A Man Claimed He Was Selling Queen Elizabeth II’s Walking Stick for Cancer Research. He Was Just Convicted of Fraud

Just a week after Queen Elizabeth II's Sept. 2022 death, a British man listed a walking stick on eBay that he claimed once belonged to the British royal herself.

Dru Marshall, 26, said he planned to donate the proceeds from his sale to the charity Cancer Research UK.

The only problem was that the stick had never once been used by the late Queen, and Marshall had intended to keep the money for himself.

“Dru Marshall used the death of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II to try and hoodwink the public with a fake charity auction – fueled by greed and a desire for attention," Julie Macey, a senior crown prosecutor, said.

The South England resident was charged with fraud by false representation on Monday and given a 12-month community order as well as a fine of $783, the Crown Prosecution Service announced.

To make his post appear more believable, Marshall claimed he was a senior footman — a role similar to that of a butler — at Windsor Castle, where Elizabeth lived in the last decade of her life.

Her Majesty used the stick more frequently in her later years, "as she struggled with her mobility," the listing explained.

Prospective buyers offered as much as $685 for the walking stick.

But Marshall took the listing down in the middle of the auction after learning that police had grown suspicious of his claims.

Marshall had initially argued that the listing was simply a joke gone wrong.

He later said he was trying to devise a social experiment "to see how much attention his post would receive."

But the court was unconvinced, in part because Marshall had Googled "how to delete an eBay listing" before ultimately taking the post down.