A con woman who pretended to be a surrogate for a desperate couple in a “callous, calculated and cynical” crime has been jailed for two years.
Samantha Brown painted herself as the saviour who would help Benita and Mark Cutter complete their family with a child of their own.
But instead, the 25-year-old spun a web of lies, attending non-existent hospital appointments and sending the couple a scan picture she found on the internet.
And as her “due date” approached, the Tain woman faked a car crash, claimed the baby was stillborn – and even sent the shattered couple a photo of their “dead” baby.
Her nasty scheme, that lasted for nearly a year, cost the Humberside-based pair more than £8,000 in maternity and baby clothes, travel expenses and even rent.
Yesterday at Inverness Sheriff Court, Brown was handed a two-year prison term to be followed by a year of supervised release.
She will serve her time at the end of a three-year sentence she is currently serving for shooting a neighbour in the face at point blank range with an air rifle in a row over gulls.
Sheriff Margaret Neilson told her yesterday: “What makes this fraud particularly despicable is the callous, calculated and cynical manner in which it was carried out over a 10 month period.”
Last month Brown, formerly of Mansfield Estate but now a prisoner, admitted the surrogacy fraud, inducing the Cutters to pay her £8,307 in expenses between June 25, 2013 and April 20, 2014.
Fiscal Roderick Urquhart previously told the court Cutters had turned to her as their last option, after placing an advert online in the desperate hope of being able to have a baby together.
The couple then went to Tain to stay with Brown and she pretended to inseminate herself.
Mr Urquhart added: “It was agreed that Brown would be recompensed by the Cutters for her out of pocket expenses and, over the coming months, they paid £8,307.00 into her bank account, having been assured by Brown that the insemination process had been a success and that she was pregnant with their child.
“On April 18 2014, at what would have been the end of the pregnancy, the Cutters received text messages stating that Brown had been in a car crash, that she was in an induced coma and eventually that the child was dead. They were later sent a photo of what they were told was their dead son.
“It would appear that the financial loss incurred by the Cutters paled almost into insignificance compared with the heartbreak, anguish and despair they suffered when they realised not only that they were not to become parents, but that they had been the victims of a calculated and callous fraud.”
Defence solicitor Alison Foggo said her client accepted that it was a “callous crime and repugnant”.
But she claimed that alarm bells had been ringing for the victims and added: “Looking at it objectively, if they had not been blinded by their own desires for a child there may have been an opportunity for them to realise that they were being hoodwinked.
“My client had an accomplice who was 20 years her senior, and she says it was her who conceived the plan, was an essential part of its execution and shared in the reward.”
Both Brown and her former co-accused, 44 year old Karen Galashan appeared on petition at Tain Sheriff Court on March 2 this year facing the fraud charge.
The charges against Galashan were dropped by the Crown and the court heard that there was insufficient evidence to prosecute her.
