A traveller 'King' buried in a 'six-figure' solid gold coffin headed a notorious crime gang who ran one of Britain's biggest-ever cowboy building rackets, it can be revealed today.
Frank Thompson, 69, who died in July, was given an extravagant send-off during which his coffin was taken on a six day 'farewell tour' of the UK in a Rolls Royce before being laid to rest in South London.
Hailed by relatives as 'businessman through and through with great wisdom, one said of Thompson: ‘He was the head of a very big family, the king of the family - everyone looked up to him.’
But what the family did not say was that in 2011 Thompson and three accomplices were jailed for a total of 20 years after making £1.3m by tricking elderly folk aged between 65 and 92 into paying extortionate fees for botched-up jobs.
Prosecutors said branded the scam ‘systematic fraud’.
