Divorcee sues ‘conman lover who tricked her out of £400,000’
A DIVORCEE who says she fell in love with a silver-tongued ‘conman’ who posed as a cancer- stricken millionaire is suing him for more than £600,000, claiming his lies made her squander her savings.
Sacher Barker, 47, fell for Richard Winter seven years ago following her divorce, the High Court heard.
She says he bragged about his ‘fabulous wealth’, spinning tales that he owned a valuable wine collection, a villa in Majorca, and that he had sold a business for £5million. Mr Winter, 42, also claimed to own a lucrative real estate portfolio and to be the beneficiary of two trusts, the court was told.
Mrs Barker’s barrister, Justin Higo, said: ‘She trusted and loved Mr Winter and believed his promises. He promised marriage and claimed his family had turned against him. He even falsely claimed in 2012 that he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer.’
But his tales of riches were all a fantasy and Mrs Barker ploughed her £400,000 savings into funding their high-rolling lifestyle after he complained of a ‘temporary cash flow issue’, said Mr Higo. She wants compensation for the cash she spent as well as for loss of profit on a thwarted property deal and ‘distress’.
Mr Higo claimed that Mr Winter told Mrs Barker he would repay her in full and help her with a house purchase she was planning when they met.
‘Ms Barker was persuaded by Mr Winter to postpone that investment on the promise that Mr Winter would provide her with the money to buy a similar property outright on payment of his next dividend,’ Mr Higo added.
‘At the same time as boasting of his fabulous wealth, Mr Winter represented that he had a temporary cash flow issue, arising as a consequence of his assets being frozen in the context of his impending divorce.
‘He then made a series of deceitful representations in order to procure that Ms Barker made all her capital available to fund the extravagant lifestyle that he had represented, and Ms Barker believed, he was capable of affording.’ Between July 2012 and late 2014, Mrs Barker spent £400,000 ‘in reliance on his repeated representations’, said the barrister.
Mrs Barker says she discovered the truth when her lover, with whom she was living in a rented flat in West Wittering, West Sussex, went out for a coffee in February 2015, never to return.
She is suing Mr Winter for deceit, seeking over £600,000 to ‘put her back where she was’ before she met him.
But for his lies, she says she would have used her savings to buy a £330,000 home that would since have spiralled in value. Instead, she was left without any savings and is struggling to rebuild her life, said Mr Higo.
Mrs Barker told Judge Brian Rawlings: ‘I was in a position where I trusted someone and now I have nothing. I got involved with a conman. We had an agreement, but he welshed on it.’
Mr Winter insisted in a witness statement that ‘he spent significantly more than she has lost in funding the lavish lifestyle they enjoyed’. Mrs Barker, he claimed, ‘did extremely well out of me while I had money to spend’ and might actually owe him money.
But Mr Higo said Mr Winter had not put in a formal defence to the claim and last July Mrs Barker secured a ‘summary judgment on her claims in deceit’ against him. Judge Rawlings will assess the damage Mrs Barker claims to have suffered and give his ruling on her claim at a later date.
‘Extravagant lifestyle’