A former City currency trader who fled after running up a £3,000 bar bill with friends on a cancelled credit card has been spared jail.
Joshante Amihyia, 23, put the card behind the bar for a seven-hour drinking session at the Crowne Plaza Hotel at London Bridge on September 25 last year.
He and his friends started the night with a bottle of champagne before switching to cocktails and beer, the Old Bailey heard.
Amihyia, who once dated Tamera Foster, a contestant on the 2013 series of The X Factor, abandoned the card when the group left just before midnight.
They had spent £2,965 on drinks, with a £371 service charge on top.
Amihyia, chief executive of now-defunct City firm J A Wealth Consultants, was not traced until May this year, and then claimed he had not realised other people at the table were putting drinks on his tab.
He said he had only bought about £40 of drinks himself, on a card borrowed from a friend for online shopping, and had forgotten to collect it when he left. But the jury convicted him of fraud by false representation after just over an hour of deliberations.
Recorder Judge Jeremy Dein QC ordered Amihyia, from Brockley, to pay the Crowne Plaza £2,965 and complete 120 hours’ community service.
Amihyia, who is currently jobless, was also given a six-month night-time curfew from 10pm to 6am.
His former company operated from Canada Square in Canary Wharf, offering tips to young entrepreneurs on foreign exchange currency trading. It was established in February 2014 but has since ceased to trade.
