‘Flash' James Stunt once blew £100,000 to impress Petra Ecclestone – now his bank accounts are empty

Telegraph

05-03-2025

James Stunt was once an unmistakable figure on the London art scene, regularly pulling up at Sotheby's and Christie's in a fleet of personalised black supercars – including a one-of-a-kind carbon fibre Lamborghini, a troop of security guards in tow. But these days, the 43-year-old cuts a rather more subdued figure. His bank accounts are blocked or empty, his fleet of luxury cars now locked away or impounded.
Stunt has been appearing at Leeds Crown Court, one of eight men accused of being involved in a £266 million Bradford money-laundering operation, the biggest money-laundering prosecution brought before a British judge in history. Stunt was accused of allowing his prestigious Mayfair office to be used as 'a trusted hub for money laundering' but denied the offence.
This week, nine years after his office was raided by police, he was cleared of involvement, hugging his father with relief outside the courtroom as they both struggled to contain their emotion. However, four of his co-accused were found guilty and are to be sentenced at a later date.
But this recent incident is just another twist in what has already been quite an eventful life. The former husband of Formula One heiress Petra Ecclestone has been a bullion dealer, an art collector, a lover of fine wine and a self-described 'billionaire'. He's been a cocaine addict, an alleged domestic abuser, and when he was declared bankrupt in 2019, the judge called him 'appalling'. His former father-in-law, Bernie Ecclestone, has called him a 'flash bastard' and an 'idiot'.
He has links to the criminal underworld but also to royalty. He claims to know David Cameron 'intimately', has lent art to King Charles (more on this later), and there are multiple photographs of him cosying up to the monarch. On Stunt's Instagram (now deleted) he called himself 'the most hated man in London'. One former friend of his, who asked not to be named, described him simply as 'Stunt the c--t'.
He grew up in Virginia Water, Surrey, in an affluent family. His father, Geoffrey, was from Brixton and had built a self-made fortune in commercial printing. His godfather is also 'The Godfather' – the alleged Mob boss Terry Adams, a man linked to 25 murders, money laundering, racketeering and extortion.
Stunt went to Bradfield College in Berkshire (annual day pupil fees are currently just shy of £45k), where a contemporary describes him as 'mildly amusing in a petulant way, always rubbing the teachers up'. Stunt himself quipped that students of Bradfield were 'like cream – rich and thick'.
In 2014, he donated money to his former alma mater to restore a dilapidated building, which was renamed Stunt Pavilion in his honour. His former housemaster Stuart Williams said at the time: 'James was a bundle of energy and extremely good fun. Sometimes, I had to persuade him not to be, which led to a few encounters.'
As a young man, Stunt claimed variously to have been an oil tycoon, a shipping magnate and a gold trader. Before meeting Petra in 2006, on a blind date set up by a friend, Stunt says he dated another young heiress, Camilla Fayed, the daughter of Harrods owner Mohamed Fayed.
On his first date with Petra, Stunt says he took her to Crockfords, the private casino, where he blew £100,000. 'I was trying to be Flash Harry,' he recalls. And when he married the 22-year-old heiress in 2011, Stunt was catapulted to a stratospheric level of wealth.
There was the engagement party at Battersea Power Station, a £12 million wedding at Odescalchi Castle near Rome, with Alicia Keys, Eric Clapton, Andrea Bocelli and the Black Eyed Peas chartered in by helicopter to entertain guests. 'A fairy-tale wedding fit for a Formula One princess,' according to Hello! magazine.
The couple had three children (Lavinia, now 12, and twin boys, James and Andrew, now nine) and lived a life of glamour and excess. One of many properties they owned was the 123-room Holmby Hills mansion – the largest house in Los Angeles – built by the television producer Aaron Spelling. Petra bought the mansion, originally dubbed 'Candyland' in honour of the producer's wife, for $85 million and an ever-modest James renamed it 'Stunt Manor'. It had a screening room, bowling alley, beauty salon, billiards room and gift-wrapping room, plus a wine cellar where Stunt stored what is thought to be the world's largest collection of Pétrus.
From his Mayfair office on Curzon Street – in the former HQ of M15 – James ran his numerous business dealings. He would regularly lunch at the members' club 5 Hertford Street, where one former staff member recalls him splashing out on caviar and Château Lafite and tipping generously. During a single evening at the nightclub Tramp, he is said to have spent £200,000 on Cristal champagne alone.
When he wasn't partying, Stunt became interested in art and amassed a collection of portraits by Peter Lely and Van Dyck.
'I first heard of Stunt when he was still married to Petra, and he was swanning around Sotheby's and bought a Van Dyck portrait in a spectacular frame,' says Georgina Adam, an art journalist and author. 'He did build up an impressive collection, but to say he was seriously dodgy is an understatement. I'm sure he does have some sensitivity to art, but he probably has more sensitivity to money.'
In 2014, he withdrew from buying a portrait of Van Dyck for £12.5 million in order to keep it in the UK, and a year later, he loaned paintings from his collection to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.
'He wanted to put a collection together for his daughter to inherit, with a view to lending things to museums,' Malcolm Rogers, the former curator of the National Portrait Gallery and retired director of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, told Vanity Fair in 2020. 'He always presented himself as a very charitable and positive person.'
But in 2017, his marriage to Petra unravelled amid allegations of domestic violence, abuse and drug overdoses (denied by Stunt), and the couple were embroiled in a bitter legal fight over their £5.5 billion fortune. During the hearing, Stunt was said to have rubbed cocaine on his gums in court and made a gun gesture towards his ex-father-in-law, Bernie. He lost custody of his children.
It was around this time that his drug addiction spiralled. Stunt would later tell a court that he took cocaine 'every day for two years'. He took to Instagram and filmed bath-robe-clad rants about 'horrific allegations' against him – 'perpetrated by an evil dwarf named Bernie Ecclestone… a filthy second-hand-car dealer.'
Petra said at the time of their divorce: 'While we were married, he had someone create a Wikipedia page stating he was a billionaire. Later, he had an entire website created, listing himself on a billionaire rich list that he then paid Google Ads to promote if anyone searched his name. I gave him access to money, and the more he had, the worse he became.'
He certainly had delusions of grandeur. A former friend recalls him sending handwritten notes on light blue stationery that Stunt had decorated with a fake family crest, and carrying around a fake chequebook which referred to him as the Duke of Cumbria.
Post-divorce, Stunt was living in a townhouse on Chester Square, Belgravia, paid for by his father. But he needed money to fund his lifestyle, and it was around this time that he lent Prince Charles a magnificent collection of 17 paintings, including pieces by Picasso, Dalí, Monet and Chagall. The only problem was – they were fakes.
'The first time I spoke to Stunt, it was 2017, and he was screaming down the phone at me,' recalls Giampiero Ambrosi, the producer of The Royal Stunt, a documentary about Stunt's plan to pass fake art on to King Charles and make millions. 'I had been meeting with Tony Tetro, the famous art forger, and Stunt was wanting first refusal on a painting Tetro had done. He had commissioned Tetro to make copies of all these famous paintings and it was all very fishy.'
Ambrosi spent months researching Stunt, and even filmed him undercover – supposedly for a documentary about his art collection. He discovered that Stunt had loaned a then-Prince Charles a series of faked paintings to hang in Dumfries House. Stunt then valued the paintings at £217 million and then tried to use them – and the royal seal of approval – to secure loans to pay off his debts. The artwork has since been removed from Dumfries House.
'James could be very funny and charming and self-deprecating,' says Ambrosi. 'He'd go on about his $300,000 watch. He'd say, 'I have the street cred of a gangster with the business sense of a mogul.' But he could also be irate and crazy and paranoid. He was convinced there were all these different conspiracies against him. Sometimes he appeared wired, other times sedated.'
Since then, things have become difficult for Stunt. Because of the investigation into the alleged money laundering, he had his assets and cash frozen at the High Court in 2018 in a 'proceeds of crime' restraint order. He was declared bankrupt in a London court in June 2019, with debts of more than £5 million, including an unpaid sum of £3.9 million to Christie's. Stunt's £11 million luxury cottage in Belgravia was repossessed along with two other flats, each worth £5 million. He tried – unsuccessfully – to claim that a Van Dyck portrait of the Cheeke Sisters, worth £4 million, actually belonged to his father, Geoffrey.
But it seems he has, at least, found love. Stunt has been in a relationship with Helena Robinson, 28, since 2020. She was working in a watch shop when she met him, and she has been by his side as he appeared in court. 'She saved my life,' says Stunt. 'I've never met anyone more beautiful, on the inside and out.'
The money-laundering charge which Stunt has been facing alleges that his business Stunt & Co took in tens of millions of pounds between 2014 and 2016 from Bradford gold dealer Fowler Oldfield. The money probably originated from 'large-scale drug dealing' but could also have been generated by fraud, tax evasion or human trafficking. Stunt denies knowing or suspecting the cash was criminal property and has described the case as a 'fit-up'.
In 2022, forgery charges against him were dropped, after he claimed he 'didn't know it was an offence' to ask his personal assistant to 'forge' his signature so he could buy an Andy Warhol painting, while he was high on morphine.
As for the psychology of what makes Stunt act the way he has, those who know him have some theories. 'He always had a chip on his shoulder that he wasn't as rich or as knowledgeable about art as the people around him,' said one former friend. 'When you add drugs and unlimited wealth to the mix, that insecurity can turn toxic.'
'I think he genuinely had a desire to be knowledgeable about art and develop a real collection,' says Ambrosi. 'But he wanted to take short cuts and all he's left with is a bunch of lies and grandstanding. Everything about him is fake. He is so guilty of so many louche and shifty things.'