Man jailed over false 9/11 claim

A man who lied about having a son killed in the September 11 attacks in order to obtain £100,000 from charity funds has been jailed.

Cyril Kendall, 54, from New York, was sentenced to 11 to 33 years for falsely claiming he had a 29-year-old son, Wilfred, who died when the twin towers collapsed.

During the prosecution, Kendall produced a photograph of himself when he was younger saying it was his son and claimed to have dropped off Wilfred for a job interview at the World Trade Center shortly before the plane struck.

He said he spent the money from the Red Cross and Safe Horizons on family grief counselling and related expenditure, including a memorial service.

But prosecutors portrayed Kendall as a practised liar who used the disaster to fatten his bank account at the expense of charity organisations.

Kendall claimed that his dead son was his 13th child, born in Guyana 29 years ago, and produced a Guyanese birth certificate to show relief workers.

During his trial, one witness, an officer with the US Embassy in Guyana, said that she could not find a birth record for a son of Kendall named Wilfred-Another, a Red Cross official, said Kendall received aid from the charity to help with funeral expenses, rent, credit cards, living expenses and counselling.

Prosecutor Diana Florence said: " Little did those organisations know that at a time most New Yorkers came forward to help each other, Cyril Kendall came forward to help himself."

Now four of his 12 children could be prosecuted after backing up his story about a 13th child.

His daughter Attesta Kendall, 24, claimed in court that she was in the car with her father and Wilfred on September 11 when the young man supposedly went to the twin towers.

Out of the 500 fraud cases connected to September 11 terrorist attacks Kendall's case is one of the few to come to trial. In most cases defendants accused of stealing money from charities decided to accept plea bargains.

However, the court heard Kendall had a history of filing frivolous lawsuits.

He also has a criminal record. In 1987 he pleaded guilty to statutory rape and served four months in jail.