A serial con woman who claimed she had cancer has been ordered to start paying back her victim thousands of pounds before Christmas – or go to jail.
Charlotte Roche duped a man she met on a dating site into giving her cash for “treatment and post-operative care”.
Matthew Pilgrim gave her £14,320 – and has yet to see a penny back.
Roche, 31, was supposed to have started returning the money at the rate of £1,000 a month in July.
But in August she was jailed for four months for stealing £3,119 from the John Clark BMW dealership in Aberdeen.
During her three day trial it emerged the 31-year-old took the money over a five-week period between November and December 2014.
Garage boss Raymond Henderson became suspicious of the service assistant when she suddenly took ill and was admitted to hospital – just after he was told about missing customer payments.
Roche tried to claim she was being “framed” by colleagues, who had set her up.
But Sheriff Eric Brown dismissed her evidence as “not credible”.
Roche also took 30,000 euros from her former employers in her native Ireland in a previous scam involving another car garage near Dublin.
When she appeared at Aberdeen Sheriff Court earlier this year to face sentence for the John Clark BMW fraud, a Crown blunder meant the sheriff was forced to ignore her criminal history and treat her as a first offender.
She was back in the dock at the same court yesterday after being released early from prison.
And a sheriff was told she has yet to pay any of the £14,320 in compensation she owes Mr Pilgrim, who she met through the Plenty of Fish dating site in April 2014.
She told him that she had financial problems and that she was seeing a specialist over fears she had ovarian cancer.
Roche, whose address was previously given in court papers as Great Northern Road, Aberdeen, claimed she needed surgery and that she could avoid a six-month wait on the NHS by paying to go private.
Feeling under pressure, Mr Pilgrim agreed to lend her thousands of pounds.
He went on to lend her more money for post-op care but eventually he realised the relationship was over and that he had been duped.
Roche was spared jail but was given a six-month suspended sentence at Maidstone Crown Court in February this year and ordered to pay her victim more than £14,000.
Her agent, solicitor Stuart Murray, told Aberdeen Sheriff Court yesterday: “There’s no point in shying away from the fact that it is going to be a difficulty getting employment given her previous convictions.”
Sheriff Margaret Hodge gave Roche until December 20 to come up with “proposals” on how she was going to stump-up the cash.
The sheriff added: “In light of your current circumstances I’m prepared to continue this matter for two months.”
According to court papers, the alternative to paying the cash is a year in jail.