February 27, 2025 • 43 mins
Tina is ready to be a mother. But she couldn’t prepare herself for the elaborate deceptions of her baby’s father.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
A friend of mine described it really well. She said,
it's not like he's a catch me if you can
type person. He actually lies to make himself as normal
as possible, just like your average vote. And it's true
his bacade was authenticity.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
I'm Andrea Gunning and this is Betrayal, A show about
the people we trust the most and the deceptions that
change everything. Tina Maya is a successful e commerce consultant
in the UK. In twenty sixteen, a casual, romantic fling
turned her entire world upside down. It showed her a
(01:02):
dark side of humanity, one that she'd never seen before.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
There's definitely an element of control. He can walk away,
but he can remotely control the rest of your life.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
Her story is also one of community. Along the way,
she found a group of other women who had been
deceived and betrayed by the same man. Tina's become their
spokesperson and the spokesperson for a much larger story. Tina
(01:39):
was raised to be opinionated and strong willed.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
So I was born in Iran actually before the revolution.
We came here in nineteen seventy eight, and I grew
up in Southeast England, though very green leafy parts of
the world.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
When she graduated from university, traveled and spent years living abroad.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
I went to Australia, in Thailand and India, as well
a lot of places Costa Rica. You know that I
spent a lot of time to building my career and
living life.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
In the nineties and two thousands, Tina was early to
adopt the internet's potential, especially for commerce and online retail.
She made a career working in digital sales that ended
up taking her to New York City, where she met
her husband. By her mid thirties, he welcomed a son, Leo.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
He was an incredible baby and I really enjoyed becoming
a mother.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
But her husband, on the other hand, struggled.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
He wasn't a very handsome father. It was just sea
with me. It gets work for a while.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
When Tina was offered a prestigious job back in the UK,
she separated from her husband and made the leap. Now
her daily life was focused on work and raising her son.
For Tina, being a single mom to one child felt manageable.
She loved that dynamic.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
I was at a mom's drinks thing and I remember
having a conversation with one of the moms who had
a lot of problems with the second child sitting. They're like, God,
you got to write like one child the dream.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
When her son started grade school, Tina had more nights
to herself.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
He spends more time with friends, he goes sleepovers, but
a little bit more independence. I wasn't actively going out
and dating or anything like that. I was so busy.
I wasn't even thinking about dating. It wasn't on the radar.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
In twenty sixteen, she attended a tech conference in London.
That day she must have met in exchange contact info
with at least thirty people, one of them being Neil Lahman.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
He's a very charismatic person. He's very good looking. I
suppose he was a bit flirtatious.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Neil was from Essex. To put it in American terms.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
I guess the American version would be Jersey shure.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
Think party culture in SPRAYTNDS. Tina's interaction with Neil was
nothing special, just a friendly exchange of business cards. She
assumed it was a professional connection, but soon Neil began
texting her, and.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
Then one day he texted me and I had just
closed a very significant deal. So I was in a
very good mood, and he said that he was in
the area and asked me if I fancied.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
Going for a drink that night. Her son was at
a sleepover.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
I said, you know what, why not.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
It was perfect timing, so they met at a neighborhood pub.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
We sat down and started talking. He was very open,
asked me about you my life.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
She talked about her son and her ex husband in America,
and Neil shared details about his past.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
He told me that his ex wife they lived together
in the US, and she had cheated on him and
she'd run off with his best friend.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
The reason his wife had left was because Neil couldn't
have kids.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
She was very bitter about the fact that he couldn't
give her children. And then he went on to tell
me about the fact that he'd had cancer and has
testicular kind of it was impossible.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
It was a touchy subject. Neil seemed deeply hurt by
his ex wife. Tina felt for him.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
He seemed almost a little bit vulnerable, like he had
this sort of emotional vulnerability about him.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
The name was going well, and before long they found
themselves in another bar, making jokes and inching closer together.
She liked him, but she wanted to keep it casual.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
I didn't see it as being a long term, serious
relationship prospect. That was not where my head was. It's
not the sort of time that I had. I wasn't
interested in bringing anyone into my son's life. It was
just letting my head down and having a bit of fun.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Really, and Neil knew how to have a good time.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
He had that sort of cheeky, chappy jack the lad
kind of thing about him. It was fun.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
At the end of their night together.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
He walked me home in the very early hours of
the morning.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
They kissed good night, and Neil said he wanted to
see her again. He was often in her area because
he owned and managed a few properties there. He promised
to text the next time he was in her neighborhood,
and he did so. After their first night out together.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
He continued to text me, and then he would come
over once a week or so.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
Tina couldn't remember the last time she had a fling
like this. It had to have been well before her marriage.
It was just what she needed. It made her feel
sexy and confident. Before they slept together, I.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
Said to him that it wasn't on the pill. Does
he have anything. He said, no, I'm really allergic to
They text.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
Tina was forty one, and after his testicular cancer treatments,
Neil couldn't have kids without the pill or using regular condoms.
They settled on another method.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
I was quite adamant about using withdrawal methods, and I
asked him, did you withdraw in time? Because I could
have gone and got a plan B, but he was like, no, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
Over the next few months, they saw each other whenever
they could, and Tina got to know more about him.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
He said that he went to the London School of Economics,
which is sort of Harvard Business School level.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
But when Tina tried to talk about the neighborhood where
are the schools located? Neil seemed confused, like he didn't
know the area. But it had been decades since Neil
was in school, so Tina didn't think much of it.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
I didn't really question it too much. I wasn't thinking
of him as husband's material or something, so things weren't
registering too much with me.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
Eventually, Neil's appeal started to wear off.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
There was just one too many things that just wasn't
adding out for ringing true, like he would make a
plan and then have some weird excuse and like it
started to be less fun.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
Now she was ready to move on, so she stopped
responding promptly to his texts.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
Kind of wanted to phase it out anyway, So it
got a little cold.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
A few weeks later, she didn't feel quite like herself.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
It was misplacing things. I was looking for my car
keys all over the place and realized that I turned
them in the wheelie bin with my rubbish when I
threw the rubbish out.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
This feeling was familiar.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
Funny thing. I normally handy things like that. When I'm pregnant.
I don't get morning sickness, I don't get cravings, but
I get very forgetful.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
She confided in a friend about what was going on.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
She said, to me, go and get a pregnancy test.
And she said, as soon as you do that, I
mean you realize that you know you're not pregnant. Then
the period of I'm like, you know that. That's a
really good idea.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
So she got the test.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
So I went to the back room and read the
instructions and then yeah, popped the lad on your space
to wait three minutes. Immediately came up quite nant. Okay,
I'll just wait the full three minutes for the knot
to come up.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
She was pregnant at forty one. Even though it was
unexpected and unplanned, she felt immediately connected to this child.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
It's hard to describe, but she was very present in me,
very early on. There was something very very strong about
this presence, and I felt that right away.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
Even still, it was a massive shock because the baby
had to be meals.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
There hadn't been anybody else.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
But Neil was infertile, so this baby was a medical miracle.
Tina turned to her friend, who suggested maybe Neil would
be happy about the baby.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
She was like, oh, all these years, he didn't know
that he could have children.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
Miracle baby or not. Tina knew that she and Neil
didn't have a future together. Now she had to break
up with him and tell him the news.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
Wow, okay, this is going to be awkward. There.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
She took a few days to think and finally sent
Neil a message.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
So I said, I need to talk to you, but
to meet up tomorrow. I can come to meet you,
but need to have a little chat. And then he
said something along the lines of yeah, yeah, sure, I'll
send my brother to meet you and I know because
(11:58):
we need to talk. And he said, well, I don't
see why there's anything you can't tell me here. I
was like, really, you want me to tell you what
I need to tell you over text and he said yeah.
I was like, okay, Hi, if you insist, and so
I said, I am pregnant. You are the only option
(12:20):
of who the father is. And then he answered a
little bit strangely, he said, nice, try. I had a
vasect to me and I was like thesectomy and I
sent him a picture of the pregnancy test and I said,
well it didn't work.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
She wasn't expecting anything from him.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
One of the things that I immediately said was I'm
not expecting or asking you to be a father to
the child. I am letting you know because it's a
responsible thing to do, and you can be as I'm involved,
as you wish.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
She didn't know how he would react, but she certainly
wasn't expecting what happened.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
Next. Things turned nasty on his part, which took me aback.
He said, the whole load of nasty voice mails.
Speaker 3 (13:20):
Hi, T you know, let's talk about this baby. Okay. Now,
there's something very strange about this baby. Let me explain
it to.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
You, and you could just hear in his voice that turn,
and how nasty he became. Its like real viteroal.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
In these messages, Neil doubled down on his story.
Speaker 3 (13:39):
I have zero span is medically impossible. If it were,
I'd still be living happier with my wife in the USA.
We split up because she wanted kids and I couldn't
have them.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
As the messages and cars kept coming, they got more personal.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
He's the thing that you'd be a single mom, you
won't be able to get a job, and you won't
be able to work.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
And you'll be poor, then meaner, and.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
Oh he accused me of thinking of him as a
cash can.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
Then kind of scary, and then.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
He said that he had gone to the police and
reported me to the police. At first he said harassment,
and then he said that he'd reported me for entrapment.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
And some of his messages were downright strange.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
He started to come up with a story when he
was in the hospital with his kidney infection, they found
cancer cells, and how selfish I am, and what a
horrible person I am at having told him that I
was pregnant, then that I'm basically killing him.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
From her first date with Neil, she knew he wasn't
a keeper. She had no idea he could be this cruel.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
Whoa, this is not normal. This was really strange.
Speaker 3 (15:01):
So I'm going to tell you something. I will have
nothing to do with you, nothing to do with you
claiming I'm father of your child. You can keep the baby.
Great for you, but it ain't mind, darling. It's seriously, seriously,
he isn't mine.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
I just thought he was an asshole. My friend, she's
kinder than me, thought that he was in some sort
of state of shock because he thought he could never
have children.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
But Neil wasn't in shock, and he wasn't in denial.
Tina didn't know it at the time, but this was
something far more insidious.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
This is something that he's got too many, many, many
many times over.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
When Tina Maya told the man she'd been casually dating
she was pregnant, he became a different person. Neil Lawman
started sending her callous voice messages about how the baby
could not possibly be his. He even accused Tina of harassment.
Regardless of his disturbing reaction, Tina wanted to have the
(16:17):
baby on her own. She was sure of that, so
after his vitriolic messages, she drew a boundary with Neil.
Speaker 1 (16:26):
They said, yeah, I'll let you know when she's born
and you can decide to be what to have a
dnatist or not. That's you're right, And then he replied, no,
thank you. I will not be participating in any dnatist. Okay,
no worries.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
As far as Tina was concerned, Neil was out of
the picture, and.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
I went on obviously I had a lot to deal with.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
She blocked him and moved forward with the rest of
her pregnancy. It wouldn't be her first time as a
single mom. Tina's friends and family rallied around her to
buy support, and she needed it, especially when the baby
was born.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
When I went into labor, both she and I got
an infection. She wet blue, and she was there in
an incubator. She also had very very very bad georgice.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
Her newborn baby, Josephine, was in critical condition. She had
a severe lung infection. The doctor wanted to prepare for
a blood transfusion.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
He said, so, you know, just in case the worst
case scenario, we're going to need to get medical history,
blood types of parents, in cases some kind of rarity,
the genetic rarity or something like that. I was like, well,
I could only give you half.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
But half wasn't good enough, especially considering Neil's history of cancer.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
There was probably a complex medical history that we needed
to know about before we get this baby a blood transfusion.
She was two days old.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
Instead of reaching out to Neil, she decided to call
one of his friends, the only friend of his she
knew how to reach.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
Citizen. Here's my hospital number, and this is the doctor's name.
Can you just have him tell them bloodsite, any kind
of medical history, anything like that.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
Neil's friend tried to get him to go or at
least to call the hospital at Is.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
I know absolutely. I told him he needs to get
his hose down there right away.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
But Neil never showed up.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
No call has come through to researchers. So yeah, he's
not here and has not been here.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
And then while Tina was lying in her hospital bed,
she got a text from Neil.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
He sent me long abusive text messages. There, I wouldn't
lift a finger to help your child, even if she
did have my DNA, and not giving any information to
any doctors. Oh oh, okay, you are a psychopath. This
(19:04):
is a two day old baby, and all I asked
is for you to make a phone call, which anybody
would do for a stranger's baby, for a kitten. No
human being would refuse to make a phone call to potentially, say,
a baby.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
But Neil refused. He was not interested in helping the baby.
He was more concerned with lashing out at Tina that
he called.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
Me vile, tongued, foul woman and all sorts of horrible name.
It's aye, I just give them birth. I was in
hospital with needles stuck in me for the antibiotics and
things like that. But this is a really evil person.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
She was beyond anger.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
I was disgusted. I was disgusted. I was like, yeah,
wherever you are, you have no humanity.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
Up until this moment, she'd planned to raise the baby
completely on her own, without asking Neil for a single penny,
But after he showed his true colors, she decided, you
know what, I'm just going to send the Chelseapool Agency
how to keep for the next eighteen years.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
Bye bye.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
She figured the courts could handle Neil and she and
her family could move on. Luckily, her newborn daughter recovered
without needing a blood transfusion.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
After a week of being in hospital, we were both
able to go home.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
When she got home with Josephine or Fifi as she
calls her, their house was full of joy. Her son,
who was eight, became a doting big brother.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
Right son adored her from day one and she's just
the sweetest baby.
Speaker 2 (20:54):
Now. With two children to support, Tina had to return
to work just two weeks later.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
I took the mandatory two weeks and went back to
work and I was back on a train in London.
I had a nanny and my friend helped me out
also with Hope and yeah to work.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
One day, while she was on her way to work,
she decided to call the UK's child support agency to
get the paperwork started for child support. After they looked
into Tina's claim, the agency contacted her with surprising news
about Neil.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
It came back that firstly, it said that he only
had to pay five pounds a week because he was
in receipt.
Speaker 2 (21:40):
Of benefits, meaning that Neil was on unemployment. But that
didn't add up to Tina. She met him at a
tech conference. He owned his own company. She'd met his coworkers.
She tried to explain this to the child support agency,
and I.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
Said, well, he's not, and if he is, he shouldn't
be because he's got a business. I mean seen it.
I know he has a functioning business.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
But the government didn't have records of his businesses or income.
And that wasn't all.
Speaker 1 (22:14):
Yeah. The interesting thing was that five pounds a week
it was split between my daughter and three other children.
I was like, okay, so here's a new spin.
Speaker 2 (22:30):
Neil had three other children, what about his story of
being infertile. Tina went into investigation mode, searching for business
and personal records of Neil Lawman.
Speaker 1 (22:43):
I went all the way back to one from a
number of years ago.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
In Neil's records, she found the name of a woman,
someone who changed her last name to Lawman.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
Says, okay, that must be his ex wife. If she
is an it might be his current wife.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
Maybe this was the woman he'd been married to in
the States. But Tina didn't really know what to believe anymore.
Speaker 1 (23:09):
At this point, I realized that there's a lot of
lie So I go on Facebook, and Norman isn't a
common name. I'd put it up and there's her Facebook profile.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
The first thing she noticed about her profile.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
She was not in America, She's right here in the UK.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
And the second.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
Pictures of two girls who are undoubtedly his daughter's.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
Looking at the photos of two little girls clearly related
to Neil made Tina's headspin. At the very least, she
knew she'd found the right person.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
So I text her on Facebook and yeah, obviously I
didn't know what to expect. I didn't know how she
would react, if she would respond at all. I didn't
know if they were still married, and he'd like about that.
I I had no idea what to expect from this,
but yeah, what could I do? So I wrote her
message and she immediately responded. The first line of a
(24:12):
very long message said, I'm so so sorry that you'd
have been his victim.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
When Tina applied for child support, she discovered a trove
of information about her daughter's biological father, Neil Lahman. First
that he was on unemployment and claimed he was unable
to make child support payments. He wasn't the high flying
tech guy he'd pretended to be. Second that he already
(24:53):
owed child support for three other children. The whole story
about him being infertile from prostate cancer was a complete lie,
an elaborate deception. From night one, when Tina began looking
into Neil's background, she found the name of his ex
(25:14):
wife for going to call her, Wendy.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
Yeah, we stopped talking and communicating, and his ex wife
had a story to tell.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
She'd been with him for ten years, they had two
daughters together. Then one day Neil walked out, leaving her
with a significant amount of debt.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
If she hadn't been bailed out by her parents, they
would have been on the streets or something like that.
And yeah, she seemed traumatized.
Speaker 2 (25:42):
Neil had claimed that his wife cheated on him, that
she left him because he was infertile. He said she
was still back in America, But it turns out Wendy
very much lived in the UK. In fact, she lived
in this same neighborhood as Tina. Now Tina could safely
(26:03):
assume everything he'd ever told her was a lie.
Speaker 1 (26:07):
So we now know that the whole America thing was
a lie. Cancer thing. Well, yeah, even if he had cancer,
they did not cause infertility. I'm like, wow, Okay, right
now we're down a rabbit hole.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
Tina and Wendy agreed to meet for dinner to talk in.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
Person, so we met up in London. We both liked sushi,
so we went to a very nice sushi restaurant right away.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
Tina was struck by how familiar Wendy seemed. The two
women had the same energy, independent, confident, and outgoing. Wendy
had some important information for Tina, things she needed to know.
You see, after Neil left her, Wendy found out about
two more children, two sons he had father before her
(27:01):
daughters were born. Tina stared at Wendy, processing the reality
that her daughter was one of five, how many more
kids were out there, and what would that mean for
her daughter, for their daughters. It was a reality Wendy
had barely begun to confront herself.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
She'd said that she had never told her daughters about
the older voice that she'd found out about.
Speaker 2 (27:30):
Since Neil left Wendy, he'd barely spoken to their two
young daughters.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
Nothing, absolutely nothing in all of these years, except an
annual birthday phone call to one of the children, where
you would lie about having said a gift that never arrived.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
Tina and Wendy ordered another round of Martini's and talked
until the restaurant closed before they said goodbye. Tina got
an idea, let's.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
Do something a little bit funny, so we took a
selfie we were both giving the bird, and we sent
him an email with just a picture and insightled the
other mother mother uhha. He went ballistic.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
Neil started sending unhinged emails to Tina, to Wendy, even
to his ex father in law.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
And then he'd also send a horrific email to my work,
very graphic slot shaping email addressed to the entire company,
including the CEO.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
She was horrified this was too far.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
So I reported this to the police and they did
take it quite seriously, and they said that it was
malicious tommunication.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
But this wasn't the first time the cops had investigated Neil.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
He was also involved in a very high profile fraud
case with the Fimbo wine scheme, and his ex girlfriend
actually ended up serving time for that, but he just
walked away. It's got free.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
Allegedly, he'd been implicated in a multi million dollar fraud scheme,
and there was more. In total, he had eleven offenses
in five convictions, but he never served any prison time.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
Like Teplon, nothing sticks.
Speaker 2 (29:42):
After Tina reported Neil to the police. She waited for
an update. She'd given them all the information she had
on him, and the officers said they'd call her when
they made an arrest. But months went by without word
when Tina called for an update.
Speaker 1 (29:58):
Strangely, the so that we can't find him. He went
onder ground or something, and then after a year the
world was canceled, which I found odd.
Speaker 2 (30:09):
Tina knew where he was. He wasn't hiding at all.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
It's like, well, I could find him, why can't you.
Speaker 2 (30:17):
This got Tina thinking.
Speaker 1 (30:19):
It crossed my mind that he might have been an
informant and he got himself out of these things by
giving information to throw other people out of bus.
Speaker 2 (30:31):
Again, that's just a theory. If the police weren't going
to give her answers or justice, she was going to
find them herself. So she reached out to Wendy and
together they came up with another idea.
Speaker 1 (30:46):
We said, look, why don't we start a Facebook group
that has his name in it, So at least if
someone's looking to sort of date him or get into
business and they look him up on Facebook or come up,
maybe give them a rip black give them a warning.
So we set up this Facebook group called the Neil
(31:08):
Norman Victim support group. It was a little tongue in cheek,
but yeah. The interesting thing was that, you know, one
after another, people actually started to join and tell their stories.
Speaker 2 (31:22):
As the group grew, Neil tried to get it taken down,
but Facebook declared it legitimate public interest. Through this page,
they discovered that Neil was allegedly running quite a few schemes.
At the same time, there were lots of posts about
his alleged shady business dealings. When it came to starting
new businesses, the posts suggested that Neil had an.
Speaker 1 (31:44):
M He would befriend somebody, get into their lives, yet
understand their business, and then take over the business. He
would just make a copy of it and then take
all the customers and try and these businesses that were
other people's, and then suddenly he's an expert.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
And then there were all the women he'd ghosted, women
he'd met online and started serious long distance relationships with.
Speaker 1 (32:12):
There was a diplomat he'd had an online relationship with
for years.
Speaker 2 (32:18):
When this woman finally booked a trip to meet him
in person, he said he would pick her up at
the airport, but when she landed, he wasn't there. She
tried to call him and she realized he blocked her.
She never heard from him again.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
He's done that a lot. He's done that a lot.
It's been quite a few people, but he's had these
sort of online, ongoing relationships.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
With These stories were bizarre. Was he doing it for
the money to resell the expensive hotel room bookings and
concert tickets or was it all just one big game
to him? Whatever the case, in every story, Neil didn't
stick her. Instead, his victims were left to deal with
(33:03):
the consequences of his actions, and some were never the same,
like one woman.
Speaker 1 (33:09):
She was only eighteen at the time. I thought she
was going for a job interview, and then he said, oh,
there's a meetings going on in the office. You have
to meet me. There's the restaurant downstairs and bought her
a drake.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
She wrote to Tina in her Facebook messages, she said
that she woke up in a hotel room disoriented. She
alleged that she'd been drugged and raped.
Speaker 1 (33:32):
She didn't go to the police because she got ashamed.
Speaker 2 (33:35):
Multiple women shared stories like this one. Their Facebook posts
alleged that Neil was not just a con artist, but
a violent man.
Speaker 1 (33:44):
The fact that they'd have these let's identical stories, it
makes me think that, yeah, that's pattern.
Speaker 2 (33:53):
As the group grew, Tina continued to wonder did anyone
out there have a story like hers?
Speaker 1 (34:00):
And then another mother came along.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
Her son was now an adult, but she knew Neil
was the.
Speaker 1 (34:07):
Father, and it turned out that her son was only
a few weeks older than one of his other sons,
and they lived down the road from each other.
Speaker 2 (34:20):
Their families knew each other. The boys never interacted, but
they easily could have.
Speaker 1 (34:28):
I mean, that's how close they were.
Speaker 2 (34:32):
Through the group, Tina learned more about Neil's backstory and
it was revealing.
Speaker 1 (34:38):
As far as I'm aware, he believed that his stepfather
was his real father until he was about fourteen, and
then the mother told him the truth that he was
rejected by his own father, but he was never.
Speaker 2 (34:56):
In Neil's life like his mom. Neil asked, so had
his first child in his teens?
Speaker 1 (35:02):
When Neil was about eighteen, that's when he got the
first mother pregnant. She was only fifteen at the time
the baby was born, and he ran.
Speaker 2 (35:17):
Off after that. It seemed like this became a pattern
of his and this wasn't just about having unprotected sex
or fathering many kids. He was intentionally deceiving women into
believing he was infertile. These women who got pregnant would
be tied to Neil forever.
Speaker 1 (35:35):
There's definitely an element of control. He can remote the
control the rest of your life. He can walk away
but still keep that control.
Speaker 2 (35:49):
So how many children does Neil Lahman actually have? Well,
four have been confirmed by DNA, but there are many
women who believe Neil is the father of their children.
Speaker 1 (36:02):
From people coming forward and talking to us, there are
at least thirteen credible children that yeah, the mothers have
said that he's the father.
Speaker 2 (36:11):
So the scheme clearly didn't end with Tina. The thirteen
mothers have become a kind of group. They've bonded. Some
of them are even friends.
Speaker 1 (36:23):
Tina admits he does have good taste in women. This
is one deeming quality. And it's interesting because he doesn't
tend to go for vulnerable women. He doesn't tend to
go for women who he can control financially, or who
don't have close families and things like that. It's almost
(36:45):
like a challenge to him that he will target women
who are strong who have careers, who are accomplished and
break them down.
Speaker 2 (36:55):
But of course Nil's victims aren't just the women. Some
members of their Facebook group are Neil's now adult children.
Many of them haven't been confirmed by DNA, but one
of them tried to find Neil. He told Tina about
the experience he.
Speaker 1 (37:11):
Told me about when he was a teenager. He'd come
to try and find him, and he'd waited outside his office.
He'd spoke to him on the phone, and he seemed
all right on the phone, but then when he went
to meet him, he waited at a coffee shop across
from where he worked, and then Neil came down and
saw him and just turned the other way and walked away.
(37:36):
A lot of these stories are very heartbreaking.
Speaker 2 (37:39):
Hearing these stories, Tina felt even more certain that justice
needed to be served, and in talking to a police officer,
she heard something that piqued her interest.
Speaker 1 (37:50):
This could be considered rape by deception.
Speaker 2 (37:54):
Rape by deception is a situation in which a perpetrator
deceives someone in order to get sexual consent. The victim
wouldn't have consented if not for a crucial lie, like
one around the perpetrator's STD or a fertility status. Rape
by deception is in a specific charge. It's a way
of arguing and giving contact to a situation as rape
(38:16):
even if it falls outside the typical definition of rape
under the law, and it's been used before in cases
like Tina's.
Speaker 1 (38:24):
There was another high profile case whereby someone who is
a rapist has taken to court because he'd claimed to
have had a aasectomy and got a woman pregnant, and
the jury had ruled him guilty. He was given a sentence. However,
they appealed it and the Supreme Court overruled the conviction.
Speaker 2 (38:51):
For Tina, there's still a lot of work to be
done around this issue. In the meantime, she's had to
move forward with her life and focus on her kids.
Speaker 1 (39:03):
My daughter is an absolute blessing gift. She's a ray
of sunshine. Yeah. The irony of this whole thing is
that she looks just like it.
Speaker 2 (39:15):
Tina has learned to navigate some tough questions with care.
For instance, her daughter has asked, it's my good.
Speaker 1 (39:23):
A nice person. I was like, your father, he's not
a nice person, but that's nothing to do with you,
And she's like, okay, She's just very matter of fact,
and it's it's just funny how adaptable kids are. Friends
of hers very innocently asked, you know, so, what'd you dead?
(39:46):
And she's like, oh, I don't have one. I don't
have one. When they do Father's Day things at school,
she makes things for her brother.
Speaker 2 (39:57):
Tina and her two children have a strong little family unit.
But now that's not their entire family because Tina and
Wendy decided to tell their kids about each other. When
Wendy told her daughters.
Speaker 1 (40:14):
One of the things that the older daughter did say
was that she wanted to meet her sister.
Speaker 2 (40:22):
Tina does worry about her daughter and how the situation
will impact her as she grows up. But at the
end of the.
Speaker 1 (40:28):
Day, what hurts and what causes damage is the lies,
not the truth. I've seen it over and over again
that a lot of the children, the people, the victims,
have all been impacted so negatively by this trail of
lines upon lives upon lives upon life, and the best
(40:50):
way to combat that is by absolute truth. And my
daughters will have a source of truth about her situation.
She wasn't abandoned and it's not her fault. This is
what he does. This is a hymn problem.
Speaker 2 (41:12):
We end all of our episodes with the same question,
why did you want to tell your story? Tina has
a really specific reason. She wants to warn anyone who's
just met Neil Lahman.
Speaker 1 (41:26):
If I can help one person avoid that pain, avoid
going through this situation, or to get out before it's
something devastating, If I can help one of the mothers
out there to feel not alone, that overcomes all of
(41:47):
his darkness, all of his lies, I think that that
can only be a positive thing.
Speaker 2 (41:59):
On the next episode of Betrayal.
Speaker 4 (42:02):
That evening, one of the strangest things happened. I looked
in the mirror and I said out loud that he's
not coming home. And I thought, my god, am I
being dramatic? Of course he's going to be home. And
I dismissed it.
Speaker 2 (42:28):
If you would like to reach out to the Betrayal
team or want to tell us your Betrayal story, email
us at Betrayalpod at gmail dot com. That's Betrayal Pod
at gmail dot com. We're grateful for your support. One
way to show support is by subscribing to our show
on Apple Podcasts, and don't forget to rate and review
Betrayal five star reviews, Go A Long Way, A big
(42:50):
thank you to all of our listeners. Betrayal is a
production of Glass Podcasts, a division of Glass Entertainment Group
in partnership with iHeart Podcasts. Show is executive produced by
Nancy Glass and Jennifer Fason, hosted and produced by me
Andrea Gunning, written and produced by Monique Leboard, also produced
by Ben Fetterman. Associate producers are Kristin Mercury and Caitlyn Golden.
(43:15):
Our iHeart team is Ali Perry and Jessica Krinjek. Audio
editing and mixing by mattel Vecchio, Additional editing support from
Tanner Robbins. Betrayal's theme composed by Oliver Bains. Music library
provided by my Music and For more podcasts from iHeart,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
(43:36):
your podcasts
A friend of mine described it really well. She said,
it's not like he's a catch me if you can
type person. He actually lies to make himself as normal
as possible, just like your average vote. And it's true
his bacade was authenticity.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
I'm Andrea Gunning and this is Betrayal, A show about
the people we trust the most and the deceptions that
change everything. Tina Maya is a successful e commerce consultant
in the UK. In twenty sixteen, a casual, romantic fling
turned her entire world upside down. It showed her a
(01:02):
dark side of humanity, one that she'd never seen before.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
There's definitely an element of control. He can walk away,
but he can remotely control the rest of your life.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
Her story is also one of community. Along the way,
she found a group of other women who had been
deceived and betrayed by the same man. Tina's become their
spokesperson and the spokesperson for a much larger story. Tina
(01:39):
was raised to be opinionated and strong willed.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
So I was born in Iran actually before the revolution.
We came here in nineteen seventy eight, and I grew
up in Southeast England, though very green leafy parts of
the world.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
When she graduated from university, traveled and spent years living abroad.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
I went to Australia, in Thailand and India, as well
a lot of places Costa Rica. You know that I
spent a lot of time to building my career and
living life.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
In the nineties and two thousands, Tina was early to
adopt the internet's potential, especially for commerce and online retail.
She made a career working in digital sales that ended
up taking her to New York City, where she met
her husband. By her mid thirties, he welcomed a son, Leo.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
He was an incredible baby and I really enjoyed becoming
a mother.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
But her husband, on the other hand, struggled.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
He wasn't a very handsome father. It was just sea
with me. It gets work for a while.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
When Tina was offered a prestigious job back in the UK,
she separated from her husband and made the leap. Now
her daily life was focused on work and raising her son.
For Tina, being a single mom to one child felt manageable.
She loved that dynamic.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
I was at a mom's drinks thing and I remember
having a conversation with one of the moms who had
a lot of problems with the second child sitting. They're like, God,
you got to write like one child the dream.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
When her son started grade school, Tina had more nights
to herself.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
He spends more time with friends, he goes sleepovers, but
a little bit more independence. I wasn't actively going out
and dating or anything like that. I was so busy.
I wasn't even thinking about dating. It wasn't on the radar.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
In twenty sixteen, she attended a tech conference in London.
That day she must have met in exchange contact info
with at least thirty people, one of them being Neil Lahman.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
He's a very charismatic person. He's very good looking. I
suppose he was a bit flirtatious.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Neil was from Essex. To put it in American terms.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
I guess the American version would be Jersey shure.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
Think party culture in SPRAYTNDS. Tina's interaction with Neil was
nothing special, just a friendly exchange of business cards. She
assumed it was a professional connection, but soon Neil began
texting her, and.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
Then one day he texted me and I had just
closed a very significant deal. So I was in a
very good mood, and he said that he was in
the area and asked me if I fancied.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
Going for a drink that night. Her son was at
a sleepover.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
I said, you know what, why not.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
It was perfect timing, so they met at a neighborhood pub.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
We sat down and started talking. He was very open,
asked me about you my life.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
She talked about her son and her ex husband in America,
and Neil shared details about his past.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
He told me that his ex wife they lived together
in the US, and she had cheated on him and
she'd run off with his best friend.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
The reason his wife had left was because Neil couldn't
have kids.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
She was very bitter about the fact that he couldn't
give her children. And then he went on to tell
me about the fact that he'd had cancer and has
testicular kind of it was impossible.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
It was a touchy subject. Neil seemed deeply hurt by
his ex wife. Tina felt for him.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
He seemed almost a little bit vulnerable, like he had
this sort of emotional vulnerability about him.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
The name was going well, and before long they found
themselves in another bar, making jokes and inching closer together.
She liked him, but she wanted to keep it casual.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
I didn't see it as being a long term, serious
relationship prospect. That was not where my head was. It's
not the sort of time that I had. I wasn't
interested in bringing anyone into my son's life. It was
just letting my head down and having a bit of fun.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Really, and Neil knew how to have a good time.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
He had that sort of cheeky, chappy jack the lad
kind of thing about him. It was fun.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
At the end of their night together.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
He walked me home in the very early hours of
the morning.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
They kissed good night, and Neil said he wanted to
see her again. He was often in her area because
he owned and managed a few properties there. He promised
to text the next time he was in her neighborhood,
and he did so. After their first night out together.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
He continued to text me, and then he would come
over once a week or so.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
Tina couldn't remember the last time she had a fling
like this. It had to have been well before her marriage.
It was just what she needed. It made her feel
sexy and confident. Before they slept together, I.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
Said to him that it wasn't on the pill. Does
he have anything. He said, no, I'm really allergic to
They text.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
Tina was forty one, and after his testicular cancer treatments,
Neil couldn't have kids without the pill or using regular condoms.
They settled on another method.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
I was quite adamant about using withdrawal methods, and I
asked him, did you withdraw in time? Because I could
have gone and got a plan B, but he was like, no, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
Over the next few months, they saw each other whenever
they could, and Tina got to know more about him.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
He said that he went to the London School of Economics,
which is sort of Harvard Business School level.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
But when Tina tried to talk about the neighborhood where
are the schools located? Neil seemed confused, like he didn't
know the area. But it had been decades since Neil
was in school, so Tina didn't think much of it.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
I didn't really question it too much. I wasn't thinking
of him as husband's material or something, so things weren't
registering too much with me.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
Eventually, Neil's appeal started to wear off.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
There was just one too many things that just wasn't
adding out for ringing true, like he would make a
plan and then have some weird excuse and like it
started to be less fun.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
Now she was ready to move on, so she stopped
responding promptly to his texts.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
Kind of wanted to phase it out anyway, So it
got a little cold.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
A few weeks later, she didn't feel quite like herself.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
It was misplacing things. I was looking for my car
keys all over the place and realized that I turned
them in the wheelie bin with my rubbish when I
threw the rubbish out.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
This feeling was familiar.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
Funny thing. I normally handy things like that. When I'm pregnant.
I don't get morning sickness, I don't get cravings, but
I get very forgetful.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
She confided in a friend about what was going on.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
She said, to me, go and get a pregnancy test.
And she said, as soon as you do that, I
mean you realize that you know you're not pregnant. Then
the period of I'm like, you know that. That's a
really good idea.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
So she got the test.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
So I went to the back room and read the
instructions and then yeah, popped the lad on your space
to wait three minutes. Immediately came up quite nant. Okay,
I'll just wait the full three minutes for the knot
to come up.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
She was pregnant at forty one. Even though it was
unexpected and unplanned, she felt immediately connected to this child.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
It's hard to describe, but she was very present in me,
very early on. There was something very very strong about
this presence, and I felt that right away.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
Even still, it was a massive shock because the baby
had to be meals.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
There hadn't been anybody else.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
But Neil was infertile, so this baby was a medical miracle.
Tina turned to her friend, who suggested maybe Neil would
be happy about the baby.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
She was like, oh, all these years, he didn't know
that he could have children.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
Miracle baby or not. Tina knew that she and Neil
didn't have a future together. Now she had to break
up with him and tell him the news.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
Wow, okay, this is going to be awkward. There.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
She took a few days to think and finally sent
Neil a message.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
So I said, I need to talk to you, but
to meet up tomorrow. I can come to meet you,
but need to have a little chat. And then he
said something along the lines of yeah, yeah, sure, I'll
send my brother to meet you and I know because
(11:58):
we need to talk. And he said, well, I don't
see why there's anything you can't tell me here. I
was like, really, you want me to tell you what
I need to tell you over text and he said yeah.
I was like, okay, Hi, if you insist, and so
I said, I am pregnant. You are the only option
(12:20):
of who the father is. And then he answered a
little bit strangely, he said, nice, try. I had a
vasect to me and I was like thesectomy and I
sent him a picture of the pregnancy test and I said,
well it didn't work.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
She wasn't expecting anything from him.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
One of the things that I immediately said was I'm
not expecting or asking you to be a father to
the child. I am letting you know because it's a
responsible thing to do, and you can be as I'm involved,
as you wish.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
She didn't know how he would react, but she certainly
wasn't expecting what happened.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
Next. Things turned nasty on his part, which took me aback.
He said, the whole load of nasty voice mails.
Speaker 3 (13:20):
Hi, T you know, let's talk about this baby. Okay. Now,
there's something very strange about this baby. Let me explain
it to.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
You, and you could just hear in his voice that turn,
and how nasty he became. Its like real viteroal.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
In these messages, Neil doubled down on his story.
Speaker 3 (13:39):
I have zero span is medically impossible. If it were,
I'd still be living happier with my wife in the USA.
We split up because she wanted kids and I couldn't
have them.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
As the messages and cars kept coming, they got more personal.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
He's the thing that you'd be a single mom, you
won't be able to get a job, and you won't
be able to work.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
And you'll be poor, then meaner, and.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
Oh he accused me of thinking of him as a
cash can.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
Then kind of scary, and then.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
He said that he had gone to the police and
reported me to the police. At first he said harassment,
and then he said that he'd reported me for entrapment.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
And some of his messages were downright strange.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
He started to come up with a story when he
was in the hospital with his kidney infection, they found
cancer cells, and how selfish I am, and what a
horrible person I am at having told him that I
was pregnant, then that I'm basically killing him.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
From her first date with Neil, she knew he wasn't
a keeper. She had no idea he could be this cruel.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
Whoa, this is not normal. This was really strange.
Speaker 3 (15:01):
So I'm going to tell you something. I will have
nothing to do with you, nothing to do with you
claiming I'm father of your child. You can keep the baby.
Great for you, but it ain't mind, darling. It's seriously, seriously,
he isn't mine.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
I just thought he was an asshole. My friend, she's
kinder than me, thought that he was in some sort
of state of shock because he thought he could never
have children.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
But Neil wasn't in shock, and he wasn't in denial.
Tina didn't know it at the time, but this was
something far more insidious.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
This is something that he's got too many, many, many
many times over.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
When Tina Maya told the man she'd been casually dating
she was pregnant, he became a different person. Neil Lawman
started sending her callous voice messages about how the baby
could not possibly be his. He even accused Tina of harassment.
Regardless of his disturbing reaction, Tina wanted to have the
(16:17):
baby on her own. She was sure of that, so
after his vitriolic messages, she drew a boundary with Neil.
Speaker 1 (16:26):
They said, yeah, I'll let you know when she's born
and you can decide to be what to have a
dnatist or not. That's you're right, And then he replied, no,
thank you. I will not be participating in any dnatist. Okay,
no worries.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
As far as Tina was concerned, Neil was out of
the picture, and.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
I went on obviously I had a lot to deal with.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
She blocked him and moved forward with the rest of
her pregnancy. It wouldn't be her first time as a
single mom. Tina's friends and family rallied around her to
buy support, and she needed it, especially when the baby
was born.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
When I went into labor, both she and I got
an infection. She wet blue, and she was there in
an incubator. She also had very very very bad georgice.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
Her newborn baby, Josephine, was in critical condition. She had
a severe lung infection. The doctor wanted to prepare for
a blood transfusion.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
He said, so, you know, just in case the worst
case scenario, we're going to need to get medical history,
blood types of parents, in cases some kind of rarity,
the genetic rarity or something like that. I was like, well,
I could only give you half.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
But half wasn't good enough, especially considering Neil's history of cancer.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
There was probably a complex medical history that we needed
to know about before we get this baby a blood transfusion.
She was two days old.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
Instead of reaching out to Neil, she decided to call
one of his friends, the only friend of his she
knew how to reach.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
Citizen. Here's my hospital number, and this is the doctor's name.
Can you just have him tell them bloodsite, any kind
of medical history, anything like that.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
Neil's friend tried to get him to go or at
least to call the hospital at Is.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
I know absolutely. I told him he needs to get
his hose down there right away.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
But Neil never showed up.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
No call has come through to researchers. So yeah, he's
not here and has not been here.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
And then while Tina was lying in her hospital bed,
she got a text from Neil.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
He sent me long abusive text messages. There, I wouldn't
lift a finger to help your child, even if she
did have my DNA, and not giving any information to
any doctors. Oh oh, okay, you are a psychopath. This
(19:04):
is a two day old baby, and all I asked
is for you to make a phone call, which anybody
would do for a stranger's baby, for a kitten. No
human being would refuse to make a phone call to potentially, say,
a baby.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
But Neil refused. He was not interested in helping the baby.
He was more concerned with lashing out at Tina that
he called.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
Me vile, tongued, foul woman and all sorts of horrible name.
It's aye, I just give them birth. I was in
hospital with needles stuck in me for the antibiotics and
things like that. But this is a really evil person.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
She was beyond anger.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
I was disgusted. I was disgusted. I was like, yeah,
wherever you are, you have no humanity.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
Up until this moment, she'd planned to raise the baby
completely on her own, without asking Neil for a single penny,
But after he showed his true colors, she decided, you
know what, I'm just going to send the Chelseapool Agency
how to keep for the next eighteen years.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
Bye bye.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
She figured the courts could handle Neil and she and
her family could move on. Luckily, her newborn daughter recovered
without needing a blood transfusion.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
After a week of being in hospital, we were both
able to go home.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
When she got home with Josephine or Fifi as she
calls her, their house was full of joy. Her son,
who was eight, became a doting big brother.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
Right son adored her from day one and she's just
the sweetest baby.
Speaker 2 (20:54):
Now. With two children to support, Tina had to return
to work just two weeks later.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
I took the mandatory two weeks and went back to
work and I was back on a train in London.
I had a nanny and my friend helped me out
also with Hope and yeah to work.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
One day, while she was on her way to work,
she decided to call the UK's child support agency to
get the paperwork started for child support. After they looked
into Tina's claim, the agency contacted her with surprising news
about Neil.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
It came back that firstly, it said that he only
had to pay five pounds a week because he was
in receipt.
Speaker 2 (21:40):
Of benefits, meaning that Neil was on unemployment. But that
didn't add up to Tina. She met him at a
tech conference. He owned his own company. She'd met his coworkers.
She tried to explain this to the child support agency,
and I.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
Said, well, he's not, and if he is, he shouldn't
be because he's got a business. I mean seen it.
I know he has a functioning business.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
But the government didn't have records of his businesses or income.
And that wasn't all.
Speaker 1 (22:14):
Yeah. The interesting thing was that five pounds a week
it was split between my daughter and three other children.
I was like, okay, so here's a new spin.
Speaker 2 (22:30):
Neil had three other children, what about his story of
being infertile. Tina went into investigation mode, searching for business
and personal records of Neil Lawman.
Speaker 1 (22:43):
I went all the way back to one from a
number of years ago.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
In Neil's records, she found the name of a woman,
someone who changed her last name to Lawman.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
Says, okay, that must be his ex wife. If she
is an it might be his current wife.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
Maybe this was the woman he'd been married to in
the States. But Tina didn't really know what to believe anymore.
Speaker 1 (23:09):
At this point, I realized that there's a lot of
lie So I go on Facebook, and Norman isn't a
common name. I'd put it up and there's her Facebook profile.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
The first thing she noticed about her profile.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
She was not in America, She's right here in the UK.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
And the second.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
Pictures of two girls who are undoubtedly his daughter's.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
Looking at the photos of two little girls clearly related
to Neil made Tina's headspin. At the very least, she
knew she'd found the right person.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
So I text her on Facebook and yeah, obviously I
didn't know what to expect. I didn't know how she
would react, if she would respond at all. I didn't
know if they were still married, and he'd like about that.
I I had no idea what to expect from this,
but yeah, what could I do? So I wrote her
message and she immediately responded. The first line of a
(24:12):
very long message said, I'm so so sorry that you'd
have been his victim.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
When Tina applied for child support, she discovered a trove
of information about her daughter's biological father, Neil Lahman. First
that he was on unemployment and claimed he was unable
to make child support payments. He wasn't the high flying
tech guy he'd pretended to be. Second that he already
(24:53):
owed child support for three other children. The whole story
about him being infertile from prostate cancer was a complete lie,
an elaborate deception. From night one, when Tina began looking
into Neil's background, she found the name of his ex
(25:14):
wife for going to call her, Wendy.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
Yeah, we stopped talking and communicating, and his ex wife
had a story to tell.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
She'd been with him for ten years, they had two
daughters together. Then one day Neil walked out, leaving her
with a significant amount of debt.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
If she hadn't been bailed out by her parents, they
would have been on the streets or something like that.
And yeah, she seemed traumatized.
Speaker 2 (25:42):
Neil had claimed that his wife cheated on him, that
she left him because he was infertile. He said she
was still back in America, But it turns out Wendy
very much lived in the UK. In fact, she lived
in this same neighborhood as Tina. Now Tina could safely
(26:03):
assume everything he'd ever told her was a lie.
Speaker 1 (26:07):
So we now know that the whole America thing was
a lie. Cancer thing. Well, yeah, even if he had cancer,
they did not cause infertility. I'm like, wow, Okay, right
now we're down a rabbit hole.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
Tina and Wendy agreed to meet for dinner to talk in.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
Person, so we met up in London. We both liked sushi,
so we went to a very nice sushi restaurant right away.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
Tina was struck by how familiar Wendy seemed. The two
women had the same energy, independent, confident, and outgoing. Wendy
had some important information for Tina, things she needed to know.
You see, after Neil left her, Wendy found out about
two more children, two sons he had father before her
(27:01):
daughters were born. Tina stared at Wendy, processing the reality
that her daughter was one of five, how many more
kids were out there, and what would that mean for
her daughter, for their daughters. It was a reality Wendy
had barely begun to confront herself.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
She'd said that she had never told her daughters about
the older voice that she'd found out about.
Speaker 2 (27:30):
Since Neil left Wendy, he'd barely spoken to their two
young daughters.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
Nothing, absolutely nothing in all of these years, except an
annual birthday phone call to one of the children, where
you would lie about having said a gift that never arrived.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
Tina and Wendy ordered another round of Martini's and talked
until the restaurant closed before they said goodbye. Tina got
an idea, let's.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
Do something a little bit funny, so we took a
selfie we were both giving the bird, and we sent
him an email with just a picture and insightled the
other mother mother uhha. He went ballistic.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
Neil started sending unhinged emails to Tina, to Wendy, even
to his ex father in law.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
And then he'd also send a horrific email to my work,
very graphic slot shaping email addressed to the entire company,
including the CEO.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
She was horrified this was too far.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
So I reported this to the police and they did
take it quite seriously, and they said that it was
malicious tommunication.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
But this wasn't the first time the cops had investigated Neil.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
He was also involved in a very high profile fraud
case with the Fimbo wine scheme, and his ex girlfriend
actually ended up serving time for that, but he just
walked away. It's got free.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
Allegedly, he'd been implicated in a multi million dollar fraud scheme,
and there was more. In total, he had eleven offenses
in five convictions, but he never served any prison time.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
Like Teplon, nothing sticks.
Speaker 2 (29:42):
After Tina reported Neil to the police. She waited for
an update. She'd given them all the information she had
on him, and the officers said they'd call her when
they made an arrest. But months went by without word
when Tina called for an update.
Speaker 1 (29:58):
Strangely, the so that we can't find him. He went
onder ground or something, and then after a year the
world was canceled, which I found odd.
Speaker 2 (30:09):
Tina knew where he was. He wasn't hiding at all.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
It's like, well, I could find him, why can't you.
Speaker 2 (30:17):
This got Tina thinking.
Speaker 1 (30:19):
It crossed my mind that he might have been an
informant and he got himself out of these things by
giving information to throw other people out of bus.
Speaker 2 (30:31):
Again, that's just a theory. If the police weren't going
to give her answers or justice, she was going to
find them herself. So she reached out to Wendy and
together they came up with another idea.
Speaker 1 (30:46):
We said, look, why don't we start a Facebook group
that has his name in it, So at least if
someone's looking to sort of date him or get into
business and they look him up on Facebook or come up,
maybe give them a rip black give them a warning.
So we set up this Facebook group called the Neil
(31:08):
Norman Victim support group. It was a little tongue in cheek,
but yeah. The interesting thing was that, you know, one
after another, people actually started to join and tell their stories.
Speaker 2 (31:22):
As the group grew, Neil tried to get it taken down,
but Facebook declared it legitimate public interest. Through this page,
they discovered that Neil was allegedly running quite a few schemes.
At the same time, there were lots of posts about
his alleged shady business dealings. When it came to starting
new businesses, the posts suggested that Neil had an.
Speaker 1 (31:44):
M He would befriend somebody, get into their lives, yet
understand their business, and then take over the business. He
would just make a copy of it and then take
all the customers and try and these businesses that were
other people's, and then suddenly he's an expert.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
And then there were all the women he'd ghosted, women
he'd met online and started serious long distance relationships with.
Speaker 1 (32:12):
There was a diplomat he'd had an online relationship with
for years.
Speaker 2 (32:18):
When this woman finally booked a trip to meet him
in person, he said he would pick her up at
the airport, but when she landed, he wasn't there. She
tried to call him and she realized he blocked her.
She never heard from him again.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
He's done that a lot. He's done that a lot.
It's been quite a few people, but he's had these
sort of online, ongoing relationships.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
With These stories were bizarre. Was he doing it for
the money to resell the expensive hotel room bookings and
concert tickets or was it all just one big game
to him? Whatever the case, in every story, Neil didn't
stick her. Instead, his victims were left to deal with
(33:03):
the consequences of his actions, and some were never the same,
like one woman.
Speaker 1 (33:09):
She was only eighteen at the time. I thought she
was going for a job interview, and then he said, oh,
there's a meetings going on in the office. You have
to meet me. There's the restaurant downstairs and bought her
a drake.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
She wrote to Tina in her Facebook messages, she said
that she woke up in a hotel room disoriented. She
alleged that she'd been drugged and raped.
Speaker 1 (33:32):
She didn't go to the police because she got ashamed.
Speaker 2 (33:35):
Multiple women shared stories like this one. Their Facebook posts
alleged that Neil was not just a con artist, but
a violent man.
Speaker 1 (33:44):
The fact that they'd have these let's identical stories, it
makes me think that, yeah, that's pattern.
Speaker 2 (33:53):
As the group grew, Tina continued to wonder did anyone
out there have a story like hers?
Speaker 1 (34:00):
And then another mother came along.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
Her son was now an adult, but she knew Neil
was the.
Speaker 1 (34:07):
Father, and it turned out that her son was only
a few weeks older than one of his other sons,
and they lived down the road from each other.
Speaker 2 (34:20):
Their families knew each other. The boys never interacted, but
they easily could have.
Speaker 1 (34:28):
I mean, that's how close they were.
Speaker 2 (34:32):
Through the group, Tina learned more about Neil's backstory and
it was revealing.
Speaker 1 (34:38):
As far as I'm aware, he believed that his stepfather
was his real father until he was about fourteen, and
then the mother told him the truth that he was
rejected by his own father, but he was never.
Speaker 2 (34:56):
In Neil's life like his mom. Neil asked, so had
his first child in his teens?
Speaker 1 (35:02):
When Neil was about eighteen, that's when he got the
first mother pregnant. She was only fifteen at the time
the baby was born, and he ran.
Speaker 2 (35:17):
Off after that. It seemed like this became a pattern
of his and this wasn't just about having unprotected sex
or fathering many kids. He was intentionally deceiving women into
believing he was infertile. These women who got pregnant would
be tied to Neil forever.
Speaker 1 (35:35):
There's definitely an element of control. He can remote the
control the rest of your life. He can walk away
but still keep that control.
Speaker 2 (35:49):
So how many children does Neil Lahman actually have? Well,
four have been confirmed by DNA, but there are many
women who believe Neil is the father of their children.
Speaker 1 (36:02):
From people coming forward and talking to us, there are
at least thirteen credible children that yeah, the mothers have
said that he's the father.
Speaker 2 (36:11):
So the scheme clearly didn't end with Tina. The thirteen
mothers have become a kind of group. They've bonded. Some
of them are even friends.
Speaker 1 (36:23):
Tina admits he does have good taste in women. This
is one deeming quality. And it's interesting because he doesn't
tend to go for vulnerable women. He doesn't tend to
go for women who he can control financially, or who
don't have close families and things like that. It's almost
(36:45):
like a challenge to him that he will target women
who are strong who have careers, who are accomplished and
break them down.
Speaker 2 (36:55):
But of course Nil's victims aren't just the women. Some
members of their Facebook group are Neil's now adult children.
Many of them haven't been confirmed by DNA, but one
of them tried to find Neil. He told Tina about
the experience he.
Speaker 1 (37:11):
Told me about when he was a teenager. He'd come
to try and find him, and he'd waited outside his office.
He'd spoke to him on the phone, and he seemed
all right on the phone, but then when he went
to meet him, he waited at a coffee shop across
from where he worked, and then Neil came down and
saw him and just turned the other way and walked away.
(37:36):
A lot of these stories are very heartbreaking.
Speaker 2 (37:39):
Hearing these stories, Tina felt even more certain that justice
needed to be served, and in talking to a police officer,
she heard something that piqued her interest.
Speaker 1 (37:50):
This could be considered rape by deception.
Speaker 2 (37:54):
Rape by deception is a situation in which a perpetrator
deceives someone in order to get sexual consent. The victim
wouldn't have consented if not for a crucial lie, like
one around the perpetrator's STD or a fertility status. Rape
by deception is in a specific charge. It's a way
of arguing and giving contact to a situation as rape
(38:16):
even if it falls outside the typical definition of rape
under the law, and it's been used before in cases
like Tina's.
Speaker 1 (38:24):
There was another high profile case whereby someone who is
a rapist has taken to court because he'd claimed to
have had a aasectomy and got a woman pregnant, and
the jury had ruled him guilty. He was given a sentence. However,
they appealed it and the Supreme Court overruled the conviction.
Speaker 2 (38:51):
For Tina, there's still a lot of work to be
done around this issue. In the meantime, she's had to
move forward with her life and focus on her kids.
Speaker 1 (39:03):
My daughter is an absolute blessing gift. She's a ray
of sunshine. Yeah. The irony of this whole thing is
that she looks just like it.
Speaker 2 (39:15):
Tina has learned to navigate some tough questions with care.
For instance, her daughter has asked, it's my good.
Speaker 1 (39:23):
A nice person. I was like, your father, he's not
a nice person, but that's nothing to do with you,
And she's like, okay, She's just very matter of fact,
and it's it's just funny how adaptable kids are. Friends
of hers very innocently asked, you know, so, what'd you dead?
(39:46):
And she's like, oh, I don't have one. I don't
have one. When they do Father's Day things at school,
she makes things for her brother.
Speaker 2 (39:57):
Tina and her two children have a strong little family unit.
But now that's not their entire family because Tina and
Wendy decided to tell their kids about each other. When
Wendy told her daughters.
Speaker 1 (40:14):
One of the things that the older daughter did say
was that she wanted to meet her sister.
Speaker 2 (40:22):
Tina does worry about her daughter and how the situation
will impact her as she grows up. But at the
end of the.
Speaker 1 (40:28):
Day, what hurts and what causes damage is the lies,
not the truth. I've seen it over and over again
that a lot of the children, the people, the victims,
have all been impacted so negatively by this trail of
lines upon lives upon lives upon life, and the best
(40:50):
way to combat that is by absolute truth. And my
daughters will have a source of truth about her situation.
She wasn't abandoned and it's not her fault. This is
what he does. This is a hymn problem.
Speaker 2 (41:12):
We end all of our episodes with the same question,
why did you want to tell your story? Tina has
a really specific reason. She wants to warn anyone who's
just met Neil Lahman.
Speaker 1 (41:26):
If I can help one person avoid that pain, avoid
going through this situation, or to get out before it's
something devastating, If I can help one of the mothers
out there to feel not alone, that overcomes all of
(41:47):
his darkness, all of his lies, I think that that
can only be a positive thing.
Speaker 2 (41:59):
On the next episode of Betrayal.
Speaker 4 (42:02):
That evening, one of the strangest things happened. I looked
in the mirror and I said out loud that he's
not coming home. And I thought, my god, am I
being dramatic? Of course he's going to be home. And
I dismissed it.
Speaker 2 (42:28):
If you would like to reach out to the Betrayal
team or want to tell us your Betrayal story, email
us at Betrayalpod at gmail dot com. That's Betrayal Pod
at gmail dot com. We're grateful for your support. One
way to show support is by subscribing to our show
on Apple Podcasts, and don't forget to rate and review
Betrayal five star reviews, Go A Long Way, A big
(42:50):
thank you to all of our listeners. Betrayal is a
production of Glass Podcasts, a division of Glass Entertainment Group
in partnership with iHeart Podcasts. Show is executive produced by
Nancy Glass and Jennifer Fason, hosted and produced by me
Andrea Gunning, written and produced by Monique Leboard, also produced
by Ben Fetterman. Associate producers are Kristin Mercury and Caitlyn Golden.
(43:15):
Our iHeart team is Ali Perry and Jessica Krinjek. Audio
editing and mixing by mattel Vecchio, Additional editing support from
Tanner Robbins. Betrayal's theme composed by Oliver Bains. Music library
provided by my Music and For more podcasts from iHeart,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
(43:36):
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