Original subtitles

He would come to my house on his way home from shift,

and he'd have his firefighter gear on. You could smell the smoke.

Everybody loved James Scott.

Everybody. He won everybody over.

There was this little black book sitting in

the branches of the Christmas tree.

I took it out and opened it up

and it just said, "Coleen Scott's wedding diary."

I said...I said yes.

I...I couldn't really not say it.

I didn't feel I could say no.

My daughters were 13 and 15.

My family was complete in my eyes.

I was like, "Are you sure? You know, once you do this,

"there's no going back."

He is making this life-changing decision. That's the red flag.

I went into shock. I just couldn't...

..couldn't get my head around it.

I had this awful fear that he's

going to think I've cheated on him.

This was breaking my heart. My wedding dress is hanging there,

Everything's ready to go, and he's sitting there saying,

"I can't go ahead with it."

He was crying his eyes out.

The feeling of...helplessness was just terrible.

I'd been single for quite a while,

I had come out of quite a long relationship,

I'd been married for 17 years.

I just thought it might be nice to dip my toe back in

the dating scene and maybe go for a few dates,

have a bit of fun. A lot of my friends were doing it.

The apps were getting quite popular,

and I thought, "Well, I've got nothing to lose,

"it might be fun," so I gave it a go.

I got a message from

a gentleman who called himself Firefighter J,

that was his profile name.

He didn't have a profile picture on.

He just said for the nature of his job,

he didn't like to put his picture out there.

And he emailed me loads of photos straight away.

It was exciting cos we did seem to have a lot in common -

he had two daughters, I had two daughters.

He was divorced, I was divorced.

I definitely thought, "Yes, seems like my kind of person."

I think it's great being a twin.

It means you have a best friend that's always got your back.

Coleen and I worked together.

We both worked for student accommodation

for Durham University.

One afternoon at work I got a message,

and he'd just been playing a round of golf

because he wasn't on shift that afternoon

and said he could pop into Durham.

I said to her, actually, "Just go, just go and

"see if there's a spark. Go and meet him

"and then you'll know if it's something that you really,

"you know, want to pursue or not."

So, yeah, I nervously decided that, yeah,

I'll go, go meet him for coffee.

His photos were genuine, he was the spit of his photographs.

And he worked out of Darlington Fire Station,

part of the White Watch.

His stories were so interesting

and all these tales about the guys he worked with at

the station, and it was entertaining.

And, yeah, I left and thought,

"Nice guy," you know, "I might see him again."

After we'd only had two or three dates,

he would pop in to work quite regularly.

He'd bring me croissants or chocolate bars and flowers.

They'd be the most beautiful bouquets coming to work.

But they'd be coming sometimes on a daily basis,

on occasion twice a day.

I remember one instance, he sent flowers three times in one day.

The guys at work were always ribbing and teasing me

because it's like, "He's a bit keen, isn't he?"

The thing is, with love-bombing, it is disguised as love.

What James does, you know, he sends flowers,

he sends chocolates, nothing that extravagant,

but romantic.

He is being very romantic.

Something that Coleen is desperate for,

that is missing from her life,

and immediately he is filling that void.

When I first met James,

I was quite taken by how charismatic he was, really,

very gregarious.

There was no nerves at all about meeting new family members.

He was very, you know, larger than life, very boisterous.

I'd like to describe it as, you know, meeting a Jack Russell

in a house, and he'll run around, jump on you, try and lick you.

You know, that kind of personality.

Very excitable.

To me, family's everything.

The fact that my girls liked him, they got on,

my mum liked him, my sister, my brother-in-law,

all my friends. It was just great. Perfect.

What's so interesting about James at this point is that he's

incredibly good at getting other people to like him.

And so I think all those kinds of danger points that you might

look for at this point in time aren't showing.

KAREN:James was really passionate about his job.

He really sort of came alive when he was talking about his career

and the Fire Service and all his colleagues.

He would come to my house on his way home from shift

and he'd have his firefighter gear on.

You could smell the smoke on it.

He told us a story about how he had saved a little boy

from a burning building and jumped out and landed on his back.

And that's apparently how he broke his back.

He had a card from the little boy,

and he actually gave me that card. And I was so proud.

I used to keep it on my desk at work.

He is the hero. He is the saviour.

And, you know, he is a firefighter.

So, for the evenings and the occasions

he is not around, Coleen's thinking,

"Well, he's off saving someone's life, I can't be cross with that

"because he is making a difference."

And that's exactly what he wants her to think.

SIRENS WAIL

About six months into our relationship,

I discovered I was pregnant, and it was a shock.

I didn't know what to do for the best.

My daughters were 13 and 15.

My family was complete in my eyes.

James had his two daughters, his family was complete.

So we had the difficult conversation

and decided that the best thing, you know,

was to terminate the pregnancy.

Yeah, it was, um... Yeah.

I'd never had to deal with anything like that before,

and it was a hard decision to make,

and I did find it really, really tough.

I wouldn't say I made the wrong decision

but I definitely didn't take it lightly.

I was terrified if it happened once,

what's to say it wouldn't happen again?

And from that point I wasn't comfortable having

a physical relationship, just out of fear that...

It was almost like a bit of PTSD.

I was just so scared that that could happen again

that our relationship halted at that point

because I was too frightened.

James suggested having a vasectomy.

He didn't want me worrying,

and obviously he wanted us to have a relationship together.

I was like, "Are you sure?" I said, "You know, once you do this,

"there's no going back." But he was adamant that it was the

right thing to do for our relationship.

KAREN:The fact he would so selflessly decide to have

a vasectomy just for Coleen's peace of mind,

we just thought was such a nice, kind, giving act of love, really,

and we all loved him a little bit more for that.

I think the red flag comes around his willingness

to get this vasectomy

because they hardly know each other, really.

He is making this life-changing decision,

like this. SHE SNAPS HER FINGERS

I didn't go with him for this procedure, he went privately.

He was very stoic about it, he was going to go on his own.

In due course, he showed me the documentation to prove he'd got

a nil sperm count, and once I'd seen that, then, yeah,

our relationship could, in its fullness, you know, start again.

This is a really significant place

because this is where I found out I was pregnant again.

James had had a vasectomy, so that couldn't be possible.

But on a night out with Karen and Ryan and James,

I just didn't feel right. I felt a bit out of sorts.

A little uneasy, almost like I had done in my previous pregnancies,

which I knew was stupid, ridiculous.

So I took Karen to one side

and told her I was feeling that

I just felt like I could be pregnant,

which she thought was hilarious,

but I wouldn't let it go, to the point that she turned

to James and said, "For God's sake, James, will you nip to the chemist,

"get Coleen a pregnancy test, and then we can all put this to bed."

I did the test and up came a blue line,

and I just couldn't believe what I was looking at.

I was in such shock.

I remember thinking,

"This is absolutely ridiculous, this isn't right."

But, no, she was,

she went on to do about six further tests and she was pregnant.

We were all flabbergasted, except for James.

The rest of us were devastated, and he... "Oh, this is good."

And I couldn't understand why he would go through having

a vasectomy to then find out Coleen was pregnant again

and think this was a good thing.

You put his behaviour

and his responses to certain situations all together

and there is your red flag.

I was horrified cos I couldn't be pregnant.

There was no way, I'd seen the test results.

James had had the vasectomy. But it said I was.

All I could think to myself was, "How has this happened?"

And worse, "James is going to think I've been unfaithful."

And I kept telling him, "I haven't, I wouldn't,

"I could never do that to you."

And he was so, so sweet, he just said,

never, never would he ever think that of me.

KAREN:I remember at the time thinking how understanding

and trusting of him to believe without a shadow of

a doubt that she hasn't cheated on him.

Because I think most men in that situation would have

a few niggling doubts.

There was no way I was having another termination after how

I felt last time and the soul-searching

and the upset, and I just knew,

and James knew that I could never do that.

It was never up for discussion that I would be having this baby.

PHONE RINGS I started to bleed,

and it was scary.

So I tried to get in contact with James.

He was on shift at the time,

he didn't answer his phone. I left him loads

of messages, didn't get any response.

RYAN:Karen and I were there with her,

supporting her all the way.

None of us could get James on the phone.

I was very angry with James, I found it really, really difficult

to understand why he wouldn't be there at that time.

I know I hadn't wanted this baby,

but I wanted this baby now, I loved this baby.

I was scared to breathe, really.

I was so scared every movement would bring my labour on.

At this point there was no sign of James.

He still hadn't returned any of my calls.

I was in an awful state.

James turned up, it must have been maybe three or four hours

after I'd been in the hospital.

He came in wearing his firefighter gear,

he'd come straight from a shout.

KAREN:It was Bonfire Night. So it's the busiest night

of the year for the Fire Service.

And he was just so sorry that he couldn't be there.

He's saving lives, isn't he, so what can you do?

You can't be too annoyed.

I think what James is doing very cleverly is developing

the scaffolding of a story.

And he's fantastic at this storytelling.

And from Coleen's point of view, she's buying into it.

It was just before the Christmas,

so I will have been six months pregnant.

And I came into the living room and my girls were there,

and James said,

"Can you see anything different? What about the Christmas tree?"

And so I got up and waddled over to the tree

and there was this little black book sitting in

the branches of the Christmas tree,

so I took it out and opened it up

and it just said, "Coleen Scott's wedding diary."

It had these little, like, mini Post-it notes,

and they were numbered one to five, or one to six.

And number one was "meet the wedding planner",

and the time and the day and the venue

I was meeting the wedding planner.

Number two, cake tasting and where we were going to do it and the time.

And then it just went on like that.

You know, wedding dress fitting,

and then even then onto details of the honeymoon

and the flight numbers and everything,

all chapter-and-verse in this diary.

It was a massive surprise to Coleen.

She really wasn't expecting to get proposed to.

But then it wasn't really a proposal

because it was all done fait accompli.

I was just flummoxed, I was just totally shocked.

It was never on my agenda.

I didn't want to get married again.

What feels like is going on is that Coleen is now

an object who he's managing,

and he's created this fantasy wedding around her,

and she just has to take part in it.

And telling her two daughters, who are very excited

by this whole wedding,

is all adding to her being squeezed out of the story, actually,

because it's no longer about the two of them.

It's about what he's doing for her.

And he's got full control at this point.

I just turned to him and he's down on one knee with a ring.

You could have knocked me down with a feather.

I did not see that coming.

I said...I said yes.

I...I couldn't really not say it.

I didn't feel like I could say no.

And I'm not saying I didn't want to marry him.

I loved him and we were having a baby.

Just, it had never been anything that I'd even...considered,

and I didn't think he had either.

I was really scared

because I just didn't know what was happening.

Um... Yeah, it was terrifying.

KAREN:James was at the hospital sporadically

and he was always leaving Coleen to go and make phone calls.

And it got to the point where Ryan was getting quite annoyed with him

and saying, "You need to be by her side."

It looked bleak at this point.

I was too ill that I couldn't go with him.

And, um...

So they brought him in, like,

a trolley that they would put in the ambulance,

and wheeled him in to see me.

Um...

They gave me a little photograph of him,

and I didn't realise at that time that that was probably

because they thought that would be the last time I'd see him,

and they took him off and I was just...

It was the feeling of helplessness was just terrible.

So all I wanted at that point was James to go

and his dad to be with him

so he wasn't alone that night, in case the worst happened.

He didn't want me, you know, to go with him.

He was going to, you know,

be at Charlie's bedside. He didn't need anybody else.

I don't for a second believe he actually went to be with Charlie.

And Charlie, who could have passed away that night,

would have been completely on his own.

James suddenly announced to Karen and I that

his mother had approached him,

she wanted to invest in a restaurant or a wine bar

in the Newcastle area,

and she wanted James to get involved in this.

Then James opened up more about his mother's financial situation

and that she was really quite wealthy,

which we had not been aware of.

And since he was only doing the odd shift at

the Fire Service, then, yeah,

it seemed a perfect idea for him.

This is something that Coleen

and I had always harboured a dream of owning.

We'd always talked, even as children,

the fact we would love a coffee shop or a little restaurant.

I did have some money at that point

because I had an inheritance from my father.

And I thought investing in something like that,

which had always been my dream, would just be

an ideal way to use it. I invested, in total, £30,000.

ANJULA: The story that James has spun

so far gives Karen confidence

this is going to be a family business.

So, at this point, if there was a red flag,

it's turned green because she feels safer

because Mum's part of the storyline now.

I had no qualms about wanting to be part of it.

I really wanted to invest in it,

and, you know, it was...

It looked really like a legit proposition.

From a policing perspective,

the fact that he is willing

to accept money from her sister is a massive red flag.

If this was a successful business,

if his mum was putting all this

money into this business on his behalf,

he wouldn't need her money.

And one thing we do know with fraudsters

is they always purport to have money.

"Oh, yeah, well, I've already got money,

"so I don't really need yours."

Because then they'll make it look like your idea to give it them.

This is Pravda,

one of the properties we came

to view when James was interested in setting up

the business, restaurant, nightclub, whatever,

with his mum, that Karen invested in.

It used to be a Russian nightclub.

And, yeah, it was good.

Out of all the places James took us to view,

it definitely got everyone's vote.

And you could see the potential, its quite old,

not been used in quite a while, bit dusty.

But you could see the vision that James had,

and he was so excited, and...

..everybody got swept up in it.

We were going to call it, on James's suggestion, At Scott's

so it would have the Scott name

and it would be a family business.

James had an interior designer come and meet us at the property.

James had so many plans, it was like a runaway train.

At the time, I told James not to be so stupid

and I didn't believe him for a second,

but then he had so much paperwork and emails to back it up.

REBECCA:We tend to find that

fraudsters like to exaggerate everything.

Not only that, there will be supporting

documentation coming out of your eyeballs

because they know they're lying.

Being back here now, looking at the property,

it's...it's weird,

it just feels like yesterday that we were here wandering around

with Charlie in his little car seat,

and not a lot has really changed.

He had businessmen. He had solicitor's firms.

You know, organisations that, you know,

when you walked in, he was this fantastic person,

and he would promise you the world.

So it wasn't just Coleen, it wasn't just the family,

it was a lot more people.

They always say, you know, you've got to believe your own lies,

and if you do that, you can convince anyone.

And that's what he did. Everyone's wanting to invest.

They are feeding off his energy and his drive.

RYAN:James didn't just manipulate Coleen,

James manipulated the whole family.

But James didn't just manipulate the family,

James manipulated everybody around the family.

James came up with this proposal,

"Well, you work in property already.

"Why don't we just set up a property business?"

I thought, "Doesn't seem like a bad thing.

"James has got the investment from his mum.

"His mum's got the chops to make this work.

"So, you know, what could go wrong?"

The property business we decided was

going to be called Gemini Property

because the star sign Gemini is twins.

Karen I would really be the

figurehead at the front of the business.

In Gemini, I invested a further £25,000.

All of my money at that point,

everything I had was tied up

in investments related to James,

but I never felt at that point that it was worrying

because he was a member of our family,

he was my...my nephew's father.

He, you know, he was James, we all loved him.

Everything appeared totally legitimate.

Everything seemed perfect.

It was exciting times.

James found a lump on one of his testicles.

I was there in the waiting room when they called out James Scott

and he went into the room.

Um...

So, yeah, it was suspected testicular cancer.

The wedding was put on hold.

I just felt sick,

I felt just shocked and horrified and frightened

and worried for the future,

and just all the emotion you can

imagine when you find out your loved one's sick.

When I got the news, I was, you know, concerned for the guy.

You know, we'd become, you know, reasonably good friends

by this point, you know,

I was going to be his best man at the wedding.

And, you know, the news was shocking.

It feels at this point very much as

if James is now future-faking Coleen,

because how do you put the brakes on a wedding you don't want to happen?

You get cancer.

James went for tests at the hospital.

It wasn't cancer. It turned out it was a condition called hydrocele,

which causes a fluid build-up that can be misdiagnosed as cancer.

The relief and just...

We were so happy he was going to be OK.

We were just absolutely shellshocked

because we'd been pretty much told it was,

you know, the diagnosis was a bad one.

So to suddenly hear this,

it was just, like, the most amazing news ever.

I was very surprised at how quickly

the wedding got rearranged. Looking back on it,

I would have thought, you know, you've dodged a bullet,

just let sleeping dogs lie, you know,

move on with things. But, no, as James was,

everything had to happen now, and according to James' schedule.

Both his daughters were going to be bridesmaids as well as my two girls.

They were very excited about coming to the wedding,

his ex had agreed that they could come,

and this was actually going to be

the first time I'd properly met them.

He was sending us pictures from the hotel he was in,

and then it went quiet, and I rang his phone

and it was turned off,

so I started to get a little bit concerned about that,

but I just thought,

"He's going to be back the day after tomorrow, it's fine."

I was actually at my mum's house with Coleen,

and James walked in the house

and just slumped on the sofa with his head in his hands,

and then he said that the wedding was off.

He couldn't bring his daughters back, his ex-wife wouldn't allow it,

and he couldn't get married without his daughters being there.

At that point I'm like, "What?!"

And he went, "No, no, I can't do it."

And at this stage all my family in Ireland

have got the hotels booked. Everyone's got their outfits,

the hotels booked, the flights booked.

Everything's ready to go, and he's sitting there saying,

"I can't go ahead with it, I can't do it without my girls being there."

He was crying his eyes out.

I felt incredibly bad for him that he was so upset,

but I felt more upset for my sister.

This was her second wedding

and now he was cancelling it at the last moment.

So I felt angry on her behalf. And I thought,

"Yes, it's horrible his daughters can't come,

"but he can still marry her."

But he was adamant it would have to be postponed again.

This was breaking my heart.

My wedding dress is hanging there.

We've got a little boy together.

Look, everybody's bought their outfits, the girls are excited,

and I just... I was...

To be honest, I was just disgusted in him.

I just thought, "This isn't right.

"There's something not right here now."

And at that point, the whole relationship shifted

and, yeah, the cracks really started to appear.

I don't know why, but I just had this feeling that I wanted to go

and inspect one of the properties

and check everything was all right.

We opened the cabinet, expecting

to see this nice new shiny boiler, and...

..no, it wasn't. It was a dusty old, you know, thing.

And this really piqued my interest.

Why was this old boiler in-situ when Karen had paid for

a brand-new one to be replaced?

Ryan actually phoned the manufacturer of the boiler company

and found out that that particular model hadn't been stocked

for about eight years.

And I thought, "Something's not right here."

And, "Why was the wedding called off?"

I got in touch with the hotel where the wedding was supposed to be held,

asked them if there was a, you know,

a James Scott wedding.

The manager assured me there was nobody by that name -

not in the past, not today, not in the future.

We'd seen links to Wynyard Hall website and stuff on emails,

and none of it was real.

That was the moment where we ripped off the bandage,

and the horrible sore that was underneath was exposed.

PHONE RINGS

So I made a phone call to Coleen,

and she was with James and Charlie, and I just said,

"I need you to excuse yourself.

"Don't let James know there's anything wrong

"and just go to the toilet

"and I'll phone you back in five minutes."

She said, "I'm so, so, so sorry Coleen,

"you were never going to get married."

And I said, "What do you mean?" And she said,

"There's never been a wedding booked."

I just thought, "Well, that can't be possible,"

because I've met the wedding planner, I've spoken to her,

I've had emails off her, I'd been to the venue.

He spent over £1,000 on a wedding dress for me.

I felt like it was some sick joke,

and I didn't know what the hell was going on.

I honestly didn't know which way to turn or what to think.

I stood at the doorway so he couldn't get away,

because I knew once he was confronted,

he's going to make an excuse to get out, and I wanted the truth.

He just shut down.

He refused to talk.

And I let go with both barrels.

I knew that he had lied. I knew there was no wedding.

But at this point, we didn't know how far it went.

I think I knew at that point that my money was gone,

but I wasn't going to admit it to myself then.

I was still clinging onto the hope that although he'd lied

about the weddings, that was as far as it went.

I knew the name of the solicitors that he said he was using.

And I telephoned, you know, trying to find the Newcastle office

where he had said he had had many, many meetings.

I couldn't find a number for that,

so I phoned the head office in London.

"We don't have a Newcastle branch." And I thought, "Hold on a second."

You know, "The lies are starting to stack up here."

Karen, you know, telephoned Coleen and said,

"We're coming to speak to you."

At that point, off we went up to the house,

to Coleen's house, and...

..he knew we were coming.

He knew the gig was up.

He jumped back in the car, said,

"I'll be back in a minute," slammed the door, and off he went.

Karen and I were in the car, driving.

By this time, I was fuming.

There was steam coming out of my ears. I wanted answers.

When we were just pulling into their street,

James drove past us,

he just gave this little cheery wave

with this very smug little smile on his face.

That, to me...

..it was the equivalent of giving us the finger.

And that's the last time we've seen him.

We soon found out that James Scott was not James Scott.

He was, in fact, Greg Wilson...

..who had a wife and three sons.

I cried buckets.

My whole world fell apart.

It had been bad enough the wedding not happening,

but now it appeared my whole life hadn't happened either.

The name James Scott was on our child's birth certificate.

I was marrying James Scott.

But that wasn't this man's name.

This man who was the man I was

going to marry was called Greg Wilson.

At that point, I had...

..I suppose what you'd class as a little mini breakdown.

That night, I ended up staying with her in her double bed.

And I remember just lying there,

and she was sobbing, and thinking,

"Well, I've lost all my money, I've lost everything,

"but I still wouldn't want to be in her position."

It was just devastating.

This case landed on my desk, and when I read it,

I just thought straight away, "Wow, that's unusual!"

I've been a police officer for 27 years,

and I've never come across any investigation like this at all.

I didn't go and arrest him straight away.

For one, he was on the run,

and we didn't quite know where he was.

But right from the start,

so much had happened over a long period of time,

I had to get my head around it and I had to gather the evidence.

We wanted him to be brought to justice.

We wanted him not to do this to another family,

and we wanted him to pay for his crimes.

The police investigation was going ahead,

we just needed more answers.

So we managed to track down his mum and contact her, his stepbrother,

and, ultimately, a couple of weeks further down the line,

his wife.

This is when we found that, you know,

it was a much bigger story than we had actually believed.

His father had been a firefighter,

that's how he had all the knowledge.

And he'd bought an ex-firefighter's outfit off eBay.

That's why it smelled of smoke,

because it had been to plenty of fires,

just never with him wearing it.

There was no nightclub.

Gemini Properties was all based on a farce.

There were no properties that they were actually managing,

apart from the few that Karen owned.

When the police actually accessed Greg's bank account,

there was very little left.

So I think he'd been funding his lifestyle

and Coleen's lifestyle on the money that I'd given him

for quite a long period of time.

The police investigated.

The doctor didn't exist, the appointments didn't exist.

Um...

That medical note he showed me, the police believe was a forgery.

I think all the documentation that he provided

to solicitors and real estate agents was all, again, a fabrication.

All the text messages, iMessages, the Facebook posts,

the Facebook profiles, everything was fake.

He didn't just con us. He conned solicitors,

real estate agents, football clubs, rugby clubs.

He fleeced everybody he could

for as much as he could while he could.

It's incredible the lengths that Greg Wilson must have gone to,

to commence this fraud and also to keep it going,

day after day after day.

Normally, fraudsters, you can catch them out

because they forget the lies,

and it's quite easy to prove.

But, actually, Greg covered his tracks quite well.

It was... It was just, "Why?"

I just couldn't understand why.

And I really missed him

because it felt like a bereavement in a way,

because I'd fallen in love with James Scott...

..and suddenly he didn't exist. It was like he was dead.

And I was traumatised.

As soon as I found out the truth,

I went to a solicitor to see what I could do

to get Charlie's name changed,

because Charlie had a surname that didn't exist

because the father on his birth certificate said,

"James Scott, firefighter."

What he did to Charlie is unforgivable.

He'd been such a big part of Charlie's life.

And Charlie suffered from extreme separation anxiety at that point.

It got to the stage that I couldn't leave him for a second.

He would cry and cry and cry till he was sick.

And I felt so sorry for him

because he was the innocent party in all this.

CHARLIE LAUGHS

Amazingly, when I got to the house and arrested him there,

he was there with his girlfriend.

He was in a relationship

and had told a pack of lies,

saying that he was purporting to be somebody that he wasn't

and that I think it was another

family member had left him some money

and he was going to buy a house.

So I think another fraud was obviously in

the making when he was arrested.

When we got him in the car on the journey up to County Durham,

I think the only time he ever spoke, he sort of said, "Yes, it was me."

And that was what classed as what was called a significant statement,

which is the only answer he ever gave in sort of all

the interviews that I did with him.

That was the only sort of piece of admission that we got.

Everybody was ready. We were ready, the CPS was ready,

all the victims, all the witnesses were ready

to come to court to give evidence.

KAREN:It was actually on the Friday before the trial was due

to start at 9am the following Monday that I had

a call from CPS at about 4.45 in the afternoon

to say that at that point he'd decided

to plead guilty to all charges

and there would be no trial.

But he'd left it to the last possible moment,

and he'd made us suffer right to the end.

He pleaded guilty

and the verdict was that he got six years in prison

for multiple cases of fraud, which, yeah, we were happy about.

RYAN:And as he was being taken down, we could hear him sobbing.

And, for me, if I couldn't face him,

just knowing that he was now

a broken man, like he had done to everybody else,

was the only satisfaction I was going to get.

So what the judge said about Greg's behaviour

was that it was jaw-dropping cruelty,

persistent cruelty, that he lied, he manipulated,

he feigned illness, the cancer.

And when confronted, the judge says, he runs away.

It was sophisticated and sustained fraud.

And what this tells me is that there were no underlying psychological

issues that the judge could pick up on,

that Greg knew exactly what he was doing,

and he was completely devoid of empathy for anybody.

CHARLIE LAUGHS

Getting justice was a really happy day.

And I felt like I'd taken some of the power back,

because he'd hurt my family

and we weren't going to get that money back that Karen lost,

and I wasn't going to get back those lost years,

but I wasn't going to let him get away with it,

he had to be made accountable.

There's no doubt that the motivation initially was financial.

He initially lived off Karen and Coleen's wealth,

their inheritance. However, I think, as time went on,

it's the control of people, I think, that took over.

And I think he loved every single minute of it.

After what happened with James,

it left me in a situation where I had no alternative

but to file for bankruptcy.

And I lost my home and I lost everything.

My career was gone.

The worst things he did, in my opinion,

was he destroyed Karen and Coleen's lives.

They were two fantastic women when I first met them.

And when he left...

..they were shells of their former selves.

If you allow this to change the way you view all of humanity,

then, really, you're always going to be a victim.

And I don't want to be a victim. Coleen doesn't want to be a victim.

I wasn't going to let what happened to me dictate

the rest of my life.

I've got the most lovely husband now who's adopted Charlie.

So he's not a little boy with the fake name anymore,

he's got what he calls his forever dad now,

and I'm now hoping to help other women

who are in the same situation, because it's not your fault.

When something like this happens to you, you're a victim.

I couldn't stop what he did to me,

but if I can stop him doing it to somebody else, I will do.

There's no doubt that both Coleen

and Karen are survivors.

They both have moved on brilliantly,

I have nothing but admiration for them.

The police and everyone had said, you know,

"You'll have to write a book one day about this."

Neither me nor my sister are writers

but we thought it would be a cathartic measure, you know,

so that's what we did.

And I've had so many people that have read the book get in contact

and say something similar's happened to them.

Helped so many people.

Coleen has been through the most horrific,

unimaginable experience,

and she has come out of it ten times stronger.

There is no victim in her.

That woman's a warrior.

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