I'm going to start off by showing you a photograph of Coleen Greenwood
and somebody by the name of James Scott.
Do you accept that that's you?
Were you in a relationship with Coleen?
Did you tell Coleen that you were a fireman?
In March 2015, she fell pregnant.
Are you the father of the child?
It's time to own up and put your hands up to what you've clone.
REPORTER: A woman from the north-east was duped by a man
she met online who lied about his identity.
James Scott was a very charismatic man.
It was almost like a dream.
He had the wool over everybody's eyes.
The lengths he went to, it was...it was just incredible.
No-one could be prepared for what he did.
No-one.
Right, 0|<.
Back in 2014, I was a divorced mum of two girls.
I'd been married for 17 years,
so being single again was quite a new experience.
Some of my friends had said,
"Oh, you know, why don't you try a dating website,
"dip your toe back in the water?"
Ancl I thought, "You know, it might be nice to meet someone,
"go on a few dates."
I don't think I've particularly got a type,
just somebody that would make me laugh,
that was kind, family-orientated.
That's really important.
You don't have to have bulging muscles and tattoos
and a designer beard.
It's all about being the nice guy.
The world of dating, since I'd previously dated, had changed.
I was quite unnerved by it.
A lot of pictures of men with fish, for some bizarre reason.
Quite a few men that I would say were economical with the truth
about how tall they potentially were.
All sorts.
Sunday afternoon, thought I'd check my messages,
and the particular one pinged up.
"Firefighterj has messaged you."
Didn't have a photograph on it, but he said, because of his job
as a firefighter, it was frowned upon somewhat
to have your pictures out there, because of that job,
and it sounded feasible.
And, as soon as I asked him for some photographs,
he sent me probably five or six photos through.
So, you know, there was no reason to...to ask any more questions
as to why he hadn't.
I first heard about James at work one day.
Coleen just said, "Oh, there's this guy I've been chatting to
"online, and he seems really nice."
One afternoon at work, he messaged my phone.
I asked my sister, cos I worked with her, and she was like,
"Why not? What have you got to lose?"
He did a lot of the talking, but the time flew past.
He talked a lot about his two daughters.
A real doting father, which was a massive tick for me.
You could tell he was really passionate
about being a firefighter.
Throughout the relationship, he would turn up after shift
in his fire gear, which was really nice.
You'd smell it as he came in the house, the smell of smoke.
It was what defined him, really.
One instance, he'd saved a little boy.
He'd jumped out of a burning building
with a little boy in his arms, broken his back in the process.
Ancl he had this card from the little boy that he'd made
specially for him, calling him his hero.
It made your heart swell.
I used to keep this on my desk at work.
I could look at it and think, "Well, I might not be able to see him today
"cos he's working, but he's helping people."
Dating a firefighter, it's really nice,
but it does come with some negatives as well.
There'll be times that dates will be cut short,
or there'll be extra shifts they have to go in on.
I understood that. I appreciated that.
He was thoughtful.
He would send me lovely text messages.
He was sweet and he was kind,
and he made you feel cherished.
We didn't see that much of each other
because of his shift patterns.
We didn't spend many full nights together.
But that was fine by me.
I was quite happy to split my time with him,
with my girls, with my friends.
My girls were actually asking to meet him.
He's got a boyish charm about him, I'd say.
Ancl I remember that, after them initially meeting him, saying,
"Yeah, he's a good guy, Mum."
"Yeah, we'd be happy for you to date him."
I knew a lot about his girls.
I'd saw so many pictures.
I would hear him on the phone at times to his girls,
talking to them.
James's girls were clue to move abroad to the States, to Texas,
with james's ex-wife.
He was devastated and he was sad.
Seeing James so upset resonated with me
because if I thought my girls were going to move
to the other side of the world, it would tear my heart out,
so I really felt for him.
My sister and I are so close.
Growing up, we were inseparable.
She's been with me since the womb, you know?
We came into the world together
and you can't get any closer than that, really.
We work together, we socialise together.
It was really important to me that Karen liked James.
We went out and I took James to meet my sister and her boyfriend
at the time, Ryan, who's now her husband.
So, the first time I metjames,
we were sitting having a pub quiz,
and he bounded in, you know, making an entrance.
Everybody turned to look.
In he came, big and loud, and sat down with Karen and I.
James Scott was a very charismatic man.
He would go into a room and, within five minutes,
everyone would be his best friend.
You couldn't help but be intoxicated by it because it was just charming.
We'd been dating for a few months.
He'd met my family. We were going on nice clays out.
At that point, I realised that I loved him
and couldn't imagine him not being a part, a big part, of my life.
Our relationship was going from strength to strength.
We got on. We were having a nice time.
Neither of us ever talked about
wanting to have any more children. Ancl quite...quite the opposite.
I'd had quite a difficult delivery with my last child,
and more children weren't on the agenda for me,
and he said the same.
We were careful but, obviously, things happen,
and we can't have been careful enough.
But I found out I was pregnant.
She was really torn.
She didn't know what to do,
but she knew that it wasn't the right time in her life
to have another baby.
I decided, and James totally backed me and agreed,
that I should get a termination.
SHE SIGHS WHISPERS: Sorry...
This is the one bit that really upsets me.
Sorry.
I'm so sorry.
Sorry.
I didn't think I'd do this.
It was something we should've been there to support each other.
But he had to...
He had a shift and he couldn't get out of it,
so he went to work and I stayed alone that night,
erm...when it happened and, erm, the baby was no more.
After the termination, I was really fearful.
I didn't want to have any sort of physical relationship.
I couldn't put myself through another termination.
I just couldn't have clone it.
So, James decided that he should get a vasectomy,
and then we wouldn't ever have to face that problem
ever happening again.
After the procedure, he was in a bit of discomfort.
He had a little bit of bruising down below.
It was so many weeks later that he showed me, on his phone,
the results of a medical report in his name,
showing that he had no sperm count.
There was no fear any more,
so we could start our relationship again.
It was a lovely evening, but I just...didn't feel right.
I took Karen to one side and said, This sounds really stupid,
"but I think I might be pregnant."
And she hooted with laughter.
"You've had a dodgy prawn in your linguine.
"That's all it is - don't worry about it."
James went to the little Tesco's at the bottom of the street
and got a pregnancy test for me.
Went into the loo, did the test.
Coleen came back from the toilets and she...
She looked ashen-faced.
She, you know, she just looked in shock.
And she sat down at the table
and said, "|'m pregnant."
I did four more tests that evening.
It just couldn't...couldn't be right.
But, then, five tests couldn't be wrong, could they?
I just remember saying to James,
"Oh, my God, everyone's going to think
"I've cheated on you."
He just said, "I know you wouldn't do that.
"You know, I trust you implicitly."
I thought to myself, "What an amazing guy."
He wouldn't... It wouldn't even cross his mind
that I'd be unfaithful to him.
He said that every one in so many vasectomies failed.
And...he went on to say that...
Sorry.
He went on to say that it was the original baby.
We'd made a mistake. It was the original baby coming back
because it... We weren't... We shouldn't have clone what we did.
That, erm, it was a gift from God.
I was 41 years old.
I'd had a difficult pregnancy previously.
I didn't want any more children.
But I'd got no choice, cos I couldn't...
I couldn't not go through with it.
So, when Coleen fell pregnant again,
I thought, "The vasectomy is final. What's going on here?"
It was James and my second Christmas together,
and there was just a funny atmosphere in the room.
The girls were a little bit giddier than normal.
Ancl do you know when you think "There's something going on here
"but I don't know what it is"?
Ancl then James is saying, "Oh, does that tree look a bit odd?"
Ancl there was a little black book sitting in the branches.
It said "Coleen Scott's Wedding Diary"
on the front of the little book.
Ancl James turned around and I looked at him,
and he just said, "Will you marry me?"
It turned out he'd already been and spoken to my sister
and my mum, and this book had...the whole wedding planned.
Ancl you opened one, it would say,
"Wedding cake tasting," and there'd be one,
"Initial dress fitting," and, "Meet the wedding planner,"
and all the way through to
"Marry me at this time and date at Wyo yard Hall,"
and then the honeymoon to Vegas and the hotel we were stopping at.
The whole wedding was arranged.
In a family full of women - grandmother, mother, daughters -
to have another... LAUGHING: ..another man,
it was a nice change.
He was such a big part of our lives. We loved him.
And what could be better than them getting married?
It was a life-and-death moment for herself and for the baby.
Doors were being flung open.
I was being whizzed down a corridor.
There's just the lights flashing past me.
It's just utter chaos.
I think, really, I was just selfishly scared
I was going to lose my twin.
It was just...awful.
I remember waking up and my sister being beside me at the bed.
I don't know where James was at this point.
The first thing I said to Karen was, "Where's my baby?"
"Just calm down. He's OK.
"They've taken him to special care baby unit.
"He's going to be all right."
Within maybe another week,
they discharged him back home, which was...amazing.
It was a really happy clay when we could finally
go and register Charlie's birth.
Proud there was... He was all legal, and in this world and safe.
Yeah, it was a fantastic clay.
This is actually Charlie's birth certificate,
and it's got James Scott as the father.
Occupation, firefighter.
James was amazing with Charlie.
JAMES HICCU PS, BABY LAUGHS
The most doting clad.
He played with him.
The girls loved Charlie, and we were...
We were just a happy, settled family.
It was a really lovely, happy time.
Quite a while into our relationship, we decided to have a day out
and took a trip to Alton Towers.
We were waiting to go on one particular ride
when this guy came over to James, obviously knowing him, and said,
erm, "You all right, Wilson?"
And I'm thinking, "That's a weird thing to say."
So, I said, "That was odd. Why did he call you Wilson?"
He went, "Oh, it's been a firefighter."
"We all have nicknames for each other, so they used to always say,
"Where there's a will, there's a way.
"So, my nickname was Will, and he just said,
"'Will, you all right, Wilson?“
As you would and I'm like, "All right. OK."
Ancl, both my daughter and I, perfect sense.
The run-up to the wedding,
I got swept up in the excitement of it all.
James took me to meet Donna, the wedding planner.
Had a big folder all about suggestions and ideas,
and we discussed what I would like,
and how her and James would make this dream come true.
One clay, I found James sitting on our bed.
He said he'd found a lump and he was scared.
We told him to make an appointment, to go to get it checked out.
I went along to the first appointment with him,
and James said, "OK, I'll go in on my own."
He came out of that appointment.
He just said that the look on the doctor's face,
that he thought it wasn't going to be good news,
and he just had this feeling that it, you know,
it was going to be cancer.
I felt so scared for him.
I mean, he was such a good guy,
and why did awful things to keep happening?
Getting married should be the happiest clay of your life,
and if you've got a potential cancer diagnosis hanging over your head...
We decided to...to put the wedding on hold.
They couldn't get married. How could they get married
when this was hanging over their heads?
It made sense to me at the time that they did cancel that wedding.
He had an appointment,
not long afterwards,
at the Woodlands Hospital,
and he took Charlie's god mum, Yvonne, with him,
just for moral support.
I was at work, so James said,
"There's no point you sitting in the waiting room here,"
and so Yvonne agreed and went setting off.
The skies had gone a bit dark and she thought,
"You know, it's going to pour down with rain,"
so she decided to head back to the car,
and when she got back, James was sitting on the wall near the car.
So, she was quite surprised he was back so soon,
and he was just sat scrolling on his phone,
and Yvonne said, "Wow, you were quick."
You know, "Has your appointment been cancelled?"
Ancl he went, "Oh, no, no. It doesn't take long
"when they give you good news."
It had been a misdiagnosis that can look like a lump
in the position it was at.
So, after that, because everything was good,
James got straight back on to Donna, the wedding planner.
It was all back on again.
His mum, she was quite a successful sports agent
who lived in the south of France.
She'd calljames, and quite often he would take it on his iPad.
She'd be, "Hi, Coleen. Are you all right?"
Not long after Charlie was born,
his mum decided she would like to bequeath an early inheritance
to all her children.
James didn't say how much this was,
but he did imply it was, you know, generous.
I didn't realisejames's mum was quite as wealthy as she is.
And it was...it was a surprise to me
because I didn't really know much about his mum.
He was taking Coleen out for nice meals.
He was taken her away for weekends.
There was the spa at Ramside Hall.
They certainly had a lovely lifestyle.
As time went on and the stories of the money, you know,
more money coming in from his mother,
the clays out would become more outlandish.
So, instead of going to watch a match in the stands,
we went to hospitality suites.
James had realised, obviously, I had these buy-to-let properties
of my own, and his mum owned a lot of different properties herself.
And Coleen, because she worked in property, could work from home
and, that way, she wouldn't be missing Charlie,
because Charlie would be around more with her.
It just seemed really, really great.
I was incredibly close to James.
He would come around and see me, we'd have a coffee.
And we'd just been chatting and he said, "Oh, my mum's got this idea."
She wanted to look after her son, her grandson and Coleen,
and was interested in opening a bar or a restaurant
and giving it their family name, which was Scott.
Karen had inherited some money when my clad had passed away
some years earlier. We both did.
Karen still had hers.
James never actually asked me to invest.
He just talked about it a lot.
And the fact of it being a family business - I'm in the family.
I wouldn't mind being in this.
This was an opportunity for Karen to take some of her inheritance
and invest it in a good business where she could work for herself.
So we went to the property. We viewed it.
We walked around inside, had a look.
All these brilliant ideas of what it would look like
and how they'd run it. Ancl it was just fantastic.
So, in total, I invested...
...£55,000 in the businesses.
There was £25,000 at Scott's,
and then a further £5,000 for contingency,
for things going wrong, on top of that,
and then £25,000 into Gemini.
But that didn't touch on how much I actually invested in him.
And, because he was doing work on my properties,
and I was...| was giving him money to carry out works
on the properties, it was...it was everything I had.
When I first metjames back in 2016, I knew fairly little about him,
other than that he had these ambitious plans
and he really wanted to give opportunities
to other small, local businesses.
I was really excited with giving me and Media Savvy the opportunity
to be part of that journey with him,
doing some work on branding and marketing stuff
for other companies related to gyms,
and also Coleen and Karen,
including this Gemini Properties website and branding.
Just thinking, "Well, if this is just the start of it,
"where could it go?"
He was a nice guy, down-to-earth, considering the millions
he had bankrolled to do these projects.
He'd approached me to do some videography work with this big,
grand Newcastle Quayside project.
From a couple of business meetings,
to all of a sudden being invited to VIP boxes for Premier League
football matches and invited to his wedding.
Like, I'd only met him three or four times.
It was, it was a bit surreal in many, in many ways.
With At Scott's, things were not happening as quickly
as I would have liked.
There always seemed to be some reason that there was - problems
were cropping up or things had to be cancelled.
So I spoke to my sister and she was hurt and James
was just - he was absolutely
horrified that I'd, I, um, doubted him.
I felt absolutely wretched.
This is James. This is my sister's fiance.
He's part of our family. We love him.
But it was all my money in the world.
I had a lot invested in that.
If this didn't work out, then really,
I was up shit creek without a paddle.
I didn't even invoicejames for any of the work we'd clone,
until after significant amounts of bill had been sort of built
up by that point, but it was always like, oh, the accountant's got
it at hand, um, abroad.
There was always something, but it was always believable
because we were still involved with all the colleagues.
Ancl at that point, we were still going to his wedding.
A few days before the wedding day,
James was travelling to Texas to bring his two girls, Maddie
and Mackenzie, back.
He was so excited. I was really excited.
I was finally going to meet his girls.
Then when he got to the States, he went quiet.
I tried phoning, but his phone was always switched off.
And then I thought, "Well, he's with his girls.
"He's going to be back in a couple of days."
I was a bit unsettled, but not excessively worried.
Then James sent her a message.
I heard the door open and in comes James.
He said, "We're not getting married."
James said the wedding couldn't go ahead.
I just broke down in tears.
Just utter devastation.
His ex-wife had just played her old tricks, just got him
all the way to Texas and just refused to let the girls come
back with him.
So I said, "Well, this is awful, James, but after the wedding,
"we'll do a big party.
"We'll get the girls over then and we can make it just as special."
But he was having none of it.
I did at this point try and say,
"No. Come on, this is getting silly now."
"We've just cancelled a wedding a couple of months ago.
"We can't do that to everyone."
But he was adamant he couldn't get married without his daughters there.
But he would get in touch with Donna, the wedding planner.
They'd arrange another wedding date.
One when he's sure that his girls could come.
And at that point, I just said, "No, I'm not telling everyone
"that it's cancelled again."
I'd been his champion to that point.
I just checked out of it then. No.
No, I didn't even want to talk to him, really.
When I first heard the wedding was off, I remember thinking
at the time,
"Wow. Like, that's quite a big thing to do.
"Call off a wedding."
What all this time and expense has gone into.
James said that on the actual wedding day,
we should have a day away.
Make a nice memory and not just dwell on the fact
that it should have been the day we were getting married.
We decided to go for the day to Scarborough and just have a nice
family day out.
On the Saturday that they were clue to get married,
we had nothing to do.
Ryan ancl I, because we'd planned to be having a wonderful clay
at Wyo yard Hall and celebrating my sister's wedding.
James had recently had a lot of boilers installed in different
rental properties I owned, and I needed to check up on some
maintenance issues, and when we were there I thought, oh, I've seen
this brand spanking expensive
new boiler that's been installed.
We looked in the boiler cupboard.
Ancl there was a boiler in there, but it looked a bit dusty.
I also went around and looked at the rest of the property,
and the amount that Karen had paid to James to get this work clone was,
you know, a bit excessive.
Ryan phoned the boiler installation company and found out
that that model hadn't been in production
for many years.
So I then decided to phone another tenant, who also had a new boiler
installed, but she confirmed that no boiler had been put
in that property either.
None of the maintenance she'd asked for for months thatjames
had been sorting out, none of it had been clone.
It had all been paid for by me,
but none of it had been clone.
I phoned Coleen. James could hear a bit of the conversation.
He kept saying, "Let me speak to her.
"Let me speak to her. Oh, I can't believe it. I can't believe it."
He'd been let down badly and heads were going to roll
on the Monday morning.
I didn't believe him, actually.
I knew that there was something really badly wrong.
I phoned Wyo yard Hall, where the wedding was, and I spoke
to the manager.
I asked, is the Scott wedding going on today?
The gentleman said, "Never heard that name."
He says, "No, we've actually got a wedding on today that's
"been booked for months."
So this all started snowballing.
It felt like everything was going in slow motion
because how could that be?
Coleen had been dealing with the wedding planner.
She'd had emails.
And that was the moment
that it all started to unravel.
I phoned Coleen and told her to excuse herself and go
to the ladies, because I'd got something to tell her, but to act
normally in front ofjames and to not arouse his suspicions.
I said to James, "just nipping to the toilet."
Went into the ladies,
and rung Karen back, and she said, "You need to sit down."
She said, "|'m so, so sorry, Col.
"I don't know how to tell you this, but there was never any wedding."
I could hear the teeth chattering in shock, and I was saying to her,
"You mustn't let him know. Get him back to Chester le Street.
"We need to talk to him.
"We need to find out what the hell
"is going on and what's he clone?"
So somehow I went out and just said, "Karen and
"I have had a massive bust up. I'm really worried for Karen.
"I want to go see my sister now."
He knew how close we were.
He couldn't argue with that.
She deserved an Academy Award
for playing that part.
On the route, I'm staring out the window, reeling from what Karen
has just told me.
I actually said to James, "You would never lie to me, would you?"
And actually, I had to hammer it home.
So I said, "So if you lie to me now,
"you're saying Charlie would drop down dead now if you told a lie?"
"Yep. I would never lie to you."
I just at that point thought, "My God, who are you?"
What about my money now?
Ancl is it all OK? ls my money safe?
I phoned the solicitors firm and they confirmed that the name
that we'd had for who James had been dealing with, didn't exist.
Ancl not only did he not exist, there was no branch
in Newcastle anyway.
I answered the phone and Karen was just hysterical.
"|t's all lies. He's lied about everything."
"My money isn't safe."
I was just blurting it out.
She just said, "We're coming up.
"We're coming up to confront him." You know, "Keep him at the house."
James had heard part of this and turned around
And I just said to him, "What have you done?"
He just carried on driving.
Pulled in to the driveway.
Jumped out of the car.
He passed Charlie to me
and just said, "I just need a minute."
Jumped in the car and drove off.
We missed him by about half a minute because just as we were driving
into Coleen's street, he drove past us.
Ancl he had this cheeky little, you know, like, "I've got you.
"I've had you."
Just looked like the cat that got the cream.
Ancl this little wave was the moment that I knew, beyond a shadow
of a doubt, that my money had gone.
But the hardest bit was telling Coleen.
That was heartbreaking.
She looked wrecked by it.
She looked so upset and so hurt.
Absolutely devastated.
Whatever we found out
from that point was going to be bad.
We walked into the police station and I was just blurting it all out.
"All my money's been stolen. He's stolen it all.
"He's taken... He's a liar. He's a thief. He's a cheat."
We had his registration of his car.
Policeman went away and came back and said, "Well, this is registered
"to a Greg Wilson."
Brian and I looked at each other and said, "And who is Greg Wilson?"
Because we'd never heard that name...
...and that was the tip of the iceberg.
My name is Chris Bentham, and I'm a detective
with Durham Police.
I've been a police officer for 27 years and a detective for 23 years.
So I came in just on a normal routine day into the CID office
and was allocated this case.
I read through it and couldn't quite believe my eyes what I was reading.
James hadn't come back at this point.
He wasn't answering anybody's calls or texts.
"Let's try and find out who this Greg Wilson is."
Maybe he can tell us where James has gone.
You go to social media first, to find anybody these days, don't you?
So we're putting Greg Wilson.
We got up a raft of different Greg Wilsons.
None of them were right.
My daughter Laura said, "Look, it's a long shot, but let's
"just check all the Wilsons in the Darlington area.
"Maybe we can find this Greg Wilson's family member or something,
"and they can point us in the right direction."
And then we found a Facebook prof fie.
And there was a smiling photo of this woman with James.
I just turned in horror to my family and said,
"Oh, my God, James isn't James.
"He's Greg Wilson."
I just went into shock at that point.
I just couldn't believe what I was seeing.
I started to shake, just felt sick.
I decided I needed to get some more answers and find out
what was going on.
Ancl the best person I thought who could do this was his mum.
James had always said that his mum didn't do social media.
She was too private a person, so I'd never, ever looked for her.
But we'd found Facebook...
I rang the number, she answered.
I said, "Just before we go any further, can I ask
"you one question, please?
"Can I ask the name of your son?"
She went, "|t's an odd thing to ask, but of course he's called Greg."
Ancl I said, "Well, that's not who I know him to be.
"I know him to bejames Scott."
And she 'gust gasped.
So while talking tojames's mum,
obviously I asked all the questions and was he going back to his wife?
Was that where he was the whole time living this double life?
Were they still together?
His mum told me that he was very much still in his wife's life.
Obviously, his mum hasn't had a clue either.
She'd been told a pack of lies about me.
She'd been told that I owned loads of property, thatjames was working
for my business in property.
The woman had been fed nearly as many lies as I had.
She'd never owned her own property.
She'd never been a sports agent.
She'd never lived in the South of France.
Lie after lie after lie.
When he was working and he was doing shifts and he was away overnight,
he was with his wife and his family.
Ryan phoned Washington Fire Station and said did they have a
James Scott firefighter that worked there?
And they said, no, no, no, James Scott had ever worked there.
"Do you have a Greg Wilson as a firefighter working there?"
No, had never heard that name either.
So we knew then that he wasn't a firefighter either.
But he had the outfit and all his shifts -
where was he going?
Who were these girls that were his daughters
that were sending me cards and buying me presents?
They didn't exist.
He'd obviously just been taking stock images off the internet
for lots of the stuff.
They weren't daughters.
They were just, you know, whoever.
If these people didn't exist, who was he talking to?
Had he had a vasectomy?
Well, I'd seen the evidence.
The fact that he made up a false
name, that they had a child together,
there's no real crime in that.
My job was to focus on the criminal side.
He was taking money off Coleen's sister and using it
for his own purposes.
When I found out that the investments I'd invested,
hadn't - they didn't exist - and all my money had gone,
it was humiliating.
I might have lost every penny I had, but I just felt absolutely awful
for Coleen to have found all this out.
I felt heartbroken for her.
It was devastating.
If it wasn't for Charlie, I mean, he was my saving grace.
I had to get out of bed.
I had to go through the motions.
This was the card he posted from a letterbox weeks
after he'd run off.
He was aware at this point that I knew he wasn't James Scott
and he was Greg Wilson, so he doesn't even pretend
to be James Scott in this card.
Ancl it just says, "Col, I'm sorry.
"I do love you and Charlie to the ends of the Earth.
"Miss you both and love you both. Please take care.
"Sorry. And, "All my love, Princess."
Ancl then kisses again.
And that was that.
Ancl this was the last correspondence that I had with James, and he's
never contacted me since.
Once I'd had the conversation with Detective Bentham and it became
clear that we weren't going to be paid for the work we'd clone,
I was like, really pissed off. Actually,
you know, he had the wool over everybody's eyes, and he's clone
it really well.
He went on the run, but I traced him through an online
bank account.
So I literally sort of flew out of the office, grabbed the car
keys, drove as fast as I possibly could down to where Greg Wilson
was living, knocked on the door, and walked in.
And there he was, sat there, really cool, really calm.
When I told him why I was investigating, he said something
along the lines of, "Yes, it was me."
In all the time that he was spoken to, that's the only real
admission that we got.
OK. The date is the 18th of August.
What is your full name, please?
Greg James Wilson. Right.
Greg, I arrested you on suspicion of theft and fraud
by false representation.
So the first question is really simple.
Are you responsible for that? No comment.
In relation to, um, Karen Crier,
she tells me that she has paid you, um, over the period of about eight
months, in relation to businesses which you have allegedly set up,
she's paid you £57,656.90 to you.
Do you agree with that? No comment.
Do you dispute that? No comment.
Did you tell them lies about all these companies and all these things
that you were doing to con them out of money? No comment.
Is there anything that you can give to me that that would be innocent
explanation as to what you've done.
No comment.
You were living a lie. No comment.
So when I arrested Greg Wilson, there was other people in the house,
and, and surprisingly, I discovered that one of the people
was his new fiancee.
He had told, told her that he worked at Catterick in the Army.
And quite often when sort of military aircraft, aircraft
would fly over, um, he would suggest that he might get called
into work. Again, a complete lie.
He wasn't working for the Army.
He wasn't even working.
I think through the day he would go out, like, as though he was working
and do what he wanted to do, and come back on a teatime and suggest
that he'd been to work.
He was well on his way to starting another fraud.
Because I'd lost my job as well as having all the money stolen,
I couldn't keep up with the properties I owned.
I tried for as long as I could, and it got to a point
where I had to ultimately admit defeat and file for bankruptcy.
One of the worst times of my life.
Greg Wilson waited right until the last minute
to plead guilty.
It's no surprise to me to do that.
I'm pretty sure that he was waiting to see if Coleen and Karen
really wanted to go through with it,
to give evidence at court.
We're nice people, and I think he counted on us being nice
and being soft, and that's how we would behave.
But actually we've got core of steel when it comes to it.
And he wasn't going to get away that easily.
Really wanted some explanation and some answers.
That's all I've ever wanted, but I didn't get them.
He's just such a coward.
We never quite got to the bottom of,
was anybody else involved? Did Greg Wilson involved anybody
else to help him commit, commit this fraud?
That bit is still quite open-ended.
I think what he did was absolutely disgraceful.
But it was...
You've got to admire somebody that can keep so many balls juggling
and keep track of all his lies.
And if he'd only chosen to use his power for good
rather than for evil, he could have conquered the world.
It did take me a while to even consider meeting somebody else
or having a relationship, but I did, in time, go on to meet
a really nice man.
I mean, it was awful,
I made him introduce me to all his family within the first
few dates, and I had to check his bank accounts and his
birth certificate and his passport, and meet all of his friends.
Even despite everything I'd been through, I wasn't going
to let James Scott define the rest of my life.
I don't hate the man any more, because I wouldn't give
him that power.
Ancl it's corrosive, and it's a bit like a car.
He used to sit up front and always be beside me.
Now he's in the back seat, and eventually he'll be in the boot.
He's got no power any more.