Star chef David James was unmasked as a cancer fraudster who conned a woman out of £2,000 after a hygiene rating by Denbighshire Council at The Crown pub in September
A chef with a hidden criminal history was unmasked when hygiene inspectors gave his bosses a zero-star rating.
David James, known as Dai, was cooking up a storm at 400-year-old country pub The Crown after its grand re-opening following the Covid pandemic. His creative takes on classic dishes was proving a hit with clientele in the Denbighshire village of Llandegla, much to the delight of owners Mel and Brian Braban.
But unbeknownst to the couple, David’s real identity was a convicted fraudster who feigned terminal cancer to swindle a disable widow out of hundreds of pounds. Real name David Carroll, the 41-year-old was found guilty of fraud in 2018, where Leicester magistrates court heard he claimed to have stomach cancer and just months to live, conning his then mother-in-law out of £2,000 for “treatment”.
Said treatment was in fact a holiday to the USA, and Carroll was sentenced to 26 weeks in prison, suspended for two years. The conviction was brought to light after a disastrous inspection in September by Denbighshire Council, Wales Online reports, in which The Crown received the lowest rating for storing “rancid” food and leaving the kitchen in a “filthy” state.
The Brabans, who had run the pub for over 10 years, later posted on Facebook to announce the star chef was no longer working for them, claiming the inspection had found “a number of significant issues in relation to the practices he was following”. David however has accused the pub’s owners of “scapegoating” him with the post, claiming his fictitious illness had in fact been a symptom of rare condition Munchausen syndrome.
He told WalesOnline he had “taken forward” learnings from the inspection. “It’s easy to do that when I’ve got a past,” he told the outlet, claiming that at the time of the fraud he had been “severely ill” with the rare syndrome – a condition where sufferers pretend to be ill.
The September 2024 inspection was followed up with a second in December – after David’s departure – which resulted in an improved rating, despite pointing to some changes still to be implemented, such as the labelling of sauce bottles. The pub’s owners say these have now been put in place, however.
David, from the nearby town of Ruthin, has said he made the career change into catering after his conviction to start afresh, claiming to have a level two food safety certificate and seven years’ experience as a chef at the time of the inspection. “I’ve gone through hell,” he said, saying he had no responsibility to disclose his conviction as it was spent.
“I’m still getting nuisance calls about it to this day. I was ill. I made a horrible, horrible decision that caused a lot of pain, and now everyone is tarring me with the same brush.” On the zero-star rating, he added: “I’ve nothing to do with it. I was off work just before it happened.”
