Lavish and chilling: life of criminal who owes £3.2m

Outwardly respectable, he presents himself as a gardener, painter and decorator earning cash from odd jobs. Yet somehow he affords a lifestyle featuring an ocean-going yacht, fast cars and extravagant spending on his mistress.

Throw in a 20-room home with swimming pool, hot tub and steam room, and criminal associates including Millennium Dome jewel raiders and the father of an EastEnders actress, and the similarities with 007's foes increase. But the history of the grey-haired 53-year-old from Bromley is chillingly real.

May has prospered on the proceeds of a career alleged to have involved drug smuggling, armed robbery, money laundering and even murder. For years, as police struggled to compile evidence, he evaded prosecution and enjoyed a lifestyle of excess. On one occasion he flew a group of friends, including some who were involved in the failed 2000 Dome robbery, to New York to watch a Lennox Lewis title fight, posing for photos at the city's sights before spending freely in a weekend of hedonism.

Court documents show how he treated mistress Patricia Traynor to a house in Dulwich and a BMW, while giving his wife a £30,000 Mercedes. Other purchases included a £175,000 Sealine yacht and three more properties — one near Canary Wharf, the others in Kent — which in 2002 were together valued at well over £1 million.

Much of the criminal profits were spent on his family home in Bromley. Decorated in rather questionable taste, it has 20 rooms, including eight bedrooms, a pillared entrance porch, "fabulous" entertainment complex and tennis court. It lies in extensive gardens at the end of a long gated drive.

While May enjoyed the fruits of his crime, police, alerted partly by his wealth, started to close in. A long inquiry began, including a bugging operation. Detectives installed a "probe" in the Mercedes May used as an office from which to run his empire. Conscious of security, he had sent two minders to Germany to fetch it from the factory, and had the car guarded round the clock.

The probe recorded coded conversations thought to refer to cocaine imports and guns. This led police to arrest May and eight associates including Vincent Stapleton, father of ex-EastEnders actress Nicola Stapleton. It turned out May was conducting a VAT scam involving fraudulent tax rebate claims for non-existent international trading in computer chips. After an Old Bailey trial ending in 2001, May was jailed for four years and a £3.26 million confiscation order imposed.

The full extent of the evidence amassed against him was disclosed in a Court of Appeal ruling on his case in 2005. The judgement described how recorded and "background intelligence" material "contained allegations that May had been behind a massive importation of cocaine in the Nineties, had rebuilt a criminal empire and had been involved in ... armed robbery, money-laundering and other drug importations".

It revealed he was "suspected of involvement in a number of murders" and was alleged to have been a "highly successful professional criminal" for "many years".

Even now he continues to flout the law. He has so far avoided paying the £3.26 million confiscation order — though when he recently put his Bromley home on sale for £2.5 million, the estate agent's advert stated he had spared "no expense" in building a home to the "highest of standards".

Summoned to the High Court last week for contempt of court after breaching restraining orders on his financial activities, May could have gone to jail.

Instead, after claiming he had ignored the curbs because of his earnings from painting, decorating and gardening, the multi-millionaire was given a six-month suspended sentence, and walked free.