From £700m wealth and being courted by politicians and royalty to a life behind bars

THE spectacular rise and dramatic fall of Lawrence Jones reads like a slightly giddy work of fiction. But it's true.

-  JOHN SCHEERHOUT AND AMY WALKER

His start was unpromising, raised on a council estate in north Wales. But he went on to found a tech firm - UKFast based in Hulme - that became a giant, and ended up a multi-millionaire 'business guru' who regularly appeared on TV, courted by politicians and even the royals.

He has finally been unmasked as a sexual predator after a jury convicted him of two counts of rape.

From early life in poverty to huge wealth

In an interview in 2015, he recalled the moment as a child of six growing up in Denbigh he knew a life of poverty wasn't for him.

It happened when a shop assistant at discount store Kwiksave in Denbigh snipped his mother's rejected credit card in two, and Jones recalled he said himself. "That's never happening to me."

"I remember my mum having her credit card cut up. The shop assistant made such a big deal of it," he later said.

"I remember being conscious I would never let that happen. You don't need to understand money when you are that age. I had it explained to me in such a brutal fashion, it put me ahead of the game."

His mother Margaret, a teacher, and father Ken, an accountant, went on to run the St Kilda Hotel in Llandudno.

A chorister at St Asaph Cathedral in north Wales, he got a place to study and sing at Durham School in England, aged eight. There he boosted his £5-a-term pocket money to £40 by buying and reselling sweets to other pupils.