Unmasking the GBOK hoax by a fraudster....

Metropolitan Police were asked for their opinion about Arnold Johann Swanson and they told the Crown authorities that Swanson was a con artist. His plan was to float a scheme and not a radio station so that he could con money from business into his own pockets.

Swanson was a Canadian who had no money.

He was a Canadian version of Ronan O'Rahilly.

Swanson divorced his first wife and married a Canadian shipping heiress in Reno, Nevada, and she had money to spare. So he spent her money on a number of promotional schemes which allowed him to syphon money off into his own pockets.

GBOK was one of those ventures.

GBOK had been spun off the Voice of Slough Limited project started by John Thompson - who also had little money. Thompson had lived in Canada and returned to England at the time when commercial radio was being promoted by hundreds of registered companies.

All of this began late in 1959.

Thompson began making a noise for himself in 1960.

Thompson noted that a lot of the potential radio station companies being registered in the UK were copying the name 'Voice of America'. So Thompson registered 'Voice of Slough'.

Then along came Swanson who told Thompson all kinds of nonsense about his expertise, of which he really had none. So Thompson folded his project under the Swanson banner of GBOK and let Swanson take over.

Swanson conned Pye; BBC engineers, and many other people out expertise in order to get money from investors. It looked like he had money because he had control of his wife's finances and he splurged on buying an impressive house that fooled a lot of people.

Money begets money, and so does the illusion of money.

But things became too hot for Swanson and so he dumped everything back in Thompson's hands. Thompson then tried to revive his original idea, but without success and Thompson then tacked himself on to the ill-fated Radio Invicta project, and he had the nerve to complain in writing to the UK government, that Ted Allbuery had stolen that project from him with the birth of Radio 390!

I guess Thompson was trying imitate Swanson who by then had gone to California where his wife had bought another expensive property.

Then he went to Hawaii and bought a disused ocean liner which he explained was to become part of a new shipping line. Of course he didn't actually buy it, he just arranged terms so that it looked as if he bought it.

But his wife was getting worried and distanced herself from him.

Meantime he was back in Canada having sex with two underage teenage girls. His wife, accompanied by cops, caught him in the act and Swanson was arrested. She then divorced him and had to take him to court to try to regain control of her own money!

You will love his excuse that he told the judge in answer to the reason why he was in court: He said that he was so happy to be in the protection of the police who put him in jail, because his wife had become violently crazy, and he was afraid of what she might do!

Con men keep on conning and people keep on falling for their speil.

Think Ronan O'Rahilly.

​Think Radio Caroline.

There is a true story behind the birth of Radio Caroline, it's just that it has yet to be told and so you have not read it. Hopefully we will begin to remedy that before this year is out.