Cancer faker tricked boyfriend into giving her £25,000 to pay for boob job
A mum falsely claimed to have terminal cancer to get her wealthy partner to pay for her plastic surgery.
‘Wicked and devious’ Laura McPherson, 35, even led her young daughter to believe she was dying in her five years of lies.
During McPherson’s relationship with ex Jon Leonard, he bought her a £30,000 Rolex watch believing it was ‘wrong’ to deny it to someone who would die soon.
He also gave her £24,248 to fund what he thought was treatment for cervical, ovarian, colon, bowel and breast cancer.
But McPherson instead spent it on a trip to a posh resort in Austria and a boob job in Manchester.
The lying began in 2017 when McPherson told Leonard she had been diagnosed with cervical cancer.
At a Derby Crown Court hearing yesterday, the recorder ordered McPherson to pay back Leonard £30,714 by January 5.
Leonard told the court he had received two messages on social media from people who said McPherson had claimed to have cancer before.
One warned: ‘I went to school with Laura in the Highlands. She lied about having cancer there too. At least it’s finally caught up with her.’
Someone also commented on Instagram: ‘Wish I had warned you that time I saw you at Elvaston Castle together, but didn’t know the lengths she had gone to. She had been claiming ovarian cancer since she was 16 to us at school. I’m glad her 20 years of lies finally caught up with her.’
Leonard said mum-of-two McPherson had stolen eight years of his life and left him ’emotionally scarred’.
He explained her lying involved him taking calls from McPherson’s daughter’s school because the youngster had broken down, worried that her mother was going to die.
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Tricked by McPherson’s lies, Leonard, who runs the Ultra Events platform raising millions for charities, had got in touch with one of Britain’s leading private cancer specialists and tried to arrange an appointment for her, but she insisted she would rather stick with her NHS treatment.
McPherson claimed to have had a hysterectomy in 2020 but she was spotted climbing a mountain two days later.
That same year she said she would also need a mastectomy but used the opportunity to have breast augmentation surgery at Leonard’s expense.
On New Year’s Eve 2021, Leonard dropped her off for what she had said was treatment to her cervix but she headed off to take a taxi to Coventry for a night out.
McPherson, 36, of Duffield, Derbyshire, who had a second child aged one with a later partner, previously admitted to fraud and was handed a two-year community order and a five-night-a-week curfew.
After the compensation ruling, Leonard said in a statement: ‘It’s finally over. Today marks the end of eight and a half challenging years.
‘She never had cancer, and it has now come to light she has been making up having cancer since she was in secondary school, long before I knew her. She has been exposed for the horrible, lying, manipulative individual she is.’
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