A model who lured a series of men into sham relationships then conned them into spending thousands to fund her flash lifestyle has been jailed for more than seven years.
Gemma Kingsley, 50, ‘wove a web of lies with her victims’, promising them she was set to inherit £42 million from her grandfather.
She leveraged that fictitious fortune to compel them to spend huge sums of money on her behalf, including on a planned wedding, furniture for a new home, dental bills and other debts.
Jailing her at Swindon Crown Court today, Judge Jason Taylor KC told her: ‘Your duplicity and brass neck is staggering. You are a common thief who traded on her charm, charisma and good looks to ensnare victims without any regard to the train of destruction being left behind by your greed.’
At a previous hearing, Kingsley, of Beadnell, Northumberland, pleaded guilty to six counts of theft, four counts of fraud by false representation, two counts of using a false instrument with intent that it will be accepted as genuine, and one count of being in possession of an article for use in fraud.
She was jailed for seven years and seven months.
The judge went on: ‘Blinded by your greed, you persistently and manipulatively pulled whatever lever you thought necessary to extract as much as you could to fund an extravagant lifestyle.
‘Your principal lever was emotional, convincing men that their sincere feelings for you were reciprocated.
‘Two were recently divorced and, to some degree, more vulnerable and exposed because of that.
‘Telling them and others that you were due to inherit a fortune, worth as much as £80 million at one point.
‘You spun an intricate web of lies, including false documents, bank appointments and multimillion-pound house viewings, to add credibility to your claims.
‘The image you portrayed was so fantastical that it’s not hard to envisage how your victims were taken in by it because, bluntly, most people are not that divorced from reality.
‘Your lack of remorse was only matched by your guile in squeezing every last penny from one victim before moving on to the next.
‘You were a financial predator always on the prowl for easy prey.’
The judge added: ‘Over a period of years you were a well-spoken, educated and glamorous serial fraudster, fleecing unsuspecting suitors and anyone else you could take advantage of, unwilling or unable to control your greed irrespective of the impact on others.
‘Your methods were selfish, orchestrated, sophisticated and cruel.
‘When the police caught up with you your denials were vehement, portraying yourself as the victim, saying that your high profile as a model exposed you to stalking and harassment and how your allegers were either infatuated or revenge fantasists.
‘It was yet another pack of lies.’
The court heard Kingsley targeted recently divorced men through online dating sites to fund her lavish lifestyle of expensive clothes, holidays and betting sites.
Barry McElduff KC, prosecuting, said: ‘They were the victims of a sophisticated romance fraud committed over a significant period of time.’
He said the two principal victims had met Kingsley on dating sites, adding: ‘They were, to use my words, both hopelessly in love with her. The defendant traded on her good looks to perpetuate her deception.
‘It was perhaps because they loved her that they didn’t want to believe that her stories were the stuff of fantasy, even when they were being confronted with reality.’
One of the men lost more than £125,000 and was left ‘mortified and humiliated’ after being forced to cancel his wedding to Kingsley when the lavish venue pulled out.
Mr McElduff said on another occasion Kingsley made a phone call to a finance company impersonating a male Australian accent to dupe them into paying a loan.
After splitting from the first victim, she quickly moved onto the second man – spinning the same web of lies about a multimillion-pound inheritance.
‘He was later to describe it as a ‘cognitive sea sickness’, that the defendant was telling him that everything was going to be fine, but his eyes and mind was telling him something different,’ Mr McElduff said
After six months, he found photos on her phone of different bank and credit cards, realised she was involved in fraud and contacted the police.
After defrauding the man of £30,000, Kingsley told him she was pregnant with his twins, which he felt was an ‘entrapment’.
Among Kingsley’s other victims was a man she met online whose bank card details she used to pay for £365 of Ocado shopping.
She also used his card to pay a 94,000 euro bill at a five-star alpine resort, for which she has been convicted of fraud in France.
Kingsley also used the bank card of a fourth man she met online to pay an £878 Airbnb bill.
A woman who was an acquittance of Kingsley fell victim too when her bank card was used to spend £874 at Waitrose.
Kingsley defrauded her own mother’s carer of £990 to pay for a holiday they all took together at Cromhall Farm, near Chippenham.
Another victim was a family law King’s Counsel who was owed £12,000 for legal work.
Kingsley also provided false documents to a car dealership over the purchase of a £120,000 Porsche 911 and to a law firm for the purchase of a multimillion-pound house.
One of the men said in a victim impact statement that Kingsley had left him ‘humiliated, mortified and embarrassed’ after he was forced to cancel their wedding.
‘I feel used and manipulated and I feel violated and betrayed,’ he said.
‘It’s a deliberate decision by someone who I thought loved me. She deceived me mentally, emotionally and financially.’
Another said: ‘I regret profoundly that I trusted Gemma Kingsley and it has impacted my trust in other people.
‘I had previously described this as cognitive sea sickness but now I know it was gaslighting.’
Detective Constable Melissa Pope, from Wiltshire Police’s fraud team, said: ‘Kingsley wove a web of lies with her victims, causing significant emotional anxiety and long-term mental and financial harm.
‘She manipulated their emotions, assuring them that through her future inheritance she would be able to repay the considerable sums of money that they were spending on her behalf.
‘For one of the victims, an expensive wedding which had been planned, for which the victim’s relatives had booked to come from Australia, was cancelled at short notice.
