To the men she ensnared, Gemma Kingsley must have appeared quite the catch. Tall and slender, with a tumbling mass of blonde hair, she had charm and charisma in abundance.
A woman of apparently independent means, she had a gallery of glossy portfolio images – evidence of her successful modelling career – and would tell prospective suitors of the £42million fortune coming her way, following the death of a well‑heeled grandfather.
So far so enticing. There is, however, an adage that if something seems too good to be true, it usually is.
For it was a very different woman who, face devoid of make-up and wearing the hint of a smirk, appeared in a mugshot released by Wiltshire Police last month.
Kingsley, a 50-year-old mother-of-four, had appeared at Swindon Crown Court where she was unmasked as a manipulative conwoman who’d duped a string of victims out of thousands of pounds to support her lavish lifestyle, on the expectation of a multi-million-pound inheritance that, of course, never materialised – or even existed.
She had admitted six counts of theft and a further seven fraud charges, involving more than £150,000 and – already on remand after going on the run twice – she now faces an extended stay in prison after she is sentenced next week.
But this, of course, will bring little solace to those who became caught in her web of lies.
Such is their shame, none of her victims were willing to be identified when they spoke to the Daily Mail.
Gemma Kingsley, a 50-year-old mother-of-four, appeared at Swindon Crown Court where she was unmasked as a manipulative conwoman who had duped a string of victims out of thousands of pounds to support her lavish lifestyle
Romance fraud, understandably, always carries a degree of embarrassment and self-blame for those duped.
Not, as one victim commented, that they should feel any shame.
‘This isn’t some hot blonde in heels who has bamboozled a couple of guys, not at all,’ he said.
‘This was a woman who was well-spoken, educated, not unattractive and who used complex means to deceive people and gain their trust.’
Through speaking to a raft of Kingsley’s victims and friends, we were able to unpick the modus operandi of this most unlikely scammer, who – like countless con artists before her – used her charm, charisma and good looks to fleece her unsuspecting suitors.
One, a tall, dark-haired businessman from Hertfordshire, was so convinced by Kingsley’s web of lies that they moved in together.
From 2016 to 2018, he spent vast sums planning their wedding, doing house renovations, paying her dental bills and clearing her debts – and was left broken-hearted and more than £100,000 out of pocket when the whole edifice crumbled.
The divorcee’s second victim, the following year, was a similarly attractive former Royal Naval College high-flier, who had a broken marriage behind him when he became entranced by the 5ft 11in Kingsley.
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To the men she ensnared, Kingsley must have appeared quite the catch. Tall and slender, with a tumbling mass of blonde hair, she had charm and charisma in abundance
He too was convinced to fork out deposits for a Land Rover and a Porsche for his demanding girlfriend, as well as for expensive stays in top London hotels, losing more than £30,000.
And there were many more scams.
One victim described to the Daily Mail how he had a lucky escape after meeting Kingsley through an online dating site in 2019, and was invited to her house for dinner.
The next day, when his bank called to report some suspicious activity on his credit cards, the man realised, with horror, that his glamorous date had rifled through his pockets in between courses and taken photos of his cards, which she’d then used to go on an online shopping spree.
And her scams weren’t restricted to romance, either.
In 2017, before her criminal activities came to light, Kingsley even managed to con a family law KC, employed to defend her in a civil case, leaving him £12,000 out of pocket and full of regret that he didn’t act on his niggling feeling that something wasn’t quite right with his new client.
‘I realised I’d been well and truly stung,’ he told the Daily Mail.
What they all agree on, however, is that Gemma Kingsley was very, convincing, and didn’t seem a typical confidence trickster.
She had grown up in a well-to-do, but not affluent, family in south-west London with her mother, a homeopath, her brother, later a successful businessman, and her grandmother.
Kingsley first dabbled in modelling before marrying and having her eldest daughter in 2005, followed by a son.
When that marriage ended, she went on to have two more children with a chef, but that relationship also foundered.
Back then she was, friends say, a ‘doting mother’ for whom her children were everything.
Kinglsey admitted six counts of theft and a further seven fraud charges, involving more than £150,000 and – already on remand after going on the run twice – she now faces an extended stay in prison after she is sentenced next week
It is, perhaps, revealing that all four of Kingsley’s children went on to live with their fathers.
An erstwhile friend of the model, who appeared on the catwalk at London Fashion Week in 2017 and whose photos also featured in Vogue online, said he believed her problems were rooted in gambling and a longing for the ‘high life’.
Calling her a Walter Mitty character, he said: ‘Any addiction can turn a person into somebody they aren’t, can’t it? She ran up huge debts; it was big money.
‘The thing about her is that she’s very charismatic. And she’s obviously honed that and used it for evil rather than for good.’
Her first victim was a man with whom she was in a relationship between 2016 and 2018.
They’d moved in together, renting a property in a street where houses command more than £5,000 a month, and planned to marry.
According to one friend, she took her late mother to a swanky bridal shop on London’s Baker Street to look at dresses and commissioned a dressmaker to travel from Egypt to carry out fittings.
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She told her fiancé the expenses she was racking up would be covered by the £16million coming her way from an inheritance fund from her grandfather.
The lies were meticulously sown. She even produced forged bank documents and letters to back her claims. Not everyone was convinced, however.
‘Don’t buy a hat,’ were, the Daily Mail has discovered, the words of caution Kingsley’s mother gave one family friend, after her daughter shared the happy news of her engagement.
Her words were wisely prescient.
After Kingsley used her fiancé’s bank cards to steal money and open a betting account in his name, losing yet more cash, the wedding was called off.
Neighbours in the street where the couple once lived, recall watching the couple being evicted by bailiffs in 2018.
One told the Daily Mail: ‘Inside the house there were loads of designer clothes and shoes. There were also unopened bills, envelopes and demands.
‘There was a real arrogance about her. She just sat on the step, a cab came to take them away and it was as if it had just bounced off her.’
The following year Kingsley found another target in the athletic former naval officer.
Once again, she spun her lies – convincing him to help her with deposits for expensive cars and hotel stays, which she said she could pay for, then didn’t.
Even as the tower of deceit was crumbling, Kingsley carried on, deceiving two further unsuspecting victims, using their personal and company bank cards to make purchases behind their backs.
It all unravelled after she deployed her scams on a close friend of her mother in late 2019.
The pensioner discovered her bank card had been used to run up a bill of nearly £1,000 on a Cotswolds holiday let.
That woman reported the fraud to police, as did another victim a week later – the man whose credit card details were stolen during dinner after meeting Kingsley on the dating site, Bumble.
His account is a striking insight into the makings of a scam.
She’d made a good first impression, he recalls: ‘She was attractive, fun, flirty. She was interested in finding a partner. She said she had two young children.’
They’d met at Kingsley’s countryside house (actually a holiday rental) and enjoyed a ‘very civilised conversation over a glass of wine’.
But it wasn’t long before he started taking a lot of that conversation ‘with a pinch of salt’, as she started describing, effusively, the fancy cars and luxurious house she planned to buy with an impending inheritance from her grandfather.
It began to sound rather ‘far-fetched’, he recalls.
‘I think she realised that, despite all the elaborate things she was telling me, I wasn’t sold. I wasn’t going to be her next mark, which is why the fraud she committed against me was so opportunistic.’
He discovered he had been conned the very next day when he heard from his bank.
Kingsley had used his cards to go online shopping, making the error of having the item she had ordered delivered to the very address he had visited the previous night.
‘As soon as I was asked if I had authorised this transaction, I knew instantly it was her. All my senses were tingling.’
He confronted Kingsley by message but, unsurprisingly after some initial bluster, never heard from her again.
He called the police, but it wasn’t until 2020, the following year, by which time multiple forces were on her trail, that Kingsley was first arrested.
Relieved at his narrow escape, the man made it his mission to find out more about her. ‘I did a lot of digging,’ he says.
‘I was like Columbo, trying to work out who she was and how this happened.
‘I had the common sense to ring the place where she had been staying [and disappeared from] to ask some questions.
The owner had been in contact with someone else who’d been affected and it went from there, like dominoes.
‘She wove a really complex web of deceit. It’s not just using someone’s card at Tesco Express to make a contactless payment.
She didn’t have the card, so it came down to distance selling and that involves cunning and creativity.
‘The things she has done, using mechanisms to gain people’s trust, producing forged documents – there’s elaborate planning and time involved.’
Indeed there was.
Several months later, Kingsley used a long-forgotten corporate credit card her date had in his wallet that evening to pay for a foreign jaunt, clocking up thousands of pounds on cocktails, accommodation, flights and meals.
‘How a woman can spend that amount of money in such a short period of time is impressive,’ he says.
The process of bringing Kingsley to justice was no less elaborate.
Four police forces probed the trail and she was arrested and released twice, disappearing both times, before she was finally arrested for the third time after being spotted in a speeding car on the Isle of Skye in March 2025.
It was during their investigation that police discovered the 2017 fraud, in which Kingsley had scammed that barrister, employed to represent her in a Family Court hearing on an unrelated matter,
The KC recalled how she’d paid an initial amount, before then providing evidence, in the shape of forged letters from top solicitors and bank statements, purporting to have a substantial inheritance.
‘I was a little cynical,’ he says. And by the time the court date arrived he’d realised it was all a fiction.
‘She was trying to play on her femininity, but I have been married 40 years-plus; it wasn’t going to work on me.
‘She appeared a spoiled rich kid who had lost her way. She was a Walter Mitty who was looking in the mirror trying to find the 20-year-old she once was.’
He chalked up his encounter to experience: ‘It’s less hassle to do two days’ work and not get paid than make a professional claim,’ he says.
He only gave a statement after police contacted him.
DC Melissa Pope, from Wiltshire Police, said of the confidence trickster: ‘Kingsley wove a web of lies with her victims, causing significant emotional anxiety and long-term mental and financial harm.’
A tall, dark-haired businessman from Hertfordshire, was so convinced by Kingsley’s web of lies that they moved in together. From 2016 to 2018, he spent vast sums planning their wedding, doing house renovations, paying her dental bills and clearing her debts
Gemma Kingsley, meanwhile, responded to an enquiry from prison with these words: ‘My story has been misrepresented by the Press, and the police, yet it is more sad and sensational than most realise.’
It has certainly been sad, unimaginably so for her mother, who died in hospital last year, knowing her daughter was in prison.
Kingsley had been bailed out, it is understood, on more than one occasion by both her mother and brother, who says he has ‘not seen my sister for many years’.
As for her targets.
‘I’m lucky,’ says the near-miss victim we spoke to. ‘I didn’t lose a penny because I shut it down.’
It’s the others he feels for.
And, much like the others the Daily Mail interviewed, he can’t help thinking she ‘liked the finer things in life and wanted to find a way of maintaining that lifestyle’ – without paying for it.
In the end, he adds: ‘I think she told the same lies so many times they became her reality.’
