A young English woman who thought she was marrying a “lord” found out that he was a romantic scammer who had already put her tens of thousands of dollars in debt.

27-year-old Megan Clark was working as a manager at a bar on the Isle of Wight when Lord Bertie Underwood first walked into her life. He was charming, kind, thoughtful, and made it very clear that he was interested in her. He claimed to be a descendant of John T. Underwood, who owned the company that sold the Underwood Typewriter in the early 20th century, and certainly looked and acted like a modern-day aristocrat. He would send her flowers at work, buy her expensive gifts from Harrod’s, and drive to London in his Bentley for romantic dates. Lord Bertie Underwood was a dream, so when he asked her to move into his three-story seafront villa, it didn’t matter that they had only been dating for one month. Five months after that, he had asked for her hand in marriage and she accepted.

Photo: Frank Mckenna/Unsplash

Out of love for her fiancee, Megan quit her job at the bar where they met, because he didn’t like her being around so many other men. He claimed to be a successful horologist (someone who makes, designs, and fixes watches) and she joined his business. She lived her old job, but she loved him more. But as time passed, the young woman started noticing anomalies.

About 18 months into their whirlwind romance, letters addressed to other people started arriving at their home, but Lord Underwood assured her that the mail must have been meant for the previous tenants. But then she walks into his office one day and finds a wallet full of credit cards in other people’s names. With suspicions mounting, she decides to google some of those names and is shocked to discover that they are all aliases of Robert Madejski, a convicted fraudster who looks just like her Lord Bertie Underwood. Suddenly, his request to never post photos of him on social media made so much more sense, there were a lot of people looking for him.

Everything about Lord Bertie Underwood had been made up, he was not the descendant of some iconic inventor, he had nothing to do with horology, and the car and home he owned were rented to create the illusion of wealth. To make matters worse, he had already put her £30,000 ($40,000) in debt by taking out credit cards in her name. Even the diamond engagement ring she tried to sell to cover the debt turned out to be fake.

Photo: Sussex Police

When Megan confronted her husband-to-be just two weeks before their wedding, he just walked away, leaving her heartbroken and with no other option than to cancel the wedding and find a way to pay off the debt.

“I’m a trusting person until people give me a reason not to, and he was good at what he did. He never slipped up,” Megan explained. “He would make up tiny irrelevant lies to back up the big lies. For instance, he told me how he’d found our floorboards in a London studio and installed them during a renovation. He didn’t even own the house, it was a rental. Also, Bertie said his great-grandad invented the Underwood typewriter, and he had pictures of the appliance displayed on the walls. It was completely made up.”

After finding out about Robert Madejski, Megan posted her story on social media and was quickly contacted by many other people who had been scammed by him. What surprised her most, though, was that he seemed to have no clear modus operandi. “There is absolutely no pattern in type, gender, or age, which makes me think there weren’t real feelings ever involved,” she said.

 

Madejski was later arrested on unrelated charges but managed to escape jail midway through his five-year sentence. Years after their relationship she is still terrified she might run into him one day.