by Julia Roberts

Two fraudsters who tried to trick a Gravesend businessman into a "black money" scam have been jailed for a total of 28 months.

Tenness Leabua, 55, and Brown Tarley, 40, were foiled when the target of their con, the owner of the Rainbow Grill kebab shop in Milton Road, became suspicious, contacted the police and a sting was set up.

At Maidstone Crown Court yesterday, Leabua was jailed for a year, Tarley was jailed for 16 months - and kebab shop boss Irfan Erdogan was commended by the judge for his public spirited action and awarded £250.

Leabua, of Wordsworth Way, Dartford, and Tarley, of Fort Cray Road, New Eltham, south east London, went to the Rainbow Grill in May last year. Prosecutor Jill Beale said the two Africans tried to persuade Mr Erdogan they were wealthy and there was money to be made.

One of the schemes suggested was the black money fraud which involves conning victims into buying "expensive" chemicals which can be used to clean black "banknotes" smuggled out of countries such as Africa.

However, the currency is in fact worthless scraps of paper and the chemicals cheap.

The two men also claimed to have access to a gold mine and showed Mr Erdogan pictures of gold ingots and a suitcase full of money.

After their first visit, they returned to show Mr Erdogan film on a laptop computer of the plant where they said the money was being printed, as well as producing an ultra-violet bank note detector and paying for food at the takeaway with a £20 note Tarley claimed to have made.

However, having been alerted by Mr Erdogan, police arrived and the two conmen were arrested.

Leabua admitted six offences of possessing articles for use in fraud. Tarley, who is HIV positive and suffers from tuberculosis, denied three offences but a jury took just one hour to convict him.

Jailing the pair, Judge Philip St.John-Stevens said the scam had elements of "sophistication and persistence".

"Only an immediate custodial sentence can be justified," he added. "No other sentence marks the seriousness of it."

The court heard Leabua and Tarley had also offered to buy Mr Erdogan's off-licence for £150,000 cash without involving solicitors.

The prosecutor said, however, that this was just a ruse. "Talk of the purchase of the freehold may have been just bravado," she explained. "A means to strike up the relationship."