A CRUEL conman who “destroyed the lives” of two women and spun a web of terrible lies while living secret lives with both has been locked up.
Convicted armed robber David John Mackay, 49, obtained loans totalling almost £12,000 in the females’ names without their knowledge amid 10 years of callous criminal conduct.
While living in Carlisle during a 22-year relationship with one woman, which ended in 2018 after he turned violent, Mackay left her on the brink of homelessness. Trusted to manage their finances, he failed to make mortgage payments and told a bank and others, falsely, she had breast cancer.
The callous fraudster also told identical lies to that woman and to another Carlisle woman with whom he had a seven-year affair, stealing precious belongings from the pair which he pawned. He wrongly told both he had terminal cancer and that his parents had died, and tricked others into lending him cash by wrongly stating that a sister and mother of one of his partners had passed away.
“He phoned up one of the loan companies and put on a female voice to impersonate them,” prosecutor Kate Hammond said of the frauds at Carlisle Crown Court today (THURS). “Both of these women now have significant debt.”
In harrowing victim impact statements read by Miss Hammond, the devastated pair detailed the huge emotional, financial and mental cost of Mackay’s offending.
“When I think about all the lies and deceit they were so huge and life-changing,” one woman said. “The lies were all of a nature that were difficult to challenge and it is difficult to believe anyone would lie about such things.
“I feel that my world has been turned upside down from the life I knew.”
The second woman called Mackay’s conduct “cruelty beyond belief”, saying: “He stole everything from me: my self-respect, my self-esteem and my faith my my own judgement. The damage that this man has caused is irreparable. He lied about anything and everything.”
Mackay, of Leigh Farm, Pensford, near Bristol, admitted nine frauds and two theft charges, later stating: “I can’t believe what I’ve done.” It emerged the frauds had funded his drug use after release from a 1990s armed robbery prison sentence handed down by a Carlisle judge.
Jailing Mackay for two years today, Recorder Eric Lamb said: “The effect of your offending has been, in my judgement, to destroy the lives of two women with whom you had settled relationships.”
