Edward Ormus Sharrington Davenport (born 11 July 1966) is a convicted English fraudster, socialite, and property developer.
The self-styled "Lord", nicknamed "Fast Eddie", came to prominence in the late 1980s as the organiser of the controversial Gatecrasher Balls for wealthy teenagers. After being convicted for tax offences in 1990, he began a second career as a property developer. He claimed to have acquired a substantial fortune, but also attracted controversy for his business practices such as the way he acquired the former High Commission building of Sierra Leone in London, during the country's civil war.
From 2005 to 2009 he was the "ringmaster" of a series of advance-fee fraud schemes that defrauded dozens of individuals out of millions of pounds. He was arrested and charged in December 2009 and was convicted in September 2011 along with five other defendants, receiving a jail sentence of seven years and eight months.
Early life Davenport was born in Kensington, London, to Dublin-born Ormus Neville Talbot Davenport, a Magdalen College, Oxford-educated director and general manager of pharmaceutical products company Benefax,Oxford University Gazette, Univ. of Oxford, 1927, p. 88 and his second wife, Jean (née Gorrie). His father's first wife was Elizabeth Aurora, daughter of the soldier Sir Hugh Tudor.Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Landed Gentry, 15th ed., vol. 3, ed. H. Pirie-Gordon, Burke's Peerage Ltd, 1937, p. 2295 The Davenport family claimed descent from 'Ormus de Davenport', alleged to have lived at the time of the Norman Conquest; mainly vicars and soldiers, they were subsequently listed in Burke's Landed Gentry.Armorial Families- A Directory of Gentlemen of Coat-armour, A. C. Fox-Davies, T. C. & E. C. Jack, 1910, p. 425Burke's Family Index, ed. Hugh Montgomery-Massingberd, Burke's Peerage Ltd, 1976, p. 41
Gatecrasher Balls At age 15, Davenport began selling clothes on Portobello Road. While still a teenage boarder at Frensham Heights school, he started organising parties, first at his home and then in nightclubs.. In September 1986, aged 20, Davenport co-founded Gatecrasher Ltd with Jeremy Taylor. The company organised parties for teenagers at country houses such as Longleat and Weston Park, which were attended by up to 10,000 party-goers at any one time and at the height of their success were generating £1,000,000 a year. The idea behind the balls was to enable wealthy teenagers at single-sex boarding schools to meet the opposite sex and drink large amounts of alcohol. As one reveller put it, "I'm here to get drunk and get laid". The balls gained a reputation for debauchery, with one newspaper calling them the scene of "Unbridled lust among upper-class Lolitas and public school Lotharios."
The balls ceased to be held after an HM Customs & Excise audit found that Davenport had substantially underpaid his Value Added Tax bill. Davenport was found to have understated his tax returns by £24,672 by falsely claiming that only £3.50 of the £14 entry fees for the Gatecrasher Balls was liable for VAT; the remaining £10.50 was supposedly for raffle tickets, a magazine subscription and postage. The prosecution described this as a "cheat" and Davenport admitted breaching VAT rules. Convicted for tax evasion, he was sentenced in November 1990 to nine months in jail. Asked by Tatler magazine how he coped with two weeks in prison, Davenport said in 2006: "Boring. There aren't many parties there." The sentence was reduced on appeal to a nine-month suspended term for tax fraud. He later attributed his legal problems to his being "incredibly naive about things like VAT."
Business In 1991, Davenport turned his attention to the club sector. His ventures included joint ownership. with Piers Adam, of the SW1 Club (now known as Pacha), and The Conservatory in Derby. After selling the clubs, he established a high-end pawnbroking business with offices in Bruton Street, Mayfair, to pawn expensive jewellery and luxury cars. After acquiring the manorial title of the village of Gifford in Shropshire, he began to call himself "Lord Edward", though he is not a member of the peerage. He claimed to own 25 buildings in the West End of London worth an estimated £100 million, controlled through a Monaco-based company called the Davenport Trust, as well as property in Monaco and Thailand.
According to Davenport, his business method is "buying leases on loss-making properties, returning them to a profit and then selling them." A BBC investigation reported that tenants would pay their rent to one of Davenport's temporary companies, which would then pay the owner of the building. He was accused by the BBC of increasing tenants' rents at short notice and evicting them if they did not agree to the new terms, but he denied the claims, calling them "very far-fetched." In 2006, his home was raided by police and Department of Trade and Industry investigators looking into his links with two property companies that collapsed owing millions of pounds. He avoided legal action on that occasion, although action was taken against an audit firm.
In 1998, Davenport and two other men were charged after running up an £18,000 bill at the luxury Gleneagles Hotel in Scotland during a five-day New Year party. The three were said to have posed as aristocrats. They denied the charges, which were later dropped, but Davenport failed to turn up in court and claimed that he had suffered kidney failure and could not travel because he was receiving dialysis.
33 Portland Place
33 Portland Place is a Marylebone mansion built in the 1770s, and designed by architect Robert Adam. It served as the London embassy of Sierra Leone from 1954 to 1998.
In 1996, Davenport was introduced to Professor Cyril Foray, the former Foreign Minister and High Commissioner of Sierra Leone, during that country's civil war. Davenport entered into negotiations with the Sierra Leone government in order to refurbish the London embassy, then valued at £5 million. He acquired a lease on the building for £50,000 but eventually claimed the property as his private residence. The government of Sierra Leone took legal action against Davenport in London in 1999, but the case was eventually settled with no clear victor. The British government offered to purchase a new building for the Sierra Leonean High Commission, leaving Davenport with the remainder of the lease. In 2005 a Nevis-based company, Portland Place (Historic House) Ltd, acquired the freehold of the building for £3.75 million. A UK company, with an identical name, Portland Place (Historic House) Ltd, is registered at 33 Portland Place with assets and turnover listed as nil.
The property was regularly hired out for tango and pole-dancing lessons and parties, leading to many complaints from neighbours. In 2005, the Sunday Mirror reported that orgies were being held at Davenport's mansion. In July 2006 Westminster City Council issued an enforcement order directing Davenport to cease using the property for "commercial and non-residential purposes" but this was essentially ignored and unauthorised use continued.
Davenport has also hired out the building for high-profile events, including exhibitions, films and photography shoots for figures such as Kate Moss, Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter. All Visual Arts used it for a Frieze Art Fair exhibition titled Vanitas: The Transience of Earthly Pleasures in 2010 and singer Amy Winehouse used it to shoot the video for her hit song Rehab. In April 2010, the house doubled as Lionel Logue's clinic in Oscar-winning film The King's Speech starring Colin Firth. A number of porn films were also reportedly shot there.
In July 2010, following a party at 33 Portland Place, Westminster City Council brought a legal action against Davenport charging him with breaching a noise abatement order. The case was dismissed by Judge Purdy at Westminster City Magistrates Court, and Davenport was awarded £28,000 in costs. Later that month Westminster City Council brought an action at the High Court charging that Davenport's use of the property breached planning permission. The council reported that Davenport had filled a small pool with 1,000 litres of cognac.Swimming pool at Georgian mansion 'filled with alcohol for party-goers to row across' The Daily Telegraph 14 July 2010 Davenport was found to have breached the 2006 enforcement notice and a High Court judge issued a permanent ban on the use of the house for non-residential purposes. In April 2011 Davenport lost an appeal against the injunction.
Patrick Cox
In 2008, Davenport purchased the fashion label of celebrity shoe designer Patrick Cox for £2.6 million. Following the sale of his business, Cox remained on the board. However, Cox was later forced to close his store and make his staff redundant when the deal broke down in acrimonious circumstances. According to another board member, Robert Lee, the £2.6 million promised by Davenport never turned up and his representative Peter Riley did not attend a single board meeting. Lee alleged that Davenport had tried to make licensing deals abroad using the Patrick Cox name without the board's approval or the right to do so, and had removed assets from Cox's studio in Chelsea. Davenport denied the allegations, saying that "everything he does is within the legal framework."
32 Portland Place Davenport also owns 32 Portland Place, which was the venue where pornographic actress Bonnie Blue, in a well-publicised manner much discussed in the press, purportedly slept with 1,000 men in 12 hours. At 7 A.M. on Sunday, 23 February 2025, three men were arrested there following the stabbing of three men during a fight at a 'sex party'. Four men were taken to hospital, their injuries "not believed to be life-threatening" per the Metropolitan Police.
Advance fee fraud In late 2005 Davenport acquired an existing shelf company and renamed it as Gresham Ltd – a name similar to, but wholly unconnected with, the well-known wealth management company Gresham Financial – which he used as a vehicle for advance fee frauds. Gresham was falsely presented as a long-established, wealthy and prestigious firm with a prospectus claiming that it had been involved in the commercial loans market since 1958. The company promoted itself through glossy brochures and advertisements in the Financial Times.
Between 2005 and 2009, Davenport and several co-conspirators promised to finance over 50 commercial loans, targeting construction projects in several countries. Businesses were asked to pay large sums for "deposits", "verification fees", "loan guarantees" and "due diligence". The company's records noted payments of £4.5 million from prospective borrowers. Ten of the largest prospects were promised loans of £500 million but, like the rest, received nothing. In one case reported by the Financial Times, a fee of €830,000 was charged as a "security deposit". The value of the fraud was said by prosecutors to be at least £12 million. Victims included Elizabeth Emanuel, who lost her savings after being promised a £1 million loan. An Indian businessman paid £285,000 to finance a €183 million loan but suffered "crippling losses" of £825,000 after no money arrived, leaving him owing €11 million.
In October 2009 Gresham was liquidated after companies secretly controlled by Davenport petitioned to have it wound up. He continued the advance fee fraud through another newly acquired shelf company, Cutting and Company (Investments) Ltd, which had been established in 1930 and had been dormant since about 2000. Cutting was portrayed to the public as a restructuring expert. Davenport sought to keep his distance from the fraud by using aliases such as "James Stewart" or "James Stuart". However, he was exposed when fire regulators recognised "James Stewart" as Davenport from photographs on his own website and informed the Serious Fraud Office (SFO).