A “romance fraudster” has been jailed for five years and four months after admitting manipulating three women into giving him more than £200,000 to fund his gambling habit.
Sajad Hussain, 45, of Swindon, Wiltshire, who had pretended to be a police officer, admitted five counts of defrauding three women he met on dating sites over a seven-year period.
Hussain tricked the women into believing they were in a genuine relationship with him and began asking for increasingly substantial sums, promising to pay the victims back.
He claimed he needed money for damage he had caused to a friend’s car and that he would get beaten up unless he paid, and to pay his rent. He further lied that his father – who was in fact dead – had suffered a severe skiing injury and that his mother had been diagnosed with breast cancer.
All three women, who are from the West Midlands and whose relationships with Hussain overlapped, knew him by a false name. Swindon crown court heard how one woman used her family’s gold heirlooms to raise money for Hussain, while others borrowed from parents.
Judge Jason Taylor KC told him: “You spun a web of lies to ingratiate yourself in these women’s lives and earn their trust. You knew they were looking for long-term relationships, including on occasion having children.
“The contrast between you and your victims couldn’t be more stark. These women gradually fell in love with you. You on the other hand were cold-hearted and mercenary, effectively tossing them aside when they were no longer of financial use to you or you had moved on to another victim. To you, they were human piggy banks.”
The judge described the devastating effects of Hussain’s crimes on his victims, who have been left with anxiety and depression, PTSD and in financial hardship.
An investigation was started after Hussain, who was married and owned two properties, was reported to police by one of the victims, and he was arrested in October 2020. Detectives found he had gambled away £135,000 over the period he defrauded the women and discovered that he had communicated with them using a secret mobile phone.
One woman read a victim statement to the court describing how she felt “violated” by Hussain and saying that the impact of his crimes upon her and her family had been “astronomical”.
A second said she felt “stupid, ashamed and guilty” for falling for Hussain’s lies. She was forced to take out a high-interest loan to repay the money borrowed from her family, and the financial impact of Hussain’s offending meant she was unable to take a full maternity leave when she had a baby years later.
A third woman told how she lived with “a constant feeling of dread” and was unable to have children at the age she wanted to because she had believed that she had a future with Hussain.
