‘Evil’ dating site conman is jailed for 30 months for tricking £7,500 out of women he met on Plenty of Fish and Badoo including £2,500 a mother-of-five was saving for her dead son’s headstone
- Fraudster Adam Boon hunted for women online before manipulating them
- He said he needed the cash for rent or to fund trips to see them
- Boon was convicted of three counts of fraud at Oxford Crown Court
Adama Boon, 46, from Portsmouth, Hants, was jailed for 30 months after a jury unanimously convicted him of three counts of fraud at Oxford Crown Court
An ‘evil’ dating site conman pocketed thousands after tricking a mother into handing over cash saved for her dead son’s headstone.
Fraudster Adam Boon hunted for women on Plenty of Fish and Badoo before manipulating them into handing over almost £7,000.
He tricked them into thinking he needed the cash to pay his rent or wanted to borrow money to fund trips to see them.
Mother-of-five Joanne Paget – who met Boon on site Plenty of Fish in February 2016 – gave the conman more than £2,500 over their seven-month relationship.
She had saved to buy a new headstone for her late son Jonathan Hobbs’s grave after he died aged 13 of an epileptic seizure in their home in Abingdon, Oxfordshire.
The victim wanted to replace the headstone with a dolphin-shaped sculpture in memory of a family holiday following the boy’s death in 2007.
But instead, she was duped into handing the cash to Boon as a series of ‘loans’.
The 55-year-old said: ‘We were happy at the start – he said he wanted to marry me.
‘But he began to borrow more and more money. One time he said he needed to borrow £175 to visit me.
‘What an evil man to do this to two people.’
Mother-of-two Gemma Wiltshire, from Portsmouth, Hants, also fell for Boon’s lies after revealing her mental health difficulties.
He quickly began to ‘borrow’ hundreds of pounds at a time and nine months later she had given away more than £4,000.
Mother-of-two Gemma Wiltshire, from Portsmouth. She gave Boon more than £4,000
The 42-year-old, who met Boon on site Badoo in December 2015, said: ‘I was in a bad place with my mental health and he targeted that.
‘He said he worked with vulnerable children and he understood what I was going through.
‘He claimed he was going to support me with my mental health – I fell in love with the character he created.
‘He said he needed money because his job hadn’t paid him, he said he needed money to pay his rent.
‘Once he asked me for £700 to buy a watch from a friend so he could sell it on to make some money.
‘I was terrified of giving evidence – it was horrible. I didn’t think he would be found guilty. He was so good at lying.’
Boon, 46, from Portsmouth, Hants, was jailed for 30 months after a jury unanimously convicted him of three counts of fraud at Oxford Crown Court.