Lawrence Jones, a tech entrepreneur who founded UKFast, has been found guilty of drugging and raping two women in Manchester in the 1990s.
Jones was found guilty following a three-week jury trial at Manchester Crown Court and will be sentenced on 1 December.
He was separately found guilty of sexually assaulting a third woman – a former employee – in 2013 after a trial in January this year. Jones has already spent 10 months in custody for that conviction, which can only be published now that a reporting restriction has been lifted to not prejudice his second trial.
The woman had agreed to a £13,000 settlement in which she signed a non-disclosure agreement, the court heard.
Two separate women accused Jones of drugging and raping them in the 1990s while he worked as a hotel pianist.
A second woman (“Woman B”) said Jones drugged her at his apartment in Manchester in 1993 and raped her.
A third woman (“C”) accused Jones of rape, with the court hearing she felt light-headed after Jones told her to smell a bottle of liquid he was holding.
Jones pleaded not guilty but was convicted for both offences against the two women on 23 November.
Jones was cleared of raping and sexually assaulting a fourth woman, who alleged he sexually assaulted her in a hotel in 2013 while she worked at UKFast.
Rise and fall of Manchester tech tycoon
Jones set up UKFast, a internet hosting business, with his wife in 1999. Over the years he became a prominent figure in Manchester’s tech scene and received an MBE in 2015. He is worth an estimated £700m and has donated to the Conservative Party.
His former company employed around 500 staff, with clients including the Ministry of Defence and the NHS.
Yet at the same time Jones, a father of four, was being accused of “sleazy” behaviour. His company would use scantily clad women at trade shows, while influential Manchester tech figure Naomi Timperley called out a UKFast advert in 2016 that depicted a woman exposing her buttocks while skiing.
Jones’ “misogynist” behaviour was called out publicly by others in Manchester’s tech ecosystem, including a blog post published in 2017.
In November 2019 the Financial Times published an investigation, speaking to over 30 sources, that exposed Jones’ predatory behaviour.
Jones denied the allegations but left the business in 2020, with his wife taking the position of chief executive.
Private equity business Inflexion took over the business six months later and ousted Jones’ wife Gail. In June 2021, Inflexion merged rival hosting and tech business ANS with UKFast.
Following media exposure, several women made official complaints to Greater Manchester Police and Jones was charged in early January 2021 with one count of rape and four counts of sexual assault. He was charged with the second count of rape after a woman reported the crime to police in 2022.
The downfall of Jones has been documented by The Business Desk, which described him as a “sexual predator who presided over a toxic culture at his tech company in Manchester that had long been derided as outdated and sleazy”.