A CWMBRAN serial internet fraudster was branded a “cheap confidence trickster” yesterday by a judge who sentenced him to 42 months’ imprisonment for seven counts of fraud.

Judge David Wynn Morgan made the statement as he sentenced Phillip Shortman, 23, of Taff Court, Thornhill, at Newport Crown Court.

Shortman, who pleaded guilty to the charges, already had 48 convictions for fraud between 2005 and 2009.

Judge Morgan said: “You seem to have some sort of pride in your notoriety but your notoriety derives you as a cheap confidence trickster and not a good one at that as you keep getting caught.”

Shortman pleaded guilty to two of the counts at the court last month.

Prosecuting, Gareth James said the defendant had advertised a software package on trading website Gumtree for £500 last September.

Ralph Langowitz, who lives in Switzerland, bought the package after using search engine Google to find out about Shortman and questioning him about whether he was the “eBay celebrity”, which Shortman denied.

But Mr Langowitz received a low-quality copy of the software described by him as “£2 worth of plastic”.

In the same month, Shortman offered an iPhone 3GS 16GB for £230 on Gumtree, which Balraj Bangar from Leicestershire bought only to receive a different, poorquality phone.

Both offences took place when Shortman was still on licence after being sentenced to 30 months in July 2009 for making more than £7,000 selling non-existent Six Nations rugby tickets, computer graphics cards, laptops and games consoles on internet sites.

He was released from prison for this offence in July last year.

Shortman was also committed to crown court yesterday for sentencing having pleaded guilty to the five other fraud offences at a videolink hearing in Newport Magistrates’ Court on April 4.

At that hearing, Shortman admitted advertising Ryder Cup tickets, iPhones and software packages on Gumtree and eBay resulting in an overall loss by the victims of £1,913.

Representing Shortman, Hugh Wallace said the overall loss to the victims was less than £2,400 and said Shortman had pleaded guilty at the earliest opportunity.

Police welcome prison term

DC Mick Lumsden, of Gwent Police, who led the investigation, welcomed the verdict.

He said: “This conviction is the culmination of a protracted investigation into blatant fraudulent activity.

We are hopeful it will put an end to Mr Shortman’s determined efforts to defraud innocent people and deter others from committing similar crimes.”

EDITORIAL COMMENT: Time’s up for cons

SERIAL conman Phillip Shortman has been appearing on our pages for several years now and attempts to break his errant ways have so far been to no avail.

Shortman, from Thornhill, Cwmbran, has amassed 48 convictions so far for what basically amounts to ripping off people via the internet.

First via eBay and later through other popular sales websites he has systematically defrauded dozens of people of their cash and lived it up on the proceeds.

Inevitably he gets caught, admits his crimes and takes his punishment.

The problem is that the sentences handed down so far seem to have done little to cure his wrongdoing.

Now, as we report on another page, he has been given a ‘serious’ amount of time – three-and-a-half years in jail.

Naturally he will not serve the full sentence because, as usual, he has pleaded guilty.

But he should serve at least two years and hopefully that length of time behind bars might convince him that crime really isn’t worth it, and this might spare another bunch of innocent victims the ordeal of losing hundreds or even thousands of pounds of their hard-earned money.