Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - He Faked Being Paralyzed - The Alan Knight story

Episode Date: June 3, 2025

Alan Knight, a man from Swansea, Wales, orchestrated an elaborate fraud by pretending to be in a coma for two years to avoid prosecution for stealing over £40,000 from his elderly neighbor, Ivor Richards, who had dementia. Knight, with the assistance of his wife Helen, feigned a severe neck injury that allegedly left him quadriplegic and prone to comatose episodes. They went to great lengths to support this deception, including hospital admissions, the use of medical equipment, and public appearances portraying Knight as incapacitated.

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That's cool then. Marvel Studios, Thunderbolts, the New Avengers, rated PG-13. Now streaming on, you guessed it, Disney Plus. This guy pretends to be a quadriplegic to get out of going to prison. Now the guy's name is Alan and Allen's around 42 years old living in Wales and bro is just a total con man and he really wants to make money by being as shady as possible. And one day in 2008 he pulls off one of the sleesiest cons I've ever heard of. See his neighbor is this guy, Ivor.

And Iver is 80 and he has dementia unfortunately and he needs as much help as he he can get. And I guess Alan learns about this and he's like, oh, I'll just scam this guy. He won't remember. And so Alan starts getting close to Iver, helping him with things. And over time, he low-key starts withdrawing money from Iver's bank account and putting it into his, also using Iver's checks to pay himself large amounts of money. And doing this, he's clearing tens of thousands of pounds out of Iver's account at a time. And if that isn't scummy enough, he goes so far as to forge Iver's will to make himself the beneficiary. And so over time, he funnels over 40,000 pounds out of Iver's account, or about $60,000 US dollars. And of course, poor Iver has dementia, so he has no idea

any of this is going on. And even if he did and he told someone, they probably wouldn't believe him anyway. Meanwhile, Alan's spending all this new money on himself. He's like going on vacations and shopping sprees. Here's the thing, though. Iver also has some social workers that help him out sometimes. And one day they're looking at his accounts or whatever and they're like, hold up a second here. And they noticed that a bunch of his funds from his life savings are missing. So someone must be stealing it. And so they call up the local police and they report it and police start investigating. And it doesn't take long before they start to zero in on the turd who recently worked his way into Iver's life. Good old Allen. And Allen becomes a prime suspect.

And eventually, in 2011, they have enough evidence, and boom, they arrest him. And so they bring him in and they start questioning him about all this missing money. And Alan, I mean, he's a con man. He's a legendary bullshk-er. He immediately tells them some made-up story about how he has an estranged son, and it must have been his estranged son who broke into Iver's house and stole the money from him. Here's the thing, though. Alan actually does have a son.

So police think he's talking about him, and they go and they arrest his poor son. And the son's like, what do you do? I didn't do anything. What's wrong with you? And they investigate him and they find that his son didn't actually do anything wrong. And so they dropped the charges against him. Which means they now know that Alan was lying. And this makes him look even more guilty. And he knows he's fucked.

And so he starts to panic until he comes up with a crazy idea. He'll just pretend he's paralyzed from the neck down. I mean, there's no way they're going to process. a quadriplegic. And so he has a bail hearing coming up. And Alan decides to show up to this bail hearing in a wheelchair and wearing like a neck brace pretending that he can't move his body. And there he tells the court that he was in a crazy accident while he was closing his garage door and he fell down and broke his neck and now he's paralyzed from the neck down and that sometimes he has seizures and sometimes he falls into a coma. And because of all that, that they

should grant him bail. And even though he's absolutely full of shit, like he's perfect I guess the court believes him and they grant him bail and now he's out free. However, it's not over for him yet because he still has his main trial coming up. And if he gets prosecuted there, he'll go to prison for years. And so Alan just keeps the lie going. He pretends to be paralyzed. And like police are still investigating him for stealing from Ivor. And they'll like show up to his house to try and talk to him, but he'll pretend that he can't talk to them because he's in a coma.

And his wife is there and she's like in on this whole scheme too. Her name is Helen. And so Helen will like tell the police, he can't talk to you because of his garage door accident. He's in a coma. And I guess the police are just like, hi. And of course, this also becomes Alan's excuse to not have to go to court.

And so he misses court date after court date after court date. Like I can't make it. I'm in a coma. And two years go by. And Alan and Helen are still pulling this scheme. And they keep pushing his court date back again and again and again because he knows he's going to get prosecuted and he'll go to prison. Now at this point, they're also doing other things to try and further legitimize their bullshit story.

Like Allen will check himself into the local hospital pretending to be a quadriplegic who's all messed up from this alleged garage door accident and he's like pretending to be paralyzed from the neck down to the hospital staff. And of course, the doctors there examine him and they never find anything wrong with him. so I assume they know that he's full of shit and faking it, but these hospital visits actually help him delay his trial even further. Helen even gets the attention of a local newspaper, and she brings a journalist to their house,

I guess to try and get press coverage to help legitimize their case. And the journalist gets photos of Alan hooked up to a bunch of machines, pretending to be in a coma. Like, here's a picture of him, here's another picture of him, here's one of him and Helen, here's another one of him and Helen. So bro is laying it on real thick. But as ridiculous as this is, it's working. He's still not in prison because they can't convict him because they can't have his trial

because he's always pretending to be paralyzed or in a coma. Until. Now police, they're not stupid. I mean, they know something's up with Alan. He's a con man. He's totally not paralyzed. And so they start going to that local hospital and questioning the staff. And I don't know what kind of HIPAA-type laws they have in Wales,

but the staff immediately rats him out. Apparently they're telling police that they had seen him sitting up in bed, writing things down, even feeding himself. You know, things that are hard to do when you can't use your hands. Not only that, by this point, police are investigating him hard, and they're looking for, like, any piece of footage they can find of him. Like, any camera he's passed by, they go and get the footage. And they find footage of him doing all sorts of stuff.

Like, here he is, on vacation with Helen. This looks like them on another vacation. Here he is shopping at Tesco. Here he is shopping at Tesco again. Here he is shopping at Tesco again. Here he is driving his car through a toll road and notice how he's using his handicap badge to avoid paying the toll. Like he and Helen apparently take a trip to an art gallery.

They also go to a wedding. They also take a whole-ass trip to frickin' Lego Land. And so police, they see all this and they're like, I knew it! This motherfucker ain't paralyzed! And so, armed with all this evidence in 2014, the prosecutors get the court to finally call Alan on his bullshit, and they order him to show up for this hearing. And so he shows up to the courthouse,

and Helen, like, wheels him over to the hearing. Alan Knight arrived in a wheelchair at court today, maintaining his claim that he's unable to walk. And they have this whole trial, and prosecutors share all these pictures and videos of him walking and driving and acting totally not paralyzed. And so, boom, Alan finally gets convicted. This is his mugshot.

British prosecutors say Alan Knight stole more than $64,000 from a bank account of an elderly neighbor who suffered from Alzheimer's. And Helen actually gets convicted too because, you know, she played a part in this scam as well. I actually don't have a mugshot for her, but here's a picture of her looking sad. And ultimately, Alan gets sentenced to about five and a half years in prison while Helen gets 10 months in prison.