Never trust a man with a beard to be honest. Image credit: Northumbria Police
Before I heard about this news I would probably have let my mate Teal arrange any future stag dos I might have, but having read this it's giving me second thoughts.
Martyn Galvin was asked to plans a stag do to Prague in the Czech Republic by his best friend of 18 years. He was also asked to be his best man.
18 men were supposed to go on the trip in total, and 30-year-old Galvin collected £7,945 from the group to cover the cost of the trip.
But when the group turned up at Newcastle airport expecting a mad one, they soon realised that not a single thing had been booked.
They were meant to enjoy a three-day trip to Prague in August last year, followed by a trip to York Races in October. But as the trips neared, Galvin starting whining to the groom that he was out of pocket and nobody was paying for the trip.
Martyn Galvin. Image credit: Facebook
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The groom explained how he salvaged a stag night in Yarm, but it was marred by news about the scam spreading.
The groom said: "I felt then, and still do now, as if people look at me as the groom whose best man screwed his friends and family over money, and I'm ashamed.
"What made it worse is looking back he would regularly splash cash in front of me and my friends.
"He was constantly flashing cash which didn't belong to him in front of us and we didn't know it."
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Galvin also falsely told the groom he had been treated for bowel cancer and that it was terminal, when in reality he was fine and had used all the funds to fuel his crippling gambling addiction.
Sentencing, Judge Simon Bourne-Arton QC said: "This fraud is perhaps one of the nastiest and meanest I've encountered in my time involved in criminal law.
"The fraud involved a string of quite dreadful lies, lies to your best friend, a man who entrusted in you the task and the honour of being his best man.
"To lie as you did so brazenly, so persistently and in such detail about your health, only you know how you could do that.
"You were extravagantly spending, flashing the cash on yourself."
Galvin was jailed for 20 months and ordered to pay the full compensation in 28 days.
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Words by James Dawson