A fraudster who conned men into spending thousands of pounds to fund designer clothes, holidays and online bets has been jailed for seven years.<\/p>\n
Model Gemma Kingsley, 50, targeted recent divorcees, and claimed she was due to inherit millions to convince them to lavish money on her.<\/p>\n
She also used stolen or false card details to pay for fancy hotels, including a five-star resort in the Alps, Swindon Crown Court heard<\/p>\n
“Your duplicity and brass neck is staggering,” the judge told her at sentencing.<\/p>\n
“You are a con woman who traded on her charm, charisma and good looks to entice and ensnare victims without any regard to the trail of destruction being left behind in your wake.”<\/p>\n
Kingsley found her victims on dating sites, and the court was told the men ended up “hopelessly in love with her”<\/p>\n
“They didn’t want to believe that her stories were the stuff of fantasy, even when they were being confronted with reality,” said prosecutor Barry McElduff KC<\/p>\n
One of the victims lost more than \u00a3125,000, and was “mortified and humiliated” when his wedding to Kingsley fell through.<\/p>\n
Mr McElduff said she quickly moved on to another man, using the same story that she was due to get as much as \u00a380m from a relative’s will.<\/p>\n
Kingsley ended up defrauding him of \u00a330,000, and later claimed she was pregnant with twins.<\/p>\n
Six months into the con, the man found photos on her phone of various bank and credit cards and called the police.<\/p>\n
Judge Jason Taylor KC told Kingsley she had “manipulatively pulled whatever lever you thought necessary to extract as much as you could”, and called her a “financial predator always on the prowl for easy prey”.<\/p>\n
\u20ac94,000 bill and fake Aussie accent<\/p>\n
Among her other victims was a man whose card she used to pay a \u20ac94,000 (\u00a381,000) bill at an alpine resort – for which she has been convicted of fraud in France.<\/p>\n
She even conned her mother’s carer out of \u00a3990 to pay for a holiday they all took together.<\/p>\n
On another occasion, Kingsley put on a male Australian accent to trick a finance company into paying a loan over the phone.<\/p>\n
The lies did not stop when she was arrested. Kingsley claimed the men were infatuated with her, and out for revenge.<\/p>\n
Read more from Sky News: In a victim impact statement, one man told the court it was “a deliberate decision by someone who I thought loved me. She deceived me mentally, emotionally and financially”.<\/p>\n
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