WHEN Love Island star Georgia Steel met a handsome, wealthy guy in a London nightclub, she had no idea she’d fallen into the clutches of a twisted conman. Fabulous investigates failed-footballer-tu…
WHEN Love Island star Georgia Steel met a handsome, wealthy guy in a London nightclub, she had no idea she’d fallen into the clutches of a twisted conman.Former Derby player Medi Abalimba would later pose as a Premier League ace, while he was, in fact, a £300-a-week non-league player and part-time taxi driverThis was the moment, in April 2019, when the Love Island star discovered that the handsome, seemingly successful man she’d been dating was, in fact, a conman.
“I liked that,” she says. “I didn’t want to be with someone who was with me because they’d seen me on TV.” But his taste for the high life lived by his more successful footballer peers drove him to a life of crime. By 2014, he was breaking into lockers at a private health club he was a member of in London, taking photos of credit cards, then using the details to fund a playboy lifestyle.and swanned around in luxury bars and hotels, running up huge tabs, which he either didn’t pay, got someone else to pay or settled with stolen credit cards.
When he sent a limousine driver to the shop the next day to collect the goods, a store detective became suspicious and called the police. But even in jail, Abalimba sought out victims. In 2016, while serving his sentence in HMP Moorland, he exploited a vulnerable 50-year-old agency nurse working in the prison, enticing her into a relationship.
“Research shows there are correlations between coercive control and the techniques that scammers like Abalimba are using. It is the same behaviour. Some people think coercive control is about feeling threatened by violence, but it comes in many guises.”Abalimba was released from jail in 2018 and the following year met his next victim, Georgia.
The day Georgia discovered Abalimba’s true identity, she confronted him. “He came to my apartment and tried to deny it,” she says. “Eventually, he left. That was the last time I saw him.” Dr Martina Dove, author of The Psychology Of Fraud, Persuasion And Scam Techniques, explains: “The psychological impact is considerable in all frauds, but especially romance frauds. Coming to terms with the fact they trusted someone who set out to deceive them is painful and can greatly impact self-esteem.”
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