To be hooked and aghast at this story

[BreezyMintHiker]

There’s a woman in Instagram called Lacey Tucker who is in the process of outlining her marriage/upcoming divorce story.

Basically met a bloke on Bumble who turned out to be a liar/conman/narcissist. He conned her out of every penny she had, threatened to take her children away…

Whats really shocked me is the victim blaming in the comments. From women 😮

Hooefully he’ll end up being named and shamed. Shes been admirably discreet about his identity so far. It’s pretty easy to find out who his mother is tbh so I don’t expect it’ll be long so hopefully other women will be al warned.

She was abused in a 5 year marriage. It wasn’t a “scam”

it was coercive control. I don’t believe that people on Mumsnet would blame an abused women for being in a coercively controlling, financially and emotionally abusive marriage?

@EveryKneeShallBow When I met her she had a very “big job” in a public service and was a great person, really smart, independent, very highly respected. When it all came out I’m afraid I wasn’t really surprised and I judged her very hard

You say your colleague was ‘really smart, independent, very highly respected’, can you say why you weren’t surprised? Where did you see the cracks?

She was all the things I said, but she was also quite shallow, in the sense of making sure we all knew when he whisked her away for a surprise weekend in a five star hotel, and when they were decorating their gorgeous countryside home which could have come from Homes and Gardens. (And none of which turned out to have been paid for). She was someone who hated being alone and she met this guy within a couple of weeks of her previous relationship ending. It was quite the whirlwind romance, but he was often busy and spent a lot of time “out of the country”. He convinced her to treat her elderly mother very poorly and damaged her relationship with her adult daughter. He just wasn’t someone I would have been quite so keen to throw myself at.

Totally agree with this. She’s an attractive intelligent woman with a good job so she was a good catch anyway. There’s nothing to suggest he set out to scam her. He just struck me as someone who has wild plans which never quite came off although she said his business in tge HS was valued at 2 million although unclear if she was just told that or had evidence to support it. I think he was just your common or garden abuser.

The big red flag she ignored was fact his mother was sent to prison for stealing from her employer and she said it was to pay off her son’s gambling debts. The fact he was a potential gambler was a huge red flag which she ignored and then seemed to walk blindly into a situation which made her very vulnerable. Giving up a good job to travel to the US on a spouse Visa where she can’t work and getting pregnant almost immediately. It wasn’t a situation interesting that she said at one point she didn’t tell her famiky and friends any if tge ‘bad stuff’ because she knew it was bad and we’re obviously red flags.

I also couldn’t understand why she thought his family should help her? Has she not heard of the term blood is thicker than water? His mother had served a prison sentence due to her son so her loyalty was clearly to him. They’d also maintained his lies and when they came out bad mouthed the mother of his secret children yet thought they would help her although unclear what they actually could have done.

I do however understand why after the lies all came out she felt she was stuck. It seemed to be a case of sunk cost fallacy and thinking somehow it would get better. She had no money and could’t leave the US with her children although I did wonder about the validity of that once he lost his Visa.

* It was interesting she said at one point she didn’t tell her family and friends all the bad stuff because she knew they were red flags she was choosing to ignore*

Yep 100%. I think he’s just a life long criminal, and she married him. He seems to have had constant addiction issues, is emotionally abusive and behaves like a narcissist.

he is a fraudster in the sense that he was likely taking clients money, wasn’t paying taxes, wasn’t paying bills getting into loads of debt etc…and finally has a warrant out for arrest for “white collar crime”
he is a desperate bloke who was willing to do whatever to get more and more cash with no fear or understanding of consequences and no ability to forward plan.

i don’t think he’s even that unusual tbh.

Stupidity needs calling out. People need to stop ignoring red flags. I'm not familiar with the story but I don't agree with the 'be kind' shit where we just pander to idiots.

This is such a bizarre response when you don’t know anything about it 😭 are you in the habit of calling victims of domestic abuse stupid?

@Itsmetheflamingo ”he is a fraudster in the sense that he was likely taking clients money, wasn’t paying taxes, wasn’t paying bills getting into loads of debt etc…and finally has a warrant out for arrest for “white collar crime”
he is a desperate bloke who was willing to do whatever to get more and more cash with no fear or understanding of consequences and no ability to forward plan.”

This is exactly the profile of the person who left my acquaintance penniless and owing tens of thousands. And he’d done similar, less successfully before.

I know what has been said so far on this thread and I've watched countless programmes about similar situations. People just ignore what is right in front of them. How can she let go of all her money?

I have people in my life that I worry cpuld get into situations like this. Some people are just blind when it comes to relationships.

She was married to him. He lost/ spent huge amounts of money- hundreds and hundreds of thousands of pounds, it seems.

but it’s hard to argue that ie the sale of her house proceeds going into the martial pot isn’t completely usual- she wasnt working / paying any bills so when he couldn’t pay for things wha else could she do?
Let them get evicted rather than dip into ger savings? It’s all normal behaviour from her point of view . he was the abusive one

The error she made was not putting it into an account that was joint access - she said they hadn't sorted out a joint account "yet" so the intention was there eventually to do so. I hope it makes someone watching the videos think again about that.

Sorry, when I say "it" I meant the house deposit inheritance he said he was keeping to one side for her, not the house sale money.

I agree that it’s pure stupidity.

I thought it was sus that she married him without telling anyone.

I’ve only watched a couple of the first videos so I’m just asking honestly - is it all definitely true?

well only she can answer that but I know on TikTok there are plenty of DV experts- police and charity/ support workers saying not only is it completely believable, it’s textbook abuse.

i mean what is unbelievable about it? The only unusual part really is moving to California, but people like him do things like that.

I don’t think there’s anything which indicates it isn’t true. She’s now finished tge story and and is back in England. Having worked in DV for a number of years there’s nothing which indicates it’s not true including her ignoring tge numerous red flags along the way.

Having managed to identify him and looked at his SM they clearly had a nice life in the US but definitely a bit of a ‘lad’. He even states his own parents described him as a ‘problem child’ so there’s probably loads more red flags she choose to ignore but she does seem very naive about a lot of things. Hopefully less so now.

How is everyone managing to find him? I thought I was up to date on the comments etc

I was in an abusive marriage to 12 years and had two children with him. It was all emotional abuse, financial and coercive. I didn’t lose thousands like this woman as I didn’t have that. But I was always the main wage earner and I wasn’t really in control if it. We were in quite a bit of debt, nothing like gambling, just him constantly wanting to redecorate/renovate etc.

Now in my mid 40s I can see blatant red flags. But I was mid 20s when I met him, and lots of therapy has shown me why I let those slide. I stayed for a long time, had a second child and tried to make it work. I felt a lot of shame about having made a mistake. I had a very desperate need to feel loved that I hadn’t addressed in y younger years.

I wouldn’t put up with that sort of stuff now, but often abuse is slow to build and things in women’s past make them less likely to spot red flags or ignore them.

Oh God, I can't face watching 17 hours of it. What's the story basically?

Woman meets man on dating app approx age 30. He says he lives in a posh flat in Bristol and wants marriage/kids. He says he wants to start a business in California so they get married for the Visa and move there. They have a baby.

She finds out he has one kid back in Bristol from a ONS but eventually finds out it's 2 kids in their teens. Continues to ignore all red flags such as his mum being in PRISON for stealing money which she said (as a legal defence) were for his debts.

She comes back to UK on discovery of the lies, but finds out she is pregnant with number 2 so decides to make the marriage work. However, she's put all her money into his US account and is a SAHM so financial visibility is nil. He basically gets a DUI so their Visas are revoked (meaning they cannot get back in if they leave). He blows through the money, maxes out her UK card and puts a truck in her name, gets verbally abusive with cameras round the house, then a warrant gets put out for his arrest and I am up to where they are on the run to Mexico.

I don’t mean is it believable, I meant more along the lines of did it happen to her as she says it did? Thinking of the Scottish woman who claimed to be pregnant etc.

Oh you have identified who he is? 🤯