Tech tycoon guilty of rapes and sex attack

A MILLIONAIRE entrepreneur whose for drugged and raped two women and sexually assaulted an employee who he tried to silence with money.

- Chris Riches

Lawrence Jones, 55 mer clients included the NHS, the Ministry of Defence and the Cabinet Office was convicted of the drug rapes yesterday.

But the jurors then learned he had been on remand in jail since January after he was found guilty of the sex attack. Reporting restrictions on that case were lifted following the verdicts of a second jury at Manchester Crown Court.

In the first trial, the court heard Jones and his wife Gail set up website host UKFast from their spare room in 1999 and it grew to employ 500 staff with more than 5,000 clients. Its success led to Jones, the chief executive, being made an MBE in 2015 for services to the digital economy.

But his career started to crumble in 2019 when an ex-worker went to police with a string of allegations against him, including that he raped her in 2010.

A second woman then came forward to say Jones sexually assaulted her in a hotel on a 2013 business trip.