Eamonn Holmes has said he was left feeling “very vulnerable” after being scammed out of £60,000 by a con artist.
The ‘This Morning’ host revealed he was “suspicious of everyone” after his account was raided by fraudster Jay Cartmill in 2014.
Speaking to The Sun, Eamonn claimed he was only alerted to the scam after his bank called him to ask if he had spend £25,000 on gardening goods.
He explained: “The effect it has on you is that it makes you suspicious of everyone and everything and you feel very, very vulnerable.
“I get this call and they say to me, ‘Mr Holmes, this is your bank here. Have you just bought £25,000 of paving stones and 400 metres of wood panelling?’”
Eamonn revealed he initially thought he’d been scammed while on holiday with wife Ruth Langsford, explaining: “We were in Dubai at a Bedouin experience. And the guy said to me, ‘I can’t get a signal on the machine, I have to go to the top of that sand dune to get a signal’. And I thought, ‘That’s where it happened.’ But it didn’t happen there.”
The scam actually took place in Belfast when Cartmill - who also targeted Eamonn’s former Sky News colleague Stephen Nolan - posed as the host for two weeks in a hotel and ran up huge bills, including £25,000 on a marble fireplace.
Eamonn added: “The guy with the brain hacks your account, the Mafioso lot pay him money, they take your details and they live off them.
Cartmill was handed a two-year suspended sentence and did not serve jail time, which Eamonn branded “scandalous”, as the judge had told him it was “a victimless crime” as the bank would reimburse him.