A PUB landlord conned into holding a charity night for a fictitious cause plans to donate money made from selling his story to the son of a cancer victim.
Jamie Newman and staff at the George and Dragon pub in Downe High Street were duped by 20-year-old Katie Wolff after she made up a story she had a daughter who had died from leukaemia.
Wolff, of Claremont Close, Orpington, was ordered to do 180 hours’ unpaid work after pleading guilty to one charge of fraud by false representation to the value of £558.
Mr Newman has arranged with police for the money, which Wolff will pay back, to be donated to charity Leukaemia Research.
The 55-year-old said workers and punters would have raised money for the 11-year-old son of a regular who lost his mother to lung cancer had they not already been fundraising for Wolff.
Now after selling his story to a magazine for the same amount of money raised for Wolff, he plans to give the cash to the young boy’s father to take him on holiday.
Father-of-two Mr Newman said: “Obviously the main reason is he’s a real person and he’s a needy person.
“However you look at it, he spent most of his life in a one-person family.
“Then his mother died and he moved in with his father.
“He’s not had the greatest of lives so far.
“I would like to give him some money so his dad can take him on holiday.”
The experience with Wolff has put Mr Newman off continuing the pub’s tradition of holding fundraising events.
He said: “I don’t think I could ask my customers to put their hands in their pockets for someone else.
“The easiest thing for me is to not do it anymore, which is a shame.”
Wolff began spinning her web of lies when she told her employers she could not come to work because her two-year-old daughter had broken her leg.
When she returned to work, she said her child had been diagnosed with leukaemia and had managed to get a bone marrow donor for a transplant at Great Ormond Street Hospital.
She later broke the news her daughter had died.
Devastated staff at the pub rallied round and held a charity night to raise money for the funeral.
However, Wolff was caught out when she claimed her daughter’s headstone had been vandalised.
Staff realised a headstone would not have been put up so soon after a funeral and it soon emerged Wolff never had a daughter in the first place.
Wolff used the identity of her best friend Anna Pickett’s two-year-old daughter, Lilie Mae.
Ms Pickett went to Hayes School with Wolff and had been her pal for 10 years.
The 21-year-old said: “I was distraught and very angry. How could she do that to me?
“I feel really hurt and she used my daughter for this sick story.
“I’ve forgiven her in my own way but I couldn’t be her friend now.”
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