Pal fleeced in a £500k cancer con

Sally Field, 74, and Tom Hanks, 64, in Forrest Gump

A GAMBLER pretended he had cancer to dupe a friend out of half a million pounds to fund his addiction, a court heard.

Peter Saad, 32, even forged emails and invented operations which he needed money to pay for.

Chester Crown Court heard Saad was in debt to loan sharks and companies.

So he lied to his friend who was the chief executive of an investments and credit group in Warrington “in order to get his hands” on £521,889.55 between September 2018 and May 2019.

Saad, of Nottingham, set up a pharmaceutical company with the victim and forged invoices for work that would never be carried out.

He admitted three counts of fraud and was jailed for 21 months.

In 1994, Sally Field played Tom Hanks’ mum in the award-winning film Forrest Gump. Field, who is only 10 years older than Hanks, had played his love interest in the comedy Punchline only six years before when they were cast as a pair of wannabe stand-up comics who start a relationship.

Bryce used her own mum as inspiration in the film when she played Elton John’s mother from his childhood right up to adulthood. “The makeup artist came over one day to do tests on me with the prosthetics and we needed to age me until 70,” Howard said. “We felt that it didn’t quite look right and my mom Cheryl walked in, and she came and stood next to me and we were like, ‘Wait a second, we need to make me look like her [Cheryl]!’ “She’s 65 and she hasn’t messed with her face at all or anything, so it’s what I’m going to look like when I’m 65,” Howard said.