SURVIVAL STORIES
EMMA FERRIS, 40, WAS CONNED BY SOMEONE SHE THOUGHT LOVED HER…
After my divorce, I started dating Andrew Thomson in 2017, after matching with him on a dating app.
I was a mum of two and had my own company called The Breath Effect, where I work with men and women around the world as a stress and resilience coach. Andrew was also a successful businessman and we had lots in common, such as travelling and skiing. Andrew said he had built up and sold a truck company, using the capital to buy five restaurants, which he’d also sold on. Now, he was looking for some new opportunities.
I was impressed and thought we had a genuine connection. Andrew was my shoulder to cry on when a friend’s husband passed away and, in time, he met my family –my sister Sarah really took to him. Andrew was generous, too, always surprising me with gifts and weekend breaks. He would often bring up his business ventures, taking me to look at the properties he was investing in. He also presented me with a document, showing that he had assets worth £6million. One day, he showed me a potential property development site he said he owned and insisted he could help me out. He asked to borrow £25k to invest in the property and said he’d repay it with interest. Keen to give my children stability, I agreed. I appointed a lawyer, drew up documents, and researched Andrew’s companies. It was all above board, so I gave him the money.
In April 2019, when he’d made all the repayments, he approached me with another proposal. Although this time my gut said no, I ignored it. A few days later, I transferred £125,000 of my hard-earned life savings. But the next day, my friend Jo said her husband had done some digging and Andrew wasn’t who he said he was. She showed me a newspaper article that said he was a fraudster who had served time in jail, and that his name was actually Andrew Tonks. I felt sick – I had been groomed by a skilled con man. I rang the bank, who froze part of the £125,000 from being transferred. But to get the money back into my account, I needed him to sign the paperwork at the bank. After speaking to my brother, my lawyer and the police, I hatched a plan. Pretending that my family were angry about the investment, I persuaded Andrew to come with me to the bank, where he signed the paperwork. The bank staff were in on the bluff. Thankfully, my money was safe. But it was far from over –Andrew still had more than £52,000 of my money and I had to pretend we could have a relationship to try to claw it back and build a case against him.
Eventually, Andrew was arrested. In March 2
