimes they have been convicted of.
'They prey upon those who trust them for money that they can gamble it because they can't stop gambling. Neither one of them were natural born killers.
'They were conning people not hurting people and both could be extremely charming as part of the con but gambling had got them in its grip.
'By April 16 Mr Bhayani was increasingly desperate for money to meet his debts and feed his addiction.'
The trial continues.

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