Edward Davenport (fraudster) - Gatecrasher Balls

Gatecrasher Balls

In 1987 aged 19, Davenport co-founded Gatecrashers, a company that organized parties for teenagers at country houses such as Longleat and Weston Park. The balls 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." In the aftermath of his conviction, Gatecrashers ceased trading.