Watch out for Conrad Sean Thornton of Chester

Potential employers in the UK and in particular the Chester area should watch out for an individual calling himself “Conrad Thornton” or sometimes “Conrad Sean”.

Who is Conrad Thornton?

Conrad Thornton applied to my company Triangle for a job as a Director of Client Development……..in reality over 7 months he failed to achieve anything, his references are non-existent, and he is prepared to engage in fraud to attempt to demand money.

Conrad Thornton also appears to interchange his name with “Conrad Sean”.

‘Conrad Thornton’ (if that’s even his real name) is a guy who lives (apparently) in the Chester area – but also sometimes claims to live in places across Spain – including Malaga and Mallorca.

Exactly where he resides in Chester is a bit of a mystery as for contracting purposes he tried to give the false address of Haines Watts, at Military House, 24 Castle Street, Chester. However Haines Watts confirmed back in December 2023 they have no business relationship with him, and he has no entitlement to use that address.

He then gave an address of 40 Road X, but after terminating his contract, we found NowTV accounts which he used a Credit Card registered at 38 Road X – and usually Credit Cards are rejected without the correct address.

Conrad Thornton claims to have close contacts at corporate giants Liberty Global and Virgin Group, and seemingly once met Richard Branson – but when he was put to the task of opening conversations with these ‘friends’ of his, failed to achieve anything.

Conrad is also someone with a strong propensity to lie, and seemingly a whizz in Canva and other image editing programs – so it could well be the case that the photo with Richard Branson has been doctored.

He lied in the recruitment process….

As I mentioned above, Conrad Thornton approached my company Triangle for a job as a Director of Client Development. He came with an impressive CV, claiming to have been generating £150,000 per month of revenue for another company – and claiming to have been employed by them from July 2022 until time time of applying for the job November 2023. He claimed because he was freelance he couldn’t provide any references….

In reality, he had only worked for this other company from July 2023 to October 2023 – and they then sacked him for achieving nothing.

Coming to me, he told me that he could “easily” bring in high-value clients including Liberty Global, Virgin and many others. But to do this, he demanded an up front payment of an invoice for a monthly fee – which he claimed he was going to re-invest at least 50% of into the company’s marketing campaigns.

That was a complete lie……and I think we can all guess what happened next!

He lied whilst working for me….

Giving Conrad Thornton the opportunity of Director of Client Development, he achieved nothing in 7 months working for the business (from December 2023 to June 2024). No revenue, barely any new business prospects – and 95% of the ‘prospects’ he did achieve were found through signing up through free government pitch websites – which led to nothing.

In April 2024, I told him enough was enough, and he continued to work for me telling me he was happy to work on a commission only basis. Fair enough I thought.

However by June he started making demands to be paid for May….and then started to make demands to be paid for June – despite agreeing in writing he wouldn’t be paid for these periods unless he achieved revenue for the company.

At the end of June, getting annoyed with his demands for money, I asked Conrad to send me a report of the prospects he had……he duly sent me a comprehensive list of ‘leads’ in the anticipation I’d pay him……in reality the entire list was full of lies! Project after project he claimed he was waiting decisions on – when in reality, he had been informed we had not been successful on. He claimed to be in active conversations with CEO’s and Executive Teams of large companies – when in some cases they had told him “no”, but Conrad claimed they expressed an “active interest”….. and so on it went. Lie after lie.

Not only did this happen, but in May 2024 we started to get some adverse comments on our social media from people Conrad Thornton was in debt with. I reached out to one person, and they explained they had done thousands of pounds of work for Thornton which they not been paid for – and out of desperation were writing on the company’s LinkedIn profile to attempt to get paid!

Then he went legal!

When Conrad Thornton realised the game was up he sent me a Grievance in early July 2024 and threatened to go to the Employment Tribunal. Seemingly, he decided 7 months after signing a contract that said he was a Contractor, he was now an employee (demanding unpaid wages, notice and even holiday pay)……but made demands to be paid by way of invoice, rather than PAYE – and obviously didn’t invite us to deduct taxes and national insurance from the invoice! Suffice to say there was no offer from him to now repay his back taxes, national insurances, and other PAYE things.

The response from me was “piss off”, and he then went to ACAS and now has issued a claim in the Employment Tribunal for over £15,000. Suffice to say the claim will be robustly defended, including applications to Strike Out the claim. We’ll be having fun with this one!

However, the premise of the Employment Tribunal is entirely false and fraudulent! He’s lied through his teeth in those proceedings too!

Then it got weird!!

We took over Conrad’s emails, and we found a CV.

The CV claimed that he had been employed by my company from 2022 to 2024, and claimed that his “18-month contract” was coming to an end. Employment at the previous place (he told me was from July 2022 to November 2023), Thornton changed to 2021 to 2022 in this iteration of his CV….quite a difference!

The CV went on to make bold claims, including to have boosted my company’s client base by 30% and even to have boosted annual sales of £750K! He did none of those things!

Then even more strangely, he updated his LinkedIn profile to say the same thing – despite the fact he was ‘connected’ with me!

The whole thing was full of lies.

Then it got weirder!!

Reading Conrad’s emails, it was clear from the outset what he said he was doing for the company, he really wasn’t.

But then we found that Conrad Thornton had used his company email address to sign up for accounts, including NowTV – and that he had used an address we’d never seen before for the purpose of credit card payments……and he used the name “Conrad Sean” rather than Conrad Thornton.

We also found email after email from various vendors sent to his company email account stating that payment to various credit cards had been declined.

If this wasn’t bizarre enough, then we found an email which contained this grid (and is nothing to do with my company):

The email said:

So on the below… if a 74 year old with a house value of £200k-£250k then we’d say “congratulations, our initial estimate tells us that you may be able to release approx. £91,125*”. Or a 61 year old with a £400k+ value is “…approx £127,075” – does that make sense?

Whatever the hell this means I don’t know – it looks like some kind of scam on pensioners…..

Ultimately, between this email, the odd credit card things and the lies told to me; we have referred the matter to the Police for further investigation, as its really odd.

Conclusion

Conrad Thornton, or Conrad Sean, or Conrad Sean Thornton – or quite possibly “Dave” – is a strange character. He appears to live a life of lies and his CV contains huge amounts of falsities and blatant lies.

He is prepared to lie in a recruitment process; lie whilst working for someone; makes agreements in writing he won’t keep to; and, even lie when his contract is terminated…… Not only this, but he is prepared to openly lie about his employment history on LinkedIn when the people who know the true history are able to view his profile!

You have been warned! Watch out for a man claiming to be Conrad Sean Thornton of Chester!