BRITAIN’S biggest ticket fraudster, Terry Shepherd, who duped hundreds of Australians in a global ticketing scam has been jailed for eight years in London for his “massively cynical” Olympic ticket scam.

Australians lost hundreds of thousands of dollars when they were tricked into buying tickets to the Beijing Olympics from a fake website. The scam was uncovered by Sydney cyber crime expert Ken Gamble who exposed Shepherd and his cronies. Mr Gamble compiled a dossier showing the Olympic site and other websites had been registered to XL&H, a company based in Phoenix, Arizona, that was controlled by Shepherd and were fake.

Following Gamble’s revelations police around the world were flooded with people complaining they had been victims of scams by Shepherd. He was convicted last week along with Alan Scott, 56, who was sentenced to seven years. The company set up by Shepherd, 52, made £4.5million before collapsing, owing £7.3million, on the eve of the 2008 Games with 5,000 victims.

Judge Martin Beddoe, sitting at Southwark crown court, told Shepherd: “It was a massive, cynical and an entirely dishonest trick, motivated solely by greed and executed as cynically as can be imagined.” He said the gang had showed not a “scintilla of remorse”.

“You, Terence Shepherd, clearly received the lion’s share. What you then got your hands on was blown on a catalogue of excess – luxury cars, foreign trips and the extraordinary expenditure of your wife.”

Mr Gamble said Shepherd thought he was beyond the law and it was fantastic to finally see him brought to justice. “He stole money from a lot of people and it’s good to see him finally sentenced to behind bars,” he said.