FROM PLENTY OF FISH GETS 6YRS FOR FRAUD I fell for his tattoos but stripper I met online fleeced me of £6,000
Plenty of Fish. He refused to answer calls or texts. I never met his parents or went to his home. I didn’t know where he lived and had no way of reaching him.”
Soon Charlotte began to get letters in her name from two other mobile phone providers chasing payments.
Grace had used her details to get more phones. And he’d also used them to borrow money from payday loan firms Wonga and Pounds to Pocket. cket.
She said: “I felt sick. Apparently ently I had an £ 800 loan from Pounds nds to Pocket but with interest I owed £1,700.
“Meanwhile Wonga wanted more than £400. I’d never seen a single penny of this yet I was told I was behind d with payments on both the loans.
“I thought I’d end up in court, urt, or lose everything to the bailiffs. I felt so foolish and embarrassed. I didn’t n’t know which way to turn.
“In the end I got a £ 500 0 overdraft to buy time while I worked out what to do next.”
She called the police but they told her it was a civil matter.
“I felt helpless,” she said. “I decided I’d have to just take it on the chin, knuckle down and pay the money. The phone contracts alone came to just under £200 a month, and I had loan repayments on top.
“I was earning minimum wage in a salon and every spare penny I got went to paying the debts.
“I did extra work in the evenings doing haircuts for friends and relatives to scrape by. I was in absolute despair, staring into the abyss abyss.” ” Then came her lowest moment: “I drove to the river and sobbed my heart out as I wrote letters to everyone I loved. I was going to take a handful of sleeping tablets, walk into the water and go to sleep.
“I was sat on a bench beside the river, pills in my hand, when a friend of my gran’s chanced by.
“She was chatting away, asking about my family, and it brought me to my senses. I re realised if I went through wit with it, all I’d leave behind was pain and suffering – and all b because of this idiot Mark G Grace.
“I r ripped up the letters an and later that day I confided in my mum.” Charlotte w was helped by her loc local mental health team team. And Citizens Advice put her in touch with th the debt help charity Step C Change.
They created a debt manage management plan that reduced h her repayments to affordable sums of between £100 and £200 a month.
In February 2017, having met someone new and given birth to a baby girl, she finally paid off the £5808 debt.
“The day I made my last payment I was dancing around the e kitchen singing to my baby daughter, , ‘ Yay! Mummy’s paid the debts bts off!’ Then literally an hour later the phone e rang. It was the police. .
“They said they were f ollowing up my complaint from 2014 about Mark Grace.
“They had him in n custody and wanted to take a statement.
“I was gobsmacked and told them, ‘I wish you’d called sooner – like three years ago.’”
Grace, of Lowestoft, Suffolk, had been arrested after selling a laptop on ebay, pocketing £600 but failing to hand over the device.
In total, his loan and credit cons had scammed three female and one male victim out of £40,000. And in December he was jailed at Norwich crown court for six years for four counts of fraud and one of theft.
Charlotte, who now runs her own mobile hairdressing business in King’s Lynn, Norfolk said: “He’d met other girls through T Tinder and Facebook, and conn conned them all just like me. H He’d sell them any old sob story to get them to si sign up for loans then v vanish as soon as he g got the cash.”
Charlotte believes that without Step Change she wouldn’t h have been alive to be in co court and see Grace jail jailed.
“The “They saved my life,” she said. “I want people to know that if you’re struggling with debt there’s help out there. Talk to someone.
“I thought Mark and I had a future together but he’d played me for a total fool. Mark Grace pushed me to the edge but I came back stronger than ever. Now it’s his turn to pay.”