HAVING just come out of a long relationship with the man she thought she was going to marry, heartbroken Jak Reid was looking to find the man of her dreams.
Turning to Tinder for the first time as she approached her 30th birthday, she matched with Chris Harkins.
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Tall, dark and handsome, he was definitely her type, and on their first date, at a comedy club, they clicked.
“He was charming and made me feel good,” Jak, a businesswoman, told The Sun.
“He was friendly, fun and chatty and asked lots of questions about me. He seemed really interested.
“He would say things along the lines of, ‘Oh, you’re so pretty I can’t believe I’m going out on a date with you.’
“I’d never had that before. I felt an instant connection with him. I was attracted to him and I felt he was attracted to me.”
Harkins claimed he was a successful businessman, and he certainly seemed to have money.
When they left the club, Harkins whisked Jak to a casino where he gambled big sums, but won a lot, and generously shared the winnings with her at the end of the night before getting her a taxi home.
But the man of her dreams turned out to be a ruthless, violent manipulator and rapist who snared victims with love bombing before fleecing them, then turning nasty and threatening when they questioned him.
And, as Jak was to learn, he had left a trail of victims across Scotland, before turning his attention to London.
Jak is one of five brave women speaking out about falling prey to this ruthless scammer in the new Prime Video documentary Catching The Tinder Predator.
After their first date in 2015, Jak, who worked her way up from the sales floor to management at a car company in Scotland, met Harkins several more times, each time becoming closer to him.
“He always paid for dinner so one time, when he went to the bathroom, I thought I would do something nice and called the waiter over and paid the bill,” Jak said.
“But when he came back and found out, he was furious. He stood up and said, ‘We’re leaving,’ and he dragged my arm and tried to pull me up from the chair, but I wouldn’t let him.
“He then said, ‘Don’t you ever do that again. You’ve completely embarrassed me,’ and he stormed out of the restaurant.
“I was absolutely mortified. I went outside and he was phoning a taxi home for himself. That was the first time I’d seen that side of him.”
Huge red flag
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Jak said to see him turn and become so vicious was a “huge red flag” and, looking back, she wishes she’d just nipped it in the bud then and there.
“I’m not sure why he reacted that way but I think, knowing what I do now about him, it was all part of his game,” she added.
“He wanted me to think that he was very successful and so he wanted to pay for everything.
“I thought it was a one off and, naively, I felt a bit guilty, like I’d really embarrassed him.
“So, I gave him another chance when he rang a few days later and apologised, saying that he had been stressed but understands now that I was just trying to do a nice thing.
My friends thought I was silly for going back. One of them said he was a psycho. For them it was just black and white but when there are feelings involved it’s harder
Jak
“My friends thought I was silly for going back. One of them said he was a psycho. For them it was just black and white but when there are feelings involved it’s harder.
“Everybody wants the happy ending. I don’t think you should judge someone so soon. In my head I was intrigued to still get to know him, because up to that point he had been really nice.
“A few months down the line, we had been on several dates and I had stayed over a few times at his. We’d had movie nights and some nice restaurant dates and I’d met his mum.
“He lived with her and she was really nice and polite to me. So it was moving in the right direction. I felt quite comfortable.
“Then one day he texted, saying he wanted to see me to talk about whether I wanted the two of us to start seeing each other, exclusively, like boyfriend and girlfriend.
“But I was quite busy at work so didn’t see his message until later and when I got back to him he said, ‘Oh, maybe we’re moving too fast. Maybe we should just be friends,’ which I thought was really strange.
“Looking back, it was a control thing. He wanted to see how much I really wanted it.”
Mood swings
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From then on Harkins’ mood swings were increasingly a cause for concern.
“He was always up or down. You never knew what mood you were going to get him in,” Jak recalled.
“One day he could be the nicest person ever, and the next day he would be critical about my appearance, or cold, and say he has all this stuff going on and he is stressed.
“It gave me major anxiety. But I think that when you see a glimpse of who they are at the start, you want to see that again. So I remained a little bit hopeful.”
Harkins then suggested they go on holiday together to Thailand and sent her a link to an upmarket villa there.
My gut feeling took over and I just knew it was some sort of scam. The penny dropped. I thought, ‘You’re not who I thought you were’
Jak
“It looked expensive and when he was pushing, I told him I couldn’t afford to go on two big holidays. I had booked a trip to New York,” Jak recalled.
“It was where I was going to go with my boyfriend for my 30th birthday. But when we broke up, instead of going with the love of my life, I took my mum instead.
“While I was there, Chris asked if I would buy him some Ralph Lauren shirts because they were cheaper there than back home, and he would transfer me the money for them when I returned.
“I was happy to do that and bought him six shirts. I can’t remember the exact cost, it was either £600 or £800.
“But he never did pay me back and whenever I asked him about it he would get quite aggressive and belittling, saying things like I was embarrassing and, ‘Was I so desperate for money because I was skint?'”
Mask slipping
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Jak said Harkins’ mask was “definitely slipping”.
A few weeks later he asked her to transfer money into his friend’s account because his own bank account had been frozen and his friend needed this money asap.
“When I saw the message, I just thought, ‘Here we go’,” she said.
“My gut feeling took over and I just knew it was some sort of scam. The penny dropped. I thought, ‘You’re not who I thought you were.’
“I called him out and said, ‘I know you are lying,’ and I blocked him instantly, and then he obviously couldn’t handle that, and that’s when I started to get text messages from him from numbers I didn’t recognise, just giving me abuse.
“He said he was going to come after me and my family. I was scared. The messages went on for quite a while and then just stopped.
He said he was going to come after me and my family. I was scared
Jak
“I didn’t hear anything for maybe two years, and then I got a random text from him saying, ‘Hey! You’ve appeared on my contacts list.’
“I just thought, ‘He’s an absolute maniac.’ It’s not normal to behave like that. It was so creepy and I just got on with my life.”
But in 2019, Jak was shocked to see her name tagged in a Facebook post featuring an online newspaper article about a woman who had come forward to expose Harkins after he had treated her in much the same way as Jak.
Someone had asked Jak in the messages if she had been another one of his victims.
Like Jak, Shannon, from Glasgow, had a successful career as a managing director of a recruitment business.
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In 2019 she too had just come out of a relationship and, feeling vulnerable, was looking for “someone to sweep her off her feet”.
Turning to Tinder she matched with Harkins, who told her he was an engineer with the railways during the day and also traded in foreign exchange. He said he made a lot of money.
After a series of dates he booked an expensive holiday for them in Mykonos, with the understanding that they would both pay their way.
But after Shannon transferred him £3,247, his messages tailed off – and when she rang him there was a message saying the number was no longer available.
“I called the hotel in Mykonos and asked if there was a booking under Harkins or my surname, but there was no booking,” she says.
He told me he had a criminal record for breaking a policeman’s jaw and knocking him unconscious. I think that was done purely to scare me
Shannon
“I felt such a fool. But I made a decision at that point to just try and keep things as normal as possible with him while I was trying to work out in the background what was going on.
“Knowing the holiday didn’t exist, I tried to get him to cancel it, and that is where the conversation really switched. He told me he had a criminal record for breaking a policeman’s jaw and knocking him unconscious. I think that was done purely to scare me.”
Shannon contacted the police about the fraud but was told that because she had been in a relationship with him, it was a civil case and they took no further action.
So she turned to newspaper reporter Catriona Stewart, who published her story, exposing Harkins.
When it appeared online he panicked and returned Shannon’s money in full.
The article prompted a string of other victims of Harkins to speak out. As well as financial scams, some accused him of sexual assault and rape.
Finally police began to take action. By early 2020 he was arrested and charged after 13 women testified against him.
‘Untouchable’
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As well as fraud, there were multiple allegations of sexual assault and rape. But, while on bail, Harkins carried on as before. He moved to London, where he conned three more women.
“It’s as if he felt like the law would never touch him,” says Kat. But the Met police acted when a woman complained about him defrauding her out of a large sum of money.
In court in January 2023, he pleaded guilty to five counts of fraud and was given a 15 month custodial sentence.
This pushed back his trial in Scotland, which was set for the day he was released from prison in England.
There he was found guilty of defrauding nine women out of more than £214,000, as well as one charge of rape, four sexual offences, three charges of assault and physical abuse and recording an intimate video without consent, all of which took place between 2013 and 2020 on a total of 14 women in Scotland and England.
He was jailed for twelve years in July 2024.
Her experience with Harkins has scarred Jak, who is no longer able to trust men.
“I haven’t trusted another man fully since and I don’t think I ever will,” she admitted.
I haven’t trusted another man fully since and I don’t think I ever will
Jak
“It’s really put me off dating, to be honest, because there are other people out there, like him, who make their living in this way, and that is terrifying to think about.
“I’ve not been in a long term relationship and I stay away from dating apps. I’ve met men but as soon as I see a red flag in someone, I run.
“Maybe the whole thing has given me commitment issues, or I’m just so scared I don’t want to be made a fool of ever again in my life.
“But I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t speak out. I have a niece and I know that people look up to me because I have a successful career and I want to be a good role model and not sit in silence.
“I’d rather be on the front line with all the other girls telling my story to show it can happen to absolutely anyone.”
Jak now helps other victims through her social media profiles at www.tiktok.com/@lifeofjak and www.instagram.com/jak_reid.
Catching The Tinder Predator is on Prime Video on Sunday 7 September.
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