(RepublicanPress.org) – On September 8, 2022, Queen Elizabeth II died at the age of 96 after sitting on the throne in the United Kingdom for nearly 70 years. In her elder years, the queen sometimes used a walking stick. She reportedly used one in public after an operation in 2003 and 2004, then again in 2021 while attending a service at Westminster Abbey. After she died, a man from England listed a walking stick he claimed belonged to Her Majesty — as it turned out, it didn’t.
On January 10, ABC News reported that Dru Marshall, an Englishman claiming to be a senior footman at Windsor Castle, was sentenced for listing what he said was Queen Elizabeth’s walking stick on eBay. According to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), the listing went up just one week after the head of the Royal Family died.
CPS released a statement advising that the eBay offering said the queen used the stick in her declining years, stating the money raised would be donated to Cancer Research UK. The prosecution said bids on the item reached GBP 540 — about $687 — before Marshall pulled the listing. He reportedly discovered that the Thames Valley Police were onto his scheme, and he was under investigation.
Marshall was subsequently arrested, charged with fraud by false representation, and found guilty. The defendant first claimed the whole thing was a joke, then he said it was a social experiment before settling on his final defense — he was hacked. But prosecutors debunked that claim using his search history showing he planned the scam. According to the Crown Prosecution Service, Senior Crown Prosecutor for CPS Wessex, Julie Macey, said Marshall was “fuelled by greed and desire for attention,” using Her Majesty’s death for personal gain.
The Southampton Magistrates’ Court sentenced him to a year of Community Order and 40 hours of unpaid work to pay a victim charge and other costs of GBP 614 — about $782.
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