A "best man" has stolen thousands of pounds from a groom and his friends intended for a stag party.
Martyn Galvin, 30, from Stockton-on-Tees, told friends he was planning a holiday to Prague and a day at the races ahead of his friend Dino Carter's wedding. However, he instead conned them out of £7,945 and spent the money on gambling and luxury items.
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Carter, who had been Galvin's friend for 18 years, first became alarmed when his best man did not show up for meetings to discuss the arrangements. As an excuse, Galvin told his friend he had terminal cancer and was having to go to hospital for treatment.
The groom says he was "beyond devastated" when Galvin's mother told him the cancer diagnosis was fake. "I couldn't believe that Martyn had done this to me," he said.
Galvin pleaded guilty to fraud by false representation between January and October 2015.
Delivering a 20-month jail sentence and ordering that the funds be paid back, Judge Simon Bourne-Arton said: "This fraud is perhaps one of the nastiest and meanest I've encountered."
It involved "a string of dreadful lies" to a man who gave him the honour of being his best man, he said: "To lie as you did so brazenly, so persistently and in such detail about your health, only you know how you could do that."
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