Conman made up paternity results

A conman set up a DNA paternity testing firm and then made up the results of anxious clients' tests.

Simon Mullane, 39, charged doubting fathers up to £600 for the service which was meant to have analysed DNA swabs from them and a child.

But after taking a fee he failed to send the samples away to a laboratory and simply guessed the outcome of some tests.

He then wrote letters to his victims, informing them that their results were positive or negative.

As a result some of his clients were given bogus information leading them to believe that they had or had not fathered a child.

After police learnt of the callous scam they offered the victims a legitimate DNA test to confirm if their results had been correct.

In all, Mullane made up the test results of 16 clients who had paid him a total of £3,212. He admitted to Bournemouth magistrates that four of the 16 had been given wrong results.

Mullane, from Poole, Dorset, pleaded guilty to 16 counts of theft between May and August 2002.

His case was adjourned for reports, but he was warned that all sentencing options including prison were being left open. Mullane, a former deputy chairman of Poole Conservative Association, who now lives in Grenada, Spain, left court in a white Rolls-Royce.

His internet-based firm, High Profile DNA, was set up to act as a middleman between UK clients and a Canadian testing company. DNA paternity tests cannot be carried out in Britain without the mother's consent, providing High Profile with a ready market.

Mullane's website offered "fast, painless and the only accurate means to determining paternity", giving the impression that swabs sent out next day would quickly be analysed in a laboratory.

But police believe Mullane's firm continued to send out results for four months despite ceasing contact with the lab in April 2002.

When police raided his business in Parkstone, Poole, they found a sealed envelope with a swab sample inside. Though it had not gone for analysis, Mullane had already sent his client a "positive" result.

Speaking after the hearing, Mullane claimed he did wrong because he was swamped with work and the business became chaotic. "We set up aiming to do about four or five tests a week, but very soon we were doing 100 a week," he said.

"We couldn't keep up with the administration and were shortstaffed. We sent back a lot of refunds because of the long waits.

"We also set up in France, Germany and Spain and got more business than we ever thought we would.

"In the end, out of 8,000 results 16 were wrong. Four got the wrong conclusions, one got another's results and the rest had other paperwork that wasn't correct.

"I pleaded guilty to 16 charges of theft. I've held my hands up to them and because the paperwork wasn't correct it is theft.

"We never set up the business to defraud people and the police let us carry on trading when they were investigating because they realised it was not that type of company."

A spokesman for Dorset Police said: "This was a remarkably mean and cruel offence. In the worst cases, people built up a relationship with a child on the back of a letter they took as genuine only to find out that it wasn't."

Mullane pleaded not guilty to 19 counts of forgery and 19 counts of using a false instrument, which the prosecution agreed not to proceed with. He will be sentenced for the theft charges on 31 August.

The maximum sentence for theft is seven years in jail.