A DESPICABLE serial conman who cashed in on the Grenfell Tower blaze was yesterday jailed for 21 months. Anh Nhu Nguyen, 53, said his wife and son had been killed and was photographed beside the Prince of Wales when he met survivors.
He claimed almost £12,000 from the fund set up to help the victims. But he is likely to be freed before the first anniversary of the fire, having already spent seven months in jail.
The court heard the local council put him up in a Holiday Inn after Nguyen told his lies to family liaison officers, describing in detail how he lost sight of his wife and child in the smoke-clogged stairwell on June 14.
But while a major recovery operation was under way on June 15, the fraudster was nine miles away at a housing charity, prosecutors said.
Nguyen, of Beckenham, south-east London, showed no reaction as he was jailed by Judge Philip Bartle at Southwark Crown Court.
The judge said: “I am sure from everything I have seen that despite your low IQ, you knew full well what you were doing.
“You knew that you were taking advantage of these genuine victims at this terrible time of this terrible tragedy.”
The court heard that Nguyen received about £11,270 from charities and Kensington and Chelsea Council.
In all 71 people were killed in the inferno which swept through the west London tower block after cladding on the exterior caught fire
Nguyen pleaded guilty in November to two counts of fraud by false representation and one count of making an untrue statement for the purpose of obtaining a passport.
He was born in Vietnam, has been in the UK since the 1980s, is a British citizen and has 17 aliases.
He has 28 previous convictions for 56 offences spanning more than 30 years, including arson, grievous bodily harm, theft and dishonesty.
Councillor Kim Taylor-Smith, deputy leader of Kensington and Chelsea council, said: “What this man did was crass beyond words.”