A woman has been left devastated after a man she met on Tinder conned her out of more than £3,000 by pretending he needed a kidney transplant.
Rebecca Rouse, 35, from Lincoln, UK, thought Paul Gillett, 28, was different to the other guys she met on the dating app - in a good way.
Within a couple of months, he had moved in with her and when he said he needed £3,182 to cover private medical fees for a kidney transplant, she forked out from her savings without a second thought.
However, after sending across the funds, she could no longer make contact with Gillett and eventually she realised their relationship had been built on lies.
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Rebecca first swiped right back for him in February 2017 and in March of this year, Gillett, from Carmathen, Wales, was sentenced to three years in prison after he admitted three frauds and 21 similar matters at Worcester Crown Court.
Speaking to The Mirror, Rebecca said Gillett's swindling is still having an effect on her to this day.
She said: "I still can't believe the lengths he went to for money.
"When we first met, I really believed I'd found someone decent and that we had a lasting relationship. He seemed so nice and it felt like there was potential for it to blossom into something long-term.
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"It's really shaken my trust in men. I'm still in a bad way because of him."
Reflecting on how it all began, Rebecca said she was deceived by his generosity and flattery.
She said: "I'd been single since the beginning of 2015 so it took a lot to put myself out there again.
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"He wasn't like all the other people on Tinder and he appeared genuinely interested in me. All his messages were so flattering. Whenever I got one, it would put a huge smile on my face.
"He came around the night we met and my mum really liked him. We started seeing each other most days and Paul was so generous. He'd take mum and me out for meals and insist on paying.
"He even mentioned taking me to see Ed Sheeran for my birthday, so everything was going really well between us."
A month later, Gillett moved in with Rebecca and her mum after claiming a storm had rendered his house uninhabitable. He also began to open up to Rebecca about his apparent kidney problems, which made Rebecca feel closer to him, as she suffers from intracranial hypertension; he even showed her a medical dressing on his side after claiming he had been put on dialysis.
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As such, Rebecca didn't think twice when he said he needed funds to cover private medical bills for a kidney transplant.
Rebecca told The Mirror: "He told me the waiting list on the NHS was too long and he'd have to go privately to a clinic he found in Cornwall. I transferred him the money from my savings account so he could cover the cost of a scan and his travel costs.
"But once he left, he got harder to reach and I started to get suspicious. He wouldn't answer my calls and when he gave me his mum's number, no one would answer that either.
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"The whole situation was so stressful that it made my condition flare up. I got a horrible pain in my head and I collapsed. I was then rushed to hospital and they had to drain fluid off my brain."
After eventually managing to track down Gillett's parents online, Rebecca realised that almost everything he had told her was a lie.
She said: "They told me he wasn't a funeral director and he never had any kidney problems.
"They kept saying sorry for what he'd done. It was all a lie. I was devastated.
"Paul had also left his car in front of our house the whole time he'd been gone and when my mum and I went to inspect it, we saw a packet of surgical dressings in there from Boots. We started to doubt anything he'd told us was truthful."
Now that Gillett is behind bars, Rebecca said she is glad justice has been done.
She said: "I was so relieved, even though it brought it all back up again, but I'm glad to see that justice has been done.
"I haven't spoken to him since he was sent to prison but I hope he's having a tough time there. It takes a very weak individual to go out and do something so horrendous."
Featured Image Credit: SWNSTopics: UK News, Dating, crime, Tinder