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This programme contains
strong language

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I think everyone that's dating
is looking for love.

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It's like the fairy tale
that us young girls dream of.

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He had a nice house.

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Jewellery.

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The Bentley.

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It's not every day you come
into contact with an eccentric lord.

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But it was all smoke and mirrors.

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We were groomed as a family.

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Was I just...

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...another
business transaction to him?

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Every single time we talked,

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he would have a story...

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{\an8}...which was more bizarre
than the last.

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The whole situation,
it'd gone from a fairy tale...

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...to a horror.

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I think I'm very lucky to live
on the Isle of Wight.

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It's a beautiful place.

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It's a very small town,
everybody knows everybody,

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but it's a lovely place to live.

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I don't think
I've ever really had a type.

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Someone that can make me laugh,

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a nice smile, nice eyes -
I'm happy with that.

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Me and Megan are really close.

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She's my middle child.

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She was my first little girl.

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I speak to her all the time,

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share all her trials and
tribulations.

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She's fantastic.

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Back in 2017,
I was approached

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and asked if I wanted
to open up a bar.

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I'd been in managing roles
in restaurants before,

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but this was a new opportunity.

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So we took over a run-down older bar

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and turned it into a very trendy
cocktail bar,

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and it was doing really well.

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I've always had a very close-knit
group of girlfriends.

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At the time, I was the only one
that had my own place,

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so they'd all lived with me
at some point.

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They were there every weekend.

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They were there all the time.

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We were so young and carefree.

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We were doing something every night.

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UPBEAT MUSIC PLAYS

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{\an8}Dinner, drinks.

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I was stood at the end of the bar
doing shots while she was working.

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I was like...

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We were living life.

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Living life as a pair of
young 20-year-olds, really.

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SHE LAUGHS

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I cannot tell you
how amazing Megan is.

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She's like a friend, a sister,
a therapist.

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She's like everything just wrapped
into one person.

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She's... She's unbelievable.

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I'd been single for
about two years at this point,

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but I was very much
enjoying the dating scene,

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going out on lots of dinner dates
and meeting lots of new people.

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Megan was a serial dater.

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SHE LAUGHS

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But I was fully for supporting her.

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It would be easy to say
you were looking for love,

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but then, obviously,
everybody wants that.

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I was working in the bar.

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It was the middle of the week.

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It was very quiet.

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I remember clocking him
as he came in.

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He's quite tall, very well dressed.

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Not the kind of person you'd see
around Shanklin

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on a day-to-day basis.

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The day that he came in,
we were talking quite a lot.

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Obviously, it was a new person,
new face around the town.

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He introduced himself as
Bertie Underwood.

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He was very well-to-do.

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Very, very well-spoken, very polite,
very well-mannered.

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He was an interesting character
to get to know.

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He'd just moved to the island
from the mainland.

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He was a horologist,
which I didn't know at the time,

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but that's, like,
working with watches.

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He'd just bought this house
with a sea view.

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He did stick out like a sore thumb
on the Isle of Wight.

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Absolutely everybody, within a few
months or weeks, knew who he was.

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I first heard about Bertie
when a massive bunch of flowers

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randomly arrived at the bar.

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There was a note saying,
"It was lovely to meet you.

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"Be ready for 7pm tonight.

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"I'm taking you on a date."

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It definitely did feel like,
you know,

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what they do in the movies.

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Megan was just
bouncing off the walls.

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It is so unheard of nowadays.

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People just send you a text,
don't they?

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"Want to go for a date?"

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The girls came over to my flat
to help me get ready.

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And then he picked me up
from outside the bar at about seven.

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From the start, there was,
like, a big initial attraction.

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We went to The Royal in Ventnor,

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the nicest place you could
go for dinner.

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I was only 20 at the time.

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I'd never quite
had that treatment before.

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It definitely was a lot nicer
than a lot of other first dates.

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There was something there
between us,

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but I wasn't going to make
the first move.

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After dinner, he invited me back
to his place for a cup of tea.

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Erm...

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And it was just a cup of tea.

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It was an absolutely beautiful
three-storey house.

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There was beautiful paintings
on the wall,

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there were lots of stories
about how he'd bought it at auction,

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it was really run-down,

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and he had lots of stories
about where everything had come from

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and the whole timeline
on how he'd renovated the place.

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He did tell me that
he's actually a lord,

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passed down from his grandad.

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Never met a lord before,
so I had absolutely no idea.

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He had this antique poster
of an Underwood typewriter

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framed on the wall.

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His great great-grandfather had
invented the Underwood typewriter,

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and that's where his name
and his money had come from.

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He dropped me back home
to my flat after the tea.

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We did share a little kiss
in the car on the way back.

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There were lots of butterflies.

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It was very exciting.

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The whole experience was wonderful.

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It was one of the best first
dates that I've ever had.

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I was like a giddy child.

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She was really excited.

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Like, "This man is so nice."

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Like, "He's really well-spoken.
He treats me well."

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It was someone that she'd want
to take home to her family.

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She was so ecstatic about it.

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Like, buzzing.

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The early days
with Bertie were amazing.

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We were going away all of the time,
in London...

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He was like no other relationship
I've been in.

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Bertie used to go off the island
quite often for work.

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He did always used
to bring gifts back,

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which was very nice - perfume,
clothes, shoes,

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lots of Harrods gift bags
over the time.

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Even when it was sad
that he'd have to go away for work,

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he would always make up for it
with coming back with gifts.

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He bought me a car.

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Honestly, never thought
that I would have a car like that.

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It was the dream.

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Driving around in nice cars,

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wearing the beautiful jewellery.

146
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It's like,
"Babe, you've got it all."

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My family loved him.

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Everything did move very fast.

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He offered for me
to move in with him.

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Which, at the time,
was a huge deal for me

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because I'd never lived
with a partner before.

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This is definitely the nicest
house I've ever lived in.

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We did get pictures of us
printed off together

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to put in frames around the house,

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just to make it feel a bit more ours

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and a bit more homely,
which was sweet.

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That was actually his idea.

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Over dinner one day he did say,
"I love you."

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I felt on top of the world.

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I think I obviously knew
long before he'd actually told me

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that I did love him.

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But, yeah, it all just happened
quite naturally.

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It really did feel
like a dream come true.

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In 2016, I was living in Hastings.

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I'm always happy.

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I was going out, enjoying life,

167
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and I was at work at
the supermarket.

168
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This guy comes over to me
and said to me,

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"Hi, my name's Robert and, um,
how are you, Mike?"

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He had a posh spoken voice.

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He was smart, casually dressed.

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And I said, "Who are you?"
Type of thing.

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And then he said...

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He said, "Well, we've been
chatting on Grindr."

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I'd been passing photos and getting
friendly and all that sort of thing.

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And we became friends.

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I hadn't got a clue

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he's a fraudster.

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Me and Bertie went out
a couple of times.

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We went to a pub once,

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and then on another occasion,
we went to Brighton.

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We were looking in art galleries
and he was spending money

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on quite expensive stuff,
lots of money.

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It was like living the high life.

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He told me he was a lord.

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Because of the way he dressed,

187
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his mannerism, the little
bits of eccentricity and all that.

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It's not every day you come
into contact with an eccentric lord.

189
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We knew each other's ins
and outs and such as friends.

190
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And I'd been to his flat.

191
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He'd cooked me dinner, and
we'd gone out socially and all that.

192
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And one particular occasion,

193
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we were having a few drinks
and just having a laugh and a joke,

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he said to me, "I've got a friend
who was coming with me

195
00:13:14,160 --> 00:13:19,040
"on holiday to Venice
who can't come."

196
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He said, "But the tickets are
all bought and paid for."

197
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So he said, "This is a bit
presumptuous of me."

198
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He said, "Would you like to come?"

199
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I said, "Well,
I've never been to Venice before."

200
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He said, "All I have to do is change
the documentation into your name,"

201
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which he did there
and then in front of me.

202
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He said, "But I need a copy
of your passport."

203
00:13:51,840 --> 00:13:55,240
So he took a screenshot
of my passport

204
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and he uploaded it,
and he sent it off.

205
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I didn't think much of it.

206
00:14:09,200 --> 00:14:11,200
On another visit he said to me,

207
00:14:11,240 --> 00:14:12,520
"Oh, I've got a problem.

208
00:14:12,560 --> 00:14:15,120
"My eBay account has just
been frozen."

209
00:14:15,160 --> 00:14:18,160
He said, "Would you consider selling
something on my behalf?"

210
00:14:18,200 --> 00:14:23,120
He said he needed to sell
a Rolex watch, so I agreed.

211
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He sold this watch
through my eBay account.

212
00:14:27,520 --> 00:14:29,040
Everything was hunky dory.

213
00:14:33,760 --> 00:14:35,360
About a month afterwards is

214
00:14:35,400 --> 00:14:38,200
when I got my first message
from a gentleman.

215
00:14:46,640 --> 00:14:48,920
Ooh, shit hit the fan.

216
00:15:00,480 --> 00:15:03,640
I was getting messages left,
right and centre

217
00:15:03,680 --> 00:15:07,520
from different people
saying I was taking their money.

218
00:15:09,240 --> 00:15:10,880
But we're not talking hundreds,

219
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we're talking thousands.

220
00:15:13,200 --> 00:15:16,520
They were all sending me pictures
of the same Rolex watch

221
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that they'd actually bought.

222
00:15:23,440 --> 00:15:28,120
When I realised, I contacted eBay
and said what was happening.

223
00:15:32,600 --> 00:15:39,720
The start of the scam was he needed
a document to prove who I was.

224
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He used my screenshot of my passport
to then send to everyone

225
00:15:50,880 --> 00:15:53,760
to prove that
I was a genuine person.

226
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I confronted him.

227
00:15:58,640 --> 00:16:00,640
I said, "Look, what are you going
to do about it?"

228
00:16:00,680 --> 00:16:03,160
He said, "Leave it with me,
I'll sort it."

229
00:16:03,200 --> 00:16:05,800
I never saw him after that.

230
00:16:05,840 --> 00:16:08,520
That was the last time I actually
set eyes on him.

231
00:16:32,120 --> 00:16:35,760
This was the most fast-paced
relationship I'd ever been in.

232
00:16:35,800 --> 00:16:38,040
Our first Christmas together,

233
00:16:38,080 --> 00:16:41,240
we were just sat on the sofa
having a drink.

234
00:16:43,440 --> 00:16:47,720
He turned around and said
he had one more present left for me

235
00:16:47,760 --> 00:16:52,600
and pulled out
this very nice red Cartier bag,

236
00:16:52,640 --> 00:16:55,800
got down on one knee
and asked me to marry him.

237
00:17:00,920 --> 00:17:05,040
I was absolutely blown away,
like, the ring was stunning.

238
00:17:07,520 --> 00:17:08,880
It was impressive,

239
00:17:08,920 --> 00:17:10,880
I'm not going to lie.

240
00:17:10,920 --> 00:17:12,600
All of a sudden, they're engaged.

241
00:17:14,520 --> 00:17:15,800
I was shocked.

242
00:17:15,840 --> 00:17:17,920
It hadn't been long.

243
00:17:17,960 --> 00:17:19,240
I did say to Megan, like,

244
00:17:19,280 --> 00:17:22,480
"Are you sure this is what you want?
It's a bit soon."

245
00:17:23,680 --> 00:17:25,480
She was so in the moment.

246
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Happy, excited.

247
00:17:26,960 --> 00:17:30,120
Like, "This is what I want for
myself. This is my life now."

248
00:17:30,160 --> 00:17:32,800
Almost like the fairy tale
relationship

249
00:17:32,840 --> 00:17:34,720
that us young girls dream of.

250
00:17:34,760 --> 00:17:39,160
It hadn't been long that they'd been
in a relationship together,

251
00:17:39,200 --> 00:17:41,120
but they both seemed really happy.

252
00:17:41,160 --> 00:17:42,960
So I was happy.

253
00:17:43,000 --> 00:17:45,240
Bertie was very much
part of the family.

254
00:17:50,040 --> 00:17:52,560
We did get planning straight away.

255
00:17:55,200 --> 00:17:58,200
It was most definitely
a no-expense-spared wedding.

256
00:18:01,200 --> 00:18:05,920
I'd think to myself, "Is this what
it's like marrying a lord?"

257
00:18:05,960 --> 00:18:09,440
Bertie used to say often,
you know,

258
00:18:09,480 --> 00:18:12,480
that I would gain a title
from marrying him.

259
00:18:12,520 --> 00:18:15,080
It was quite a surreal experience.

260
00:18:18,880 --> 00:18:21,160
I wanted to show off our
relationship and what we were doing

261
00:18:21,200 --> 00:18:22,920
and all these amazing places
we were going,

262
00:18:22,960 --> 00:18:24,600
and my handsome boyfriend, like,

263
00:18:24,640 --> 00:18:26,960
why would I not want
to show him off?

264
00:18:27,000 --> 00:18:31,840
But Bertie did not allow me to post
any photos of him on social media.

265
00:18:36,360 --> 00:18:37,640
And I said, well,

266
00:18:37,680 --> 00:18:39,880
"Why am I not allowed
to post you on social media?"

267
00:18:41,200 --> 00:18:44,600
He completely lost his head.

268
00:18:50,600 --> 00:18:52,560
Which was quite a shock to me.

269
00:18:54,560 --> 00:18:58,600
I couldn't understand why it was so
serious and important to him.

270
00:18:58,640 --> 00:19:02,480
You know, like the odd story
on Instagram, out for lunch.

271
00:19:02,520 --> 00:19:05,600
Why would that be the end
of the world?

272
00:19:10,600 --> 00:19:13,600
As Megan's and Bertie's
relationship started to develop,

273
00:19:13,640 --> 00:19:19,080
it was so noticeable
how less and less in communication

274
00:19:19,120 --> 00:19:20,440
me and Megan were.

275
00:19:23,920 --> 00:19:26,440
Our friendship definitely
changed at this point.

276
00:19:33,560 --> 00:19:37,200
I started to think that perhaps
Bertie was trying

277
00:19:37,240 --> 00:19:39,960
to get Megan to drift away
from her friends

278
00:19:40,000 --> 00:19:42,280
and almost mould her into someone
that she wasn't.

279
00:19:42,320 --> 00:19:44,240
Almost to start manipulating her.

280
00:19:45,640 --> 00:19:52,280
An issue that started occurring lots
within our relationship was the bar.

281
00:19:52,320 --> 00:19:54,440
After I'd moved in with him,

282
00:19:54,480 --> 00:19:59,840
he just wasn't very happy about me
being there so late.

283
00:19:59,880 --> 00:20:05,320
He didn't like that people knew me
and men wanted to talk to me,

284
00:20:05,360 --> 00:20:09,240
so that was always a bit
of a sore subject.

285
00:20:11,000 --> 00:20:13,720
The bar was like my baby.

286
00:20:13,760 --> 00:20:18,840
I was very proud of the bar
and leaving was really sad.

287
00:20:21,520 --> 00:20:22,840
But I did.

288
00:20:22,880 --> 00:20:25,240
And I went to work for him.

289
00:20:27,120 --> 00:20:28,600
That did ring alarm bells.

290
00:20:28,640 --> 00:20:30,920
It made me feel quite uncomfortable

291
00:20:30,960 --> 00:20:34,800
because she would then be completely
dependent on Bertie -

292
00:20:34,840 --> 00:20:37,680
financially as well as
everything else.

293
00:20:40,800 --> 00:20:44,520
I used to take photos of the watches
and I used to upload them,

294
00:20:44,560 --> 00:20:49,560
and I used to send emails and make
all the social media content.

295
00:20:49,600 --> 00:20:53,680
He had a little workshop set up
coming off of the lounge.

296
00:20:56,360 --> 00:20:58,440
He used to sit there in the evening

297
00:20:58,480 --> 00:21:01,440
with his little head torch on,
fixing watches.

298
00:21:04,280 --> 00:21:07,560
I used to sit there and watch him
with a glass of red wine and think,

299
00:21:07,600 --> 00:21:09,240
"Gosh, you're so clever."

300
00:21:11,280 --> 00:21:16,160
One day Bertie decided to get
a puppy for when he's working away

301
00:21:16,200 --> 00:21:17,640
and I get a bit of company.

302
00:21:17,680 --> 00:21:23,560
We named our Chihuahua Schubert,
which was Bertie's choice of name.

303
00:21:23,600 --> 00:21:24,840
Schubs.

304
00:21:26,360 --> 00:21:27,560
He's not scared of it, is he?

305
00:21:32,640 --> 00:21:34,600
He was very, very cute,

306
00:21:34,640 --> 00:21:36,520
a little bit naughty,

307
00:21:36,560 --> 00:21:40,720
and spent the whole of his life
sat on my chest, curled up.

308
00:21:40,760 --> 00:21:44,760
But he was, yeah, like the most
perfect little puppy.

309
00:21:44,800 --> 00:21:46,960
BIRD TWEETS
Ooh!

310
00:21:47,000 --> 00:21:49,680
We were like this little family.

311
00:21:49,720 --> 00:21:50,840
It was amazing.

312
00:21:54,560 --> 00:21:56,800
Bertie had a friend called Alex,

313
00:21:56,840 --> 00:21:58,880
who I believed to be an artist.

314
00:21:58,920 --> 00:22:00,920
At the time, he was living abroad.

315
00:22:00,960 --> 00:22:03,680
They would speak on the phone
on quite a regular basis.

316
00:22:14,360 --> 00:22:15,960
I'm from Brighton originally.

317
00:22:17,200 --> 00:22:20,560
Primarily, I make installation work,

318
00:22:20,600 --> 00:22:23,440
anything from illustration

319
00:22:23,480 --> 00:22:26,800
to film-making, some writing.

320
00:22:26,840 --> 00:22:30,680
But the thing which kind of
characterises all of it

321
00:22:30,720 --> 00:22:33,360
is that it always involves a story.

322
00:22:33,400 --> 00:22:37,480
And Bertie had absolutely set
the scene for a brilliant story.

323
00:22:42,600 --> 00:22:44,400
In the winter of 2016,

324
00:22:44,440 --> 00:22:45,880
I was living in Korea.

325
00:22:49,960 --> 00:22:54,680
I was isolated quite
a lot of the time.

326
00:22:54,720 --> 00:22:57,520
Erm, I mean, I had a lot
of great friends and everything,

327
00:22:57,560 --> 00:22:59,960
but the thing is,
I worked for myself.

328
00:23:00,000 --> 00:23:02,040
I had my own public art studio,

329
00:23:02,080 --> 00:23:03,880
which was on the top of a mountain.

330
00:23:03,920 --> 00:23:05,800
It was a little bit out of the way.

331
00:23:05,840 --> 00:23:07,720
I wanted to get back to the UK
and do something

332
00:23:07,760 --> 00:23:10,120
about British culture.

333
00:23:10,160 --> 00:23:11,560
I had this crazy idea.

334
00:23:12,800 --> 00:23:16,520
I went on Craigslist back
when it still used to allow

335
00:23:16,560 --> 00:23:20,960
personal ads, and I basically
just wrote a personal ad

336
00:23:21,000 --> 00:23:24,160
with pretty much a shopping list of
all of the things

337
00:23:24,200 --> 00:23:27,400
that I would want in someone
that I was going to date.

338
00:23:29,080 --> 00:23:33,080
And I just kind of shot it out
into the aether,

339
00:23:33,120 --> 00:23:36,600
not really expecting anything to
come back, if I'm honest.

340
00:23:40,800 --> 00:23:43,040
About a month later,

341
00:23:43,080 --> 00:23:45,120
I had this email which was answering

342
00:23:45,160 --> 00:23:46,520
the Craigslist ad.

343
00:23:51,240 --> 00:23:53,840
It was clear that
they had a way with words.

344
00:23:55,320 --> 00:23:58,440
It was clear that they were able
to endear you to them.

345
00:24:01,240 --> 00:24:03,080
And that's how I first met Bertie.

346
00:24:11,600 --> 00:24:15,040
When Bertie did
kind of come into my life

347
00:24:15,080 --> 00:24:16,920
and did phone me a lot, you know,

348
00:24:16,960 --> 00:24:20,920
we would chat about kind of
anything and everything.

349
00:24:20,960 --> 00:24:23,200
And every single time we talked,

350
00:24:23,240 --> 00:24:27,640
he would have a story which was more
bizarre than the last.

351
00:24:30,040 --> 00:24:34,080
I think I said that
he looked younger than 29.

352
00:24:35,520 --> 00:24:38,080
He launched almost directly
into the story about

353
00:24:38,120 --> 00:24:41,280
how actually the reason why
he looked younger was

354
00:24:41,320 --> 00:24:45,120
because he had had his face
surgically reconstructed.

355
00:24:45,160 --> 00:24:49,480
He said it was because his
ex-boyfriend had locked him

356
00:24:49,520 --> 00:24:54,120
in their apartment and
tried to kill him, basically.

357
00:24:54,160 --> 00:24:55,760
MUFFLED BANGING

358
00:24:58,280 --> 00:25:03,040
It was the mad stories about the ex
who is on the run from the police.

359
00:25:03,080 --> 00:25:04,200
His mum...

360
00:25:05,360 --> 00:25:09,040
...beat this woman
so thoroughly in the face

361
00:25:09,080 --> 00:25:12,440
that one of the rubies in her ring
got dislodged

362
00:25:12,480 --> 00:25:14,640
and lodged into the woman's face,

363
00:25:14,680 --> 00:25:18,440
and his mum knocked two
of this woman's teeth out.

364
00:25:20,480 --> 00:25:23,760
His stories were very entertaining,
but they were also very dark.

365
00:25:26,720 --> 00:25:28,760
There were a lot of discussions

366
00:25:28,800 --> 00:25:31,640
about what we would want
in a relationship.

367
00:25:38,640 --> 00:25:40,120
But it became clear that

368
00:25:40,160 --> 00:25:42,760
that was not something
that I would want.

369
00:25:56,080 --> 00:25:58,800
I arrived back jet-lagged.

370
00:25:58,840 --> 00:26:01,800
Then he kind of steps up
contact a little bit,

371
00:26:01,840 --> 00:26:07,440
and he's asking, OK,
well, let's go out and have a pint.

372
00:26:07,480 --> 00:26:13,640
We were walking up
the hill and there's this Bentley.

373
00:26:13,680 --> 00:26:16,120
He said, "Yep, this is my car."

374
00:26:16,160 --> 00:26:19,880
So then I was like, "OK, wow."

375
00:26:19,920 --> 00:26:21,240
HE LAUGHS

376
00:26:21,280 --> 00:26:24,680
And then he turned to me and
he said, "I'm an earl."

377
00:26:26,760 --> 00:26:29,880
Then we went to
the next bar and he...

378
00:26:29,920 --> 00:26:33,280
That's when he started talking
about his bodyguard and his driver.

379
00:26:35,760 --> 00:26:37,960
Got the Bentley,
we've got the posh clothes,

380
00:26:38,000 --> 00:26:39,880
we've got the accent.

381
00:26:39,920 --> 00:26:43,480
Erm, and now we've got a driver
and a bodyguard.

382
00:26:43,520 --> 00:26:46,400
So at this point, you know,
all the things are stacking up.

383
00:26:50,040 --> 00:26:52,760
He began hinting quite early

384
00:26:52,800 --> 00:26:55,800
that he wanted to commission
an artwork from me.

385
00:26:59,760 --> 00:27:05,040
He told me that he had met
a girl on the Isle of Wight,

386
00:27:05,080 --> 00:27:10,480
and that she was a bit of a diamond
in the rough kind of thing.

387
00:27:12,040 --> 00:27:15,920
He was buying a mansion
on the Isle of Wight

388
00:27:15,960 --> 00:27:19,360
for them to move into
that he would need artwork for.

389
00:27:21,280 --> 00:27:24,840
Bertie had introduced me
over the phone to Alex.

390
00:27:24,880 --> 00:27:28,440
Alex had an invite to the wedding,
so we...

391
00:27:28,480 --> 00:27:30,600
We did speak to him
on a regular basis.

392
00:27:32,040 --> 00:27:34,640
He never told me
that they were engaged.

393
00:27:39,320 --> 00:27:40,480
None of that.

394
00:27:46,440 --> 00:27:49,320
Bertie decided that he wanted
to get married

395
00:27:49,360 --> 00:27:51,960
and have everything
at Osborne House.

396
00:27:54,000 --> 00:27:56,160
You know, we went there
for a few meetings.

397
00:27:56,200 --> 00:27:57,760
We had everything set in stone.

398
00:27:57,800 --> 00:27:59,000
We had the date.

399
00:27:59,040 --> 00:28:01,520
Wedding planning was in full swing.

400
00:28:04,160 --> 00:28:05,840
Beautiful.

401
00:28:05,880 --> 00:28:10,720
It was quite emotional to see
Megan in a wedding dress.

402
00:28:10,760 --> 00:28:14,640
You bring your daughter up
from a baby,

403
00:28:14,680 --> 00:28:18,520
and all of a sudden, they're
a grown woman in a wedding shop.

404
00:28:23,240 --> 00:28:26,440
One of the most powerful things
that Bertie did to convince you

405
00:28:26,480 --> 00:28:30,440
was he would answer the phone
in front of you,

406
00:28:30,480 --> 00:28:33,600
talking to someone else
who would corroborate the stories

407
00:28:33,640 --> 00:28:35,280
that he was giving you.

408
00:28:35,320 --> 00:28:36,880
PHONE RINGS

409
00:28:36,920 --> 00:28:41,080
He used to answer the phone
to his dad all the time.

410
00:28:41,120 --> 00:28:44,560
And I could hear the conversations
between him and his dad,

411
00:28:44,600 --> 00:28:47,120
and they were talking about
him being an earl

412
00:28:47,160 --> 00:28:48,600
and his duties as an earl.

413
00:28:48,640 --> 00:28:52,280
Those were the things which really
made his story believable,

414
00:28:52,320 --> 00:28:55,040
because he can tell me whatever
he wants, that's fine.

415
00:28:55,080 --> 00:29:01,040
But to get other people involved
in telling me the same thing,

416
00:29:01,080 --> 00:29:03,080
that's much more difficult to do.

417
00:29:04,480 --> 00:29:07,840
My friendship with Bertie started
to take a sinister turn.

418
00:29:12,480 --> 00:29:18,480
He wanted me to doctor
bank statements, passports.

419
00:29:18,520 --> 00:29:20,360
I told him no.

420
00:29:20,400 --> 00:29:22,040
So he became more and more distant

421
00:29:22,080 --> 00:29:25,040
until eventually,
he just disappeared.

422
00:29:25,080 --> 00:29:29,440
I still wanted to know
who he was and what he was.

423
00:29:29,480 --> 00:29:33,160
He used to pretend that he knew
people that I knew.

424
00:29:50,560 --> 00:29:52,520
And one day, it just clicked.

425
00:29:52,560 --> 00:29:56,320
I could get in contact with this
person that he said that he knew.

426
00:29:58,920 --> 00:30:00,440
Just to see if he did or not.

427
00:30:02,200 --> 00:30:07,040
So I phoned up this person
and I said to him,

428
00:30:07,080 --> 00:30:10,480
"Look, this is going
to sound really weird,

429
00:30:10,520 --> 00:30:15,920
"but I met this guy in Brighton

430
00:30:15,960 --> 00:30:18,000
"and he told me
that he was an earl."

431
00:30:19,920 --> 00:30:22,320
And then the phone went
really quiet.

432
00:30:26,400 --> 00:30:30,800
And this guy, this police officer,
he said, "Alex...

433
00:30:33,480 --> 00:30:36,640
"This guy, he's really dangerous.

434
00:30:41,160 --> 00:30:43,960
"And you need to get as far away
from him as you can."

435
00:31:00,280 --> 00:31:04,600
I hadn't been living
with Bertie very long

436
00:31:04,640 --> 00:31:08,680
before I realised that we were
getting a hell of a lot of post

437
00:31:08,720 --> 00:31:11,360
for someone that didn't live there.

438
00:31:14,400 --> 00:31:17,400
That was post every day
for this person.

439
00:31:18,920 --> 00:31:23,760
I mentioned it lots of times
to Bertie.

440
00:31:25,520 --> 00:31:26,960
I didn't get any answers from him.

441
00:31:28,560 --> 00:31:34,080
So, being curious,
I did decide to...

442
00:31:36,600 --> 00:31:38,360
...maybe do some digging.

443
00:31:38,400 --> 00:31:39,680
I don't know.

444
00:31:40,960 --> 00:31:43,760
I felt like I needed to try

445
00:31:43,800 --> 00:31:45,840
and get an understanding
of what was happening.

446
00:31:45,880 --> 00:31:49,520
So I went into his office.

447
00:31:55,920 --> 00:31:58,480
And I started going through
the drawers.

448
00:32:00,560 --> 00:32:03,000
I don't really know
what I was expecting to find.

449
00:32:05,200 --> 00:32:10,960
I did, however, find a wallet
with numerous different bank cards

450
00:32:11,000 --> 00:32:13,000
in multiple different names...

451
00:32:16,280 --> 00:32:19,560
...none of which in his wallet
were Bertie Underwood.

452
00:32:22,800 --> 00:32:27,480
I did ask Bertie about these cards.

453
00:32:29,760 --> 00:32:32,520
His attitude changed instantly.

454
00:32:36,240 --> 00:32:37,640
He shut it down quite quickly,

455
00:32:37,680 --> 00:32:41,320
got very defensive and irate.

456
00:32:41,360 --> 00:32:43,200
My heart was racing.

457
00:32:43,240 --> 00:32:44,720
My palms were sweaty.

458
00:32:44,760 --> 00:32:47,640
It's definitely when I started
questioning everything.

459
00:32:49,760 --> 00:32:51,000
I spoke to her on the phone.

460
00:32:51,040 --> 00:32:54,280
I was like, "Just get out of there.
Come here. Let's regroup.

461
00:32:54,320 --> 00:32:57,200
"Let's get you sorted.
We'll talk about it."

462
00:32:59,440 --> 00:33:00,840
Something wasn't right,

463
00:33:00,880 --> 00:33:05,440
so we done what anyone would do
and started googling the names

464
00:33:05,480 --> 00:33:09,120
from the bank cards and the letters
that were arriving to the house

465
00:33:09,160 --> 00:33:10,560
from the old tenants.

466
00:33:14,120 --> 00:33:15,840
Honestly, I was shocked.

467
00:33:17,440 --> 00:33:19,040
His mugshot came up everywhere.

468
00:33:20,640 --> 00:33:23,280
He was on multiple news articles.

469
00:33:25,120 --> 00:33:29,160
Wanted pages for jewellers
warning you against this con man.

470
00:33:32,240 --> 00:33:33,880
He'd conned Bentley dealers.

471
00:33:38,200 --> 00:33:40,400
He'd conned Harrods for
half a million.

472
00:33:40,440 --> 00:33:41,680
Just absolutely insane.

473
00:33:43,400 --> 00:33:45,760
If he's capable of doing that,

474
00:33:45,800 --> 00:33:48,400
what could he have possibly
done to me?

475
00:33:49,680 --> 00:33:53,160
I instantly felt sick.

476
00:33:55,160 --> 00:33:58,320
This guy from
a council estate in Hastings,

477
00:33:58,360 --> 00:34:01,880
he's been pretending
to be a member of nobility...

478
00:34:04,080 --> 00:34:08,440
...by putting on an accent
and wearing certain clothes

479
00:34:08,480 --> 00:34:10,000
and robbing a bank.

480
00:34:12,720 --> 00:34:14,400
My stomach just dropped.

481
00:34:16,280 --> 00:34:20,080
This was the man that
my daughter was going to marry.

482
00:34:21,760 --> 00:34:23,480
He'd duped all of us.

483
00:34:23,520 --> 00:34:25,520
We were groomed as a family.

484
00:34:29,880 --> 00:34:31,880
Then the letters started to arrive.

485
00:34:35,840 --> 00:34:38,000
Credit cards and loans
in Megan's name

486
00:34:38,040 --> 00:34:41,120
that she knew
absolutely nothing about.

487
00:34:41,160 --> 00:34:44,560
And they just kept coming
and coming and coming.

488
00:34:47,280 --> 00:34:51,720
Between different credit cards,
a car, phone bills,

489
00:34:51,760 --> 00:34:55,080
business accounts,
business credit cards.

490
00:34:55,120 --> 00:34:58,760
He'd taken out all of these things
in my name without me knowing.

491
00:35:03,520 --> 00:35:04,920
Around £30,000.

492
00:35:22,240 --> 00:35:27,080
We went to the police
and we went to Action Fraud.

493
00:35:27,120 --> 00:35:30,800
Erm, unfortunately,
there wasn't really a great deal

494
00:35:30,840 --> 00:35:32,120
that they could do.

495
00:35:32,160 --> 00:35:36,440
Lots of things
like the car and the phone

496
00:35:36,480 --> 00:35:40,560
and some other bits and bobs
were seen as domestic issues

497
00:35:40,600 --> 00:35:43,160
rather than fraudulent issues

498
00:35:43,200 --> 00:35:44,920
because we were in a relationship.

499
00:35:46,400 --> 00:35:50,280
So I just had to bite the bullet
and start paying off the debt.

500
00:36:00,280 --> 00:36:03,800
He told me that
he'd left the island,

501
00:36:03,840 --> 00:36:05,680
but he came over to talk to me.

502
00:36:08,120 --> 00:36:11,080
He told me that he did love me
and that it was different,

503
00:36:11,120 --> 00:36:18,640
and that he didn't mean
to take anything this far.

504
00:36:24,280 --> 00:36:27,880
That was the last time
I saw him in person.

505
00:36:35,600 --> 00:36:37,480
I did say to Mum,

506
00:36:37,520 --> 00:36:40,080
"Whatever he has done,

507
00:36:40,120 --> 00:36:41,760
"we have the engagement ring.

508
00:36:43,680 --> 00:36:46,440
"We'll be fine."
Like, "We'll sell the ring.

509
00:36:46,480 --> 00:36:49,800
"We'll clear it.
That should cover it."

510
00:36:49,840 --> 00:36:52,000
"We'll do this. We'll get it valued.

511
00:36:52,040 --> 00:36:53,880
"We'll find the best way
of selling it

512
00:36:53,920 --> 00:36:55,960
"and we'll start clearing
these debts."

513
00:36:58,560 --> 00:37:01,000
We took them to a jewellers in Ryde.

514
00:37:02,360 --> 00:37:03,640
Tested them.

515
00:37:06,520 --> 00:37:07,680
And they were all fake.

516
00:37:13,280 --> 00:37:14,680
Shocked.

517
00:37:14,720 --> 00:37:16,640
Like really shocked, actually,

518
00:37:16,680 --> 00:37:18,520
but also not surprised.

519
00:37:21,360 --> 00:37:23,960
That left her
with absolutely nothing.

520
00:37:27,280 --> 00:37:30,120
I realised, OK, I really
might be in the shit now

521
00:37:30,160 --> 00:37:34,080
and I could be in some big trouble.

522
00:37:36,600 --> 00:37:42,320
Not only had put all of my trust
and my whole life into this man

523
00:37:42,360 --> 00:37:44,880
that I loved and thought
I was going to marry...

524
00:37:47,280 --> 00:37:48,840
Why am I getting emotional?

525
00:37:51,640 --> 00:37:52,840
SHE SNIFFLES

526
00:37:59,520 --> 00:38:00,600
SHE SNIFFLES

527
00:38:02,600 --> 00:38:05,400
I think maybe just going
over it all again...

528
00:38:07,360 --> 00:38:10,000
Like, it was a pretty
crazy experience.

529
00:38:15,240 --> 00:38:17,000
I had to speak to Megan.

530
00:38:17,040 --> 00:38:18,640
"We need to do something about this.

531
00:38:18,680 --> 00:38:21,160
"Let's tell the story

532
00:38:21,200 --> 00:38:24,480
"and let's get his face out there."

533
00:38:24,520 --> 00:38:30,960
Basically, if I could make his life
uncomfortable for one second,

534
00:38:31,000 --> 00:38:32,720
it was all going to be worth it.

535
00:38:37,360 --> 00:38:39,000
And that's what we did.

536
00:38:42,840 --> 00:38:45,520
We sat down, we wrote the post,

537
00:38:45,560 --> 00:38:48,240
we read it through together,

538
00:38:48,280 --> 00:38:50,560
and I posted it, and I posted it

539
00:38:50,600 --> 00:38:53,360
in as many places
as I possibly could.

540
00:38:55,920 --> 00:38:58,800
And before I knew it,
people started sharing it.

541
00:39:01,760 --> 00:39:04,400
It had 500 shares and 1,000 shares,

542
00:39:04,440 --> 00:39:06,960
2,000 shares. And it just escalated.

543
00:39:09,080 --> 00:39:12,800
I had message after message
after message.

544
00:39:17,560 --> 00:39:21,120
I came across this post
and I just remember it

545
00:39:21,160 --> 00:39:25,920
detailing all of these horrible
things that Bertie had done.

546
00:39:25,960 --> 00:39:27,200
And it wasn't just that -

547
00:39:27,240 --> 00:39:30,600
there were all of these comments
from other people

548
00:39:30,640 --> 00:39:34,280
who had also had things stolen
and damaged

549
00:39:34,320 --> 00:39:37,480
and had their lives
really hurt by Bertie.

550
00:39:40,440 --> 00:39:42,280
One of my colleagues, she said,

551
00:39:42,320 --> 00:39:44,480
"Mike, I think you need
to read this."

552
00:39:47,400 --> 00:39:50,160
Some of these people
he duped into getting

553
00:39:50,200 --> 00:39:52,400
their private bank accounts,

554
00:39:52,440 --> 00:39:55,600
he got in to having
their bank cards.

555
00:39:57,080 --> 00:39:58,960
And that really set me off -

556
00:39:59,000 --> 00:40:02,400
to think that he'd actually
got to people,

557
00:40:02,440 --> 00:40:06,320
some people sexually through
Grindr and social sites.

558
00:40:09,840 --> 00:40:12,280
I reached out
to some of these people.

559
00:40:18,760 --> 00:40:20,200
And I just went, "Right.

560
00:40:20,240 --> 00:40:23,800
"I'm not letting this person get
away with what he's done.

561
00:40:25,600 --> 00:40:28,360
"I'm going to get this person
put behind bars."

562
00:40:34,960 --> 00:40:40,680
I had multiple men
contact me on Facebook

563
00:40:40,720 --> 00:40:44,160
to tell me that they had been
sleeping with him.

564
00:40:47,920 --> 00:40:51,560
Not only was he cheating on me,

565
00:40:51,600 --> 00:40:57,320
he was doing it in my bed -
with men.

566
00:41:14,520 --> 00:41:18,560
This, like, whole person
that was my world,

567
00:41:18,600 --> 00:41:22,280
like, was never a real person.

568
00:41:26,800 --> 00:41:29,120
None of it was real.

569
00:41:31,040 --> 00:41:32,800
SHE CLEARS THROAT

570
00:41:35,200 --> 00:41:41,720
It really broke my heart
to see her that upset.

571
00:41:45,600 --> 00:41:47,760
She changed her whole world
for this man.

572
00:41:59,600 --> 00:42:00,920
I contacted the police.

573
00:42:02,760 --> 00:42:06,760
We built a case between
the people that had got involved

574
00:42:06,800 --> 00:42:08,440
and given evidence.

575
00:42:11,800 --> 00:42:14,720
There was enough evidence
to take it via a jury.

576
00:42:20,800 --> 00:42:22,520
He was found guilty in his absence.

577
00:42:27,560 --> 00:42:31,640
The judge handed down
a sentence of five years.

578
00:42:35,280 --> 00:42:38,080
He'd actually done this before,
been convicted of it,

579
00:42:38,120 --> 00:42:39,880
done time in prison for it.

580
00:42:39,920 --> 00:42:43,320
He'd come out, he'd just picked up
where he'd left off.

581
00:42:47,120 --> 00:42:50,120
About a year and a half
down the line,

582
00:42:50,160 --> 00:42:52,520
I'd moved on with my life.

583
00:42:52,560 --> 00:42:56,800
I had a Facebook message
from somebody.

584
00:43:00,600 --> 00:43:03,880
He contacted me to let me know
that Bertie had been arrested.

585
00:43:12,040 --> 00:43:18,600
Something that has disturbed me
ever since was that Bertie was using

586
00:43:18,640 --> 00:43:25,200
my career and my website
to corroborate the stories

587
00:43:25,240 --> 00:43:29,040
he was making up with new people
that he was meeting.

588
00:43:31,600 --> 00:43:34,240
That's the cleverest thing
that he was able to do,

589
00:43:34,280 --> 00:43:37,840
to manipulate other people to tell
his story so that he didn't have to.

590
00:43:37,880 --> 00:43:39,800
And when you're hearing it
from a third party,

591
00:43:39,840 --> 00:43:41,040
it's more convincing.

592
00:43:46,320 --> 00:43:49,040
He must have never had
any intentions of marrying me.

593
00:43:51,040 --> 00:43:56,440
I obviously had to contact
suppliers and cancel things.

594
00:43:58,960 --> 00:44:00,520
I am very angry.

595
00:44:02,720 --> 00:44:06,080
I, you know, wasted the first
two years of my twenties

596
00:44:06,120 --> 00:44:07,680
on absolutely nothing...

597
00:44:11,720 --> 00:44:13,120
...other than a load of debt.

598
00:44:20,440 --> 00:44:24,080
Once Megan found out about
all of this debt, she...

599
00:44:24,120 --> 00:44:25,840
She worked her arse off to clear it.

600
00:44:32,880 --> 00:44:35,160
I had been dabbling in photography

601
00:44:35,200 --> 00:44:38,440
towards the end
of the relationship with Bertie.

602
00:44:38,480 --> 00:44:40,080
I borrowed a friend's camera,

603
00:44:40,120 --> 00:44:42,280
and I'd just sort of been having
some fun with it.

604
00:44:42,320 --> 00:44:45,600
Photographing friends,
children and things like that.

605
00:44:45,640 --> 00:44:48,760
Erm, completely unintentionally,

606
00:44:48,800 --> 00:44:51,040
it just happened to turn
into a business.

607
00:44:56,640 --> 00:44:59,280
Which, you know,
couldn't have come at a better time.

608
00:45:01,440 --> 00:45:03,240
She's had to rebuild her life.

609
00:45:05,240 --> 00:45:09,560
She's had to work incredibly hard
to pay off the debts

610
00:45:09,600 --> 00:45:12,000
that were accumulated.

611
00:45:12,040 --> 00:45:14,000
Very, very proud of Megan.

612
00:45:14,040 --> 00:45:17,520
Yeah, I'm very excited
for her future as well.

613
00:45:22,240 --> 00:45:28,440
My life has changed so dramatically
since I was with him,

614
00:45:28,480 --> 00:45:33,080
and I've been in a new relationship
and I have my home,

615
00:45:33,120 --> 00:45:35,400
I have my mortgage,
I have my business.

616
00:45:35,440 --> 00:45:40,280
My life is exactly what I wanted
when I was with him.

617
00:45:58,680 --> 00:46:04,440
He had walked out of an open prison
where he was serving his sentence.

618
00:46:07,400 --> 00:46:09,000
Currently wanted by the police.

619
00:46:10,880 --> 00:46:12,360
How do you get away with that?

620
00:46:13,840 --> 00:46:15,400
He didn't even do his sentence.

621
00:46:17,840 --> 00:46:19,080
SHE SCOFFS

622
00:46:19,120 --> 00:46:20,480
You couldn't write it.

623
00:47:09,000 --> 00:47:11,160
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