Opera singer hits a treble

An opera singer who cheated a wealthy widow out of £105,000 to fund his gambling habit and classic cars has been jailed for three years.

Andrew Amdur, 48, fleeced Elizabeth Shaheen, 66, by pretending he would organise a party in memory of her late husband and make a payment to charity on her behalf.

Mrs Shaheen transferred £80,000 to what she believed was the London Black Cabs Charity for underprivileged children but in fact Amdur had given the bank his own account details.

Amdur, who has sung at Twickenham rugby internationals, stole a further £25,000 from the grieving widow that was supposed to go towards a harp.

Jurors found the opera star, who claims to have performed for the Queen, guilty of two counts of fraud and a further count of theft at Southwark Crown Court.

After he was sentenced today (FRI), Amdur told his mother from the dock: ‘Three years for a crime I have not committed.

‘They cannot take my soul’.

Jailing him, Judge Nicholas Loraine-Smith said: ‘Within no time at all you had placed yourself and your family, particularly your daughter who was then only 14, at the centre this fragile woman’s life, and I have no doubt that, having befriended her, you were then just waiting to seize an opportunity to steal from her.

‘That opportunity arrived on 28 August 2017. Mrs Shaheen had taken you and your daughter out to lunch in a restaurant as she very often did.

‘The jury by their verdicts were sure that what was said in that recorded telephone call proved that you had encouraged Mrs Shaheen to make a hugely generous donation of £80,000 to the Black Cab Charity, a donation which you then caused to be paid into your own account for your own use.

‘Mrs Shaheen’s vulnerability and your extensive manipulative skills are both glaringly obvious in that extraordinary telephone call.

‘The money was immediately spent by you on gambling, which I now learn is an addiction from which you suffer, and other things within about a month you had got through it all and you wanted more.

‘You have shown remorse for what you did. The conduct of your defence made it abundantly clear that you never felt any.’

The court heard how the widow’s husband died in 2012, leaving her ‘utterly devastated and constrained by grief’.

‘It would seem that people found her charming, eccentric, generous, erratic perhaps – and you may take the view, having heard it all – vulnerable,’ said prosecutor James Marsland.

Amdur met Mrs Shaheen by chance in the summer of 2017 and soon became a regular visitor to her home in Clive Court, Maida Vale.

The victim would later say Amdur and his family ‘adopted me’ and would come and sing and dance for her at the flat.

Mrs Shaheen told the jury that she had clearly been unwell during their relationship and even suggested that the crooked tenor had drugged her.

During this time, Mrs Shaheen told Amdur that she wanted to make a donation to the London Black Cabs charity to take underprivileged children to Disneyland Paris in memory of her late husband.

But Amdur tranfered the money into his bank account, claiming £10,000 was for a party at L’Escargot Restaurant in Soho.

Mr Marsland told the jury that the money went nowhere near a charity and Amdur told police that he had spent it on classic cars.

Mrs Shaheen also withdrew £25,000 in cash and was seen on CCTV handing it to Amdur in a bank in Pall Mall with the money supposedly going towards a women’s harp.

But police later found an 8ft instrument in a Big Yellow Storage unit that had been rented under Amdur’s own name.

Investigators found Amdur had only spent £9,750 on the harp from the £25,000 he was said to have received.

Mrs Shaheen said the singer ‘put me in a mental state that was beyond comprehension.’

She said when she called him to ask for her money back he laughed at her down the phone

‘The most despicable part of this is they used a children’s charity for under privileged children to defraud me,’ Mrs Shaheen said.

Amdur insisted that he had been employed by the widow as a chaperone on £7,000 a month, adding: ‘I’m not heartless, I liked Mrs Shaheen very much.’

He said: ‘I worked very, very hard and it was very exhausting. This is a lady that liked leisure, she enjoyed life. She liked to go to salubrious locations.’

Amdur explained that he believed the £80,000 was payment for his chaperoning services and became ’embarrassed’ when Mrs Shaheen told the bank that the money was for charity.

He said that he runs several classic cars and had spent the money on that.

Amdur’s mother could be heard muttering from the public gallery: ‘I can’t believe it, what a wicked woman’ as sentence was passed.

Amdur, of Kingsgate Avenue, Golders Green, denied but was convicted of two counts of fraud by false representation and a single count of theft.

He was jailed for three years.