THE intriguing case of a conman who travelled wartime Europe, pretending to be a British aristocrat and swindling Jewish refugees, is revealed in previously unseen police files.

Roy Vivian was a “clever and plausible rogue” whose movements around the Continent before and during World War II aroused the suspicions of UK intelligence agencies.

Posing as Lord Hampton, he persuaded refugees in Germany, Austria and Hungary to entrust him with their money and valuables to be smuggled out of their countries.

Many of them never saw their property again. Metropolitan Police files released by the National Archives suggest Vivian came to the attention of the British authorities in December, 1938, when the sister of the real Lord Hampton complained that a man was pretending to be her brother in the Hungarian capital, Budapest.

The Honourable Mary Pakington said she had been told by a Hungarian journalist that the impostor wore RAF uniform, claimed to have business connections and had the name “Lord Hampton” on a plate on his door.

She explained it could not be her brother because he was on a ship travelling to Australia.