I thought I’d met the love of my life: she took £7,800 by faking cancer
WHEN Sean Fry first met Rebecca Gray on a dating app, he immediately felt sparks fly.
But the now 38-year-old revealed the sick facade she put on to defraud him of almost £10,000.
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Sean was initially in love with the mother-of-one, and after their sixth date she revealed she had liver cancer and was only expected to live for six months.
But in reality, Rebecca didn’t have a cancer diagnosis and instead tried to squeeze as much money out of Sean as possible.
Now he reveals to Channel 4 how he missed the warning signs.
After chatting on Tinder, Rebecca, who went by the name Arrow, revealed she was living in a van with her six-month-old child and the repair was an instant success.
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They decided to meet by the ocean, with her baby Sarah in tow and Sean remembers: “She was confident, charismatic. She was a writer. I had never met anyone like her.”
Sean’s mother recalls how he was so excited to meet someone on his wavelength and claimed he was ready to settle down and start a family.
As the pair grew closer, Rebecca revealed that her ex-partner and Sarah’s father, who lived in Britain, were abusive and so she changed her name to Arrow so he couldn’t find her – but it was another lie.
It wasn’t long after that Rebecca revealed she had cancer and was only expected to live six months.
Sean said: “The way I saw Arrow was that she was just a fighter. And she would continue.
“She said how grateful she was that I was in her life. And we can’t believe we found you.
“I really cared about her and Sarah, too. And I just wanted to do whatever I could to make their lives a little better.”
Once they started living together, Sean noticed that her illnesses went up and down – some days she was fine, while others saw her lying on the floor in pain and vomiting.
He added that she always had something in the pipeline financially but never managed to ever get a job, leaving him to pay for her and her daughter.
Despite being the protective partner most women dream of, Rebecca hadn’t quite had enough.
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She was still on Tinder and had started a relationship with another man, Steve, who remained anonymous.
Like Sean, she told him she had terminal cancer
Rebecca did everything she could to make her illness look legitimate by pulling out strands her so it looked like she was undergoing chemotherapy.
Sean had seen some messages between Rebecca and this guy, but she dismissed it saying he was just a male friend.
Meanwhile, she informed Sean that she was pregnant with his child, leaving Sean over the moon.
Just a few months later, Rebecca claimed she suffered a miscarriage while camping with her daughter, leaving Sean devastated.
The reality was that Rebecca was never pregnant in the first place and was in fact with her other boyfriend while she was away.
Rebecca also claimed she would go to court with Sarah’s father, with Sean following closely behind the bill for attorney’s fees.
The financial support he gave the mother increased, leading him to take a second job as an Uber driver in the evenings.
Then she asked Sean to come and help decorate Steve’s house while he was in Scotland.
Of course, she didn’t tell Steve that it was Sean who helped and paid for the decorations – so he paid Rebecca over £3,000, which she stashed away for herself.
It became very clear that everything was a lie.
Sean Fry
When the renovations were completed, Sean left the house but panicked next day when he hadn’t heard from Rebecca.
He decided to walk back when he ran into Steve and on the way upstairs Sean found Rebecca in his bed.
Sean left and ended the relationship there, but Steve did a little more detective work by searching her phone, realizing she had lied about everything.
“We talked for hours and we just became a couple of detectives trying to piece this story together,” Sean said.
“Once we started talking there was no doubt what was going on. Steve had a photo in the van on the Nullarbor trip. I had almost the exact same photo in the van with her and Sarah on the road to Adelaide.”
“It became very clear that everything was a lie.”
The couple soon realized that they were both paying for Rebecca’s living expenses, and that they were not the only ones fooled by her lies.
Her ex-partner was not abusive, he had also supported her through her cancer diagnosis.
It wasn’t until he started questioning doctors’ meetings that Rebecca decided to run away and move to Australia.
Despite the case going to trial, with both men providing evidence to detectives, Rebecca was spared jail and given a suspended sentence.
While Rebecca may not have faced justice, her daughter Sarah was eventually returned to her father.
Sean said, “The sentence she received doesn’t even reflect what, you know, she did financially. And financially that was absolutely the least.’
