Six years on, Shannon McKechnie can still vividly remember the gut punch of dialling her boyfriend’s number to find it out of service.
‘It’s hard to describe how sick I felt,’ she says. ‘I was panic-stricken.’
Because the previous day, Shannon, a successful recruitment manager, had transferred the sum of £3,247 to his bank account – her contribution to the dream holiday the tousle-haired Chris Harkins had convinced her would set the seal on their burgeoning romance.
Now it appeared he had vanished – along with her money.
What Shannon, now 40, didn’t know at the time was that she was just one of many victims of Harkins, who presented himself in online dating profiles as a jet-setting business owner but who in reality was both a prolific fraudster and sexual predator.
By the time she met 38-year-old Harkins, from Helensburgh, Scotland, in 2019, eight women had already independently reported him to the police, only to have their concerns dismissed.
In fact, at first, the same thing happened to Shannon, who contacted detectives in her native Glasgow to report the theft of her money, but was told it was a ‘domestic matter’. ‘They basically said there wasn’t much they could do if my boyfriend didn’t want to take me on holiday,’ she recalls.
And that may have been the end of the matter – another sorry, but private, cautionary tale about the manipulative monsters who lurk on dating sites.
By the time recruitment manager Shannon McKechnie met con man Chris Harkins, eight women had already reported him to the police, only to have their concerns dismissed
Twenty women came forward to share their own experiences at Harkins’ hands. He had not only defrauded them, but in some cases abused them sexually, physically and emotionally too
Except that a determined and furious Shannon didn’t leave it there.
Instead, she contacted a journalist to share her story in a local newspaper. She intended it as a warning – only to learn in the wake of publication that up to 20 women had come forward to share their own experiences at Harkins’ hands.
He had not only defrauded them, but in some cases abused them sexually, physically and emotionally too. Faced with such overwhelming evidence, this time police did investigate – and last July, after a two-week trial, Harkins was convicted of 19 offences including rape, assault, recording an intimate video without consent, threatening and abusive behaviour and four other sexual offences.
He had previously admitted defrauding nine women out of more than £214,000, and was sentenced to 12 years in prison.
‘It made me feel sick,’ says Shannon, describing the moment she learned the extent of Harkins’ crimes. ‘I feel it was a twist of fate that I didn’t experience much worse abuse because our relationship ended so quickly.
‘Not everybody who came forward after I spoke out went to court, so I know that the scope and scale of what he did is much bigger even than what has been made public. I feel extremely lucky.’
Now, a new documentary, Catching The Tinder Predator, lays bare the extent of Harkins’ criminality alongside the devastating toll on his victims. Many are telling their stories for the first time.
‘I hope it ensures that Harkins’ name and face are imprinted on everyone’s minds,’ says Shannon of her decision to take part. ‘He may be in prison for a long time, but I have no doubt he will be up to his old tricks when he gets out.’
Back in 2019, she had no notion that the man she had connected with on Tinder was a predator. Plunging back into the dating scene after an 18-month relationship had ended, she was drawn to Chris Harkins’ cheerful profile, which showed a gym-honed man who professed to like country music and music festivals.
‘I remember thinking that his lifestyle seemed quite aligned to my own,’ Shannon says now of her decision to ‘swipe right’.
The pair exchanged messages before agreeing to meet for their first date. ‘It was pretty casual,’ she says. ‘We had a nice time, but he was more shy than I imagined, to the point that I was actually quite surprised when he asked to see me again.’
The Scottish Tinder swindler’s profile on Tinder
Chris told Shannon he was a railway engineer – a lie – and that he also had his own company through which he traded foreign currency. ‘I did a bit of due diligence, and found he had a firm listed with Companies House. So that seemed to back up what he was saying, and there were no obvious red flags.’
As she had to travel for work, the pair exchanged more phone calls and messages and Facetimed most nights until they were able to meet for their second date.
‘We had another few dates,’ she says. ‘He also texted me all the time too. I remember wondering how he had the time when he had a full-time job but, of course, in reality he wasn’t working. He was incredibly solicitous and interested in me. I remember a sense of excitement, that this really could be something. Looking back, I can now see that I was love bombed.’
Then, a few weeks into seeing each other, Chris suggested they book a holiday.
‘The previous night he’d asked what I’d missed about being in a relationship and I said now that my girlfriends were getting married it was harder to find someone to go on holiday with, or it had to be booked months in advance when I tend to be quite spontaneous,’ she says. ‘The next day he texted me to say he was looking at holidays and would I like to join him.’
Initially taken aback, Shannon confesses to being gripped by excitement. ‘I’d seen this sort of thing happen to girlfriends, so it wasn’t something entirely outrageous and I thought maybe this was my turn for the fairy tale,’ she says. ‘We were both young, free, single, and had the financial means to do it – or so I thought.’
Harkins had asked her budget and suggested they go halves, leading to Shannon transferring him more than £3,000 – a work bonus.
‘He was insistent that he book the whole thing, which was very seductive,’ she says. ‘He had already said that he liked the luxury experience – and then he was sending pictures of five-star hotels in Mykonos with swim-up bars. I was swept up in the whole thing.’
Yet the day after Shannon had transferred the money to Harkins’ account, she woke to butterflies in her stomach. ‘I thought about the fact that he’d refused to let me have any involvement with the actual booking side. I don’t know why, but I suddenly felt a bit sick.’
That sensation morphed into total panic when she rang Harkins for reassurance, only for the number to be unobtainable. ‘I sent him a text which did go through saying “you’re giving me the fear that you’ve run off with my money”.’
Harkins responded, although not in the way Shannon thought he would. ‘He was not remotely apologetic and actually quite aggressive,’ she says. ‘He was also very quickly trying to get more money from me, saying he had other money worries.’
What Harkins didn’t know is that by then Shannon had already phoned the resort he claimed to have booked to find that there was no reservation in either of their names.
‘I felt like such a fool and my gut instinct was I wanted to have nothing more to do with him, but I knew I had to keep the conversation going if I was to have a chance of getting my money back,’ she says.
Reporting the theft to her bank and the police had gone nowhere. Her bank told Shannon that because she had authorised the transfer they were unable to retrieve it, while the police dismissed her complaint as a domestic matter. ‘It was incredibly frustrating,’ she says.
Desperate to try to keep up a front, Shannon tried to remain cordial over their text exchanges, in which he alternated between excuses and pleas for help.
Yet when Harkins started to send abusive text messages, Shannon felt she had little option but to go to the police again. ‘In one message he told me he had a criminal record for being violent to a police officer, which I felt was done purely to terrify me,’ she says. ‘Then he sent a text threatening to burn the house down with me and my little dog in it. By this point I was incredibly frightened.’
This time, police told Shannon they would put a marker on the house so if she called them again she would be prioritised. ‘I still felt very vulnerable. It felt there was real intent behind the threat,’ she says.
In the event, Harkins seemed to vanish – until in October, around six weeks after he had last been in contact, he messaged Shannon a picture out of the blue showing him clutching a wad of money and informing her he was able to give her money back.
‘He was adamant that we meet at a kebab shop rather than somewhere more sensible,’ she says. ‘My friends begged me not to go, convinced that he was just messing with me, but it was an itch I had to scratch.’
When she arrived at the address he was nowhere to be seen, and his phone was switched off. ‘I think he got a kick out of humiliating me,’ she says. ‘And something in me flipped.’
Frustrated and angry, Shannon contacted freelance journalist Catriona Stewart to ask for help in making her story public. ‘I wanted to warn other women – it didn’t occur to me that Harkins had done what he’d done to me countless times before,’ she says.
In the documentary, Catriona describes how she tracked down Harkins, only for him to claim that Shannon was threatening him. He also telephoned Shannon in a call in which he switched from aggressive to apologetic and wheedling, promising to give the money back if she did not go public.
‘On this occasion, he directed me to a local chip shop,’ she says. ‘And this time, the money was there, down to the last penny. It was all so weird. I had to ask for the owner, who then handed over an envelope.’
Catriona went ahead with her story in the Glasgow Times, little knowing that it would open the floodgates to other victims.
Harkins was finally convicted and jailed for fraud in 2022
Like Shannon, they were largely in their mid-30s, attractive, professional and articulate. All had given Harkins money – some, like Shannon, to pay for non-existent holidays, others duped into taking out loans of up to £12,000 having been told his business bank account was ‘frozen’, and some handing over savings for him to ‘invest’.
But some had also been extorted, blackmailed, and physically and emotionally abused.
One woman was forced into bankruptcy while others spent years paying off debts, suffering mental health issues as a result.
Finally, in December 2019, Harkins was arrested. ‘I breathed a sigh of relief,’ says Shannon.
But not for long: it emerged that Harkins, released on bail, had travelled to London, where he scammed another woman.
A previous attempt to scam yet another woman in a hotel had failed when the receptionist recognised him from internet pictures and warned his intended victim.
His subsequent victim reported him to the Metropolitan Police, who acted quickly, and Harkins was convicted and jailed for fraud in 2022.
As the English and Scottish justice system operate completely separately, it meant proceedings in Scotland were put on hold – and it was only in July last year that he finally went on trial at the High Court in Paisley.
As he admitted nine counts of fraud, it meant that Shannon did not have to appear as a witness for the prosecution for those offences.
‘In some ways, while I wanted to stand up and look him in the eye, I’m glad I didn’t have to,’ she says. She chose not to attend court for Harkins’ subsequent trial for violent and sexual offences.
Found guilty on 19 counts, he was sentenced to 12 years in prison by Judge Alistair Watson, who said Harkins had left a trail of emotional devastation and financial distress in his wake.
Certainly, while Shannon considers herself lucky, she admits that, as with all his victims, the effects of his betrayal have been long-reaching.
‘I’ve pretty much been single since what happened,’ she says. ‘I would like to meet someone, but I’m very cautious. He has inflicted a lot of damage.
‘The irony is that if he had put his efforts into being a genuine businessman he would in all likelihood have been very successful. Instead, he chose to go down this pathway and leave a trail of destruction in his wake.’
- Catching The Tinder Predator will be available on Prime Video in the UK and Ireland from September 7.
