Japanese student pays £1,650 for 68-mile trip

The taxi ride was from Heathrow to Chelmsford, Essex - but the bill came to a staggering £1,650.

A Japanese student took the cab because she believed it had been arranged by her language school.

But she had fallen victim to a gang of illegal taxi touts who fleeced foreigners of thousands of pounds. Another victim was charged £240 from the airport to Golders Green.

Today the two men responsible face jail after their operation was halted by police. Kenneth Grieveson, 47, and Fred Gross, 35, would approach tourists - mostly Japanese and some as young as 15 - as they stepped into the airport's arrivals hall.

Grieveson would ask their name and offer to take them to their language school, though organisers had already paid genuine taxi drivers in advance.

He would disappear and return with another man, usually Gross, carrying a piece of card with the student's name on it. The students would be told that the driver they had booked and paid for had gone, and they were taking his place.

Students were sometimes passed on to other mini-cab drivers not involved in the scam. The drivers were paid just the standard fare, while Grieveson and Gross pocketed the difference.

The scam came to light when students asked the language schools to recompense them. Grieveson and Gross were arrested when detectives, investigating more than 20 similar complaints, staked out car parks at Heathrow. Grieveson, of Portsmouth, admitted he was a Heathrow taxi tout.

He produced schedules of fares given to him by legitimate cabbies and claimed that was what he charged the students.

Grieveson denied six charges of obtaining money by deception in March and April last year. He was convicted at Isleworth Crown Court on three counts and cleared on three. Gross, of Cheshunt, Hertfordshire, admitted three similar charges.