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SPYING BILLIONAIRE CLEARED 'TOO STUPID TO BE GUILTY'

Matthew Mellon

Thursday June 28,2007

By John Twomey

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A BILLIONAIRE playboy was cleared of plotting to spy on his wife yesterday – after a jury found him “too stupid to be guilty”.

Texas oil and banking heir Matthew Mellon was accused of hiring a firm of crooked private eyes to hack into shoe tycoon Tamara Mellon’s emails.

But the 43-year-old socialite walked free after Tamara told the jury he was “like a child” and “totally incapable” of reading a comic let alone a legal document.

“In 10 years, Matthew has never read a book. He can’t read a book, he can’t focus,” the founder of the Jimmy Choo empire told London’s Southwark Crown Court.

She was backed by another Crown witness – a psychologist who put Mellon in the bottom 11 per cent of the population for poor concentration.

A legal expert commented: “Two prosecution witnesses effectively cleared Mellon. Tamara told nothing but the truth – but there has never been a more helpful character assassination in British legal history.” The court heard he hired the corrupt firm – Active Investigation Services – during his bitter divorce from Tamara in 2004.

The playboy – heir to £4.5billion – did not give evidence. But his lawyers insisted he had no idea AIS was acting unlawfully on his behalf.

AIS employed a hacker to send Tamara bogus emails offering to help her divorce battle. Each contained a “Trojan horse” virus designed to copy every email sent or received. But Tamara smelt a rat and refused to open any.

The couple met 10 years ago at Narcotics Anonymous as they were both recovering from cocaine addiction.

They married in 1999 at Blenheim Palace in one of the society events of the year, with close friends Hugh Grant and Elizabeth Hurley on the star-studded guest list. They had a daughter, Araminta, now four, but the marriage failed in 2004 and Tamara filed for divorce.

Tamara, 38, told the jury that living with her ex-husband was like “having a second child”. He was a man who “missed planes like other people missed buses”.

But they were now the “best of friends” and he was a “fantastic father”.

She was later said by her solicitor Elizabeth Robertson to be “delighted” with the jury’s verdict.

AIS was run by serving detective Jeremy Young, 38, and ex-policeman Scott Gelsthorpe – but BT discovered listening devices in junction boxes that were traced back to the crooked firm. Detectives found scores of emails and other computer material which identified AIS clients and staff.

Gelsthorpe, 32, of Kettering, Northants, and employee David Carroll, 59, of Highgate, north London, were found guilty of computer charges. Carroll’s son Daniel and Maurice Kennedy were cleared.

Young, of Ilford, east London, who pleaded guilty, will be sentenced in the autumn along with Gelsthorpe and David Carroll.