A man who jilted his fiancée three times has been ordered to repay thousands of pounds she had given him or go to jail.

Ian Oldford, 41, ran off with £9,000 belonging to a widowed mother of three, Marie Hibberd, when she was five months pregnant with his child.

Gloucester Crown Court had heard that Mrs Hibberd, 37, had become pregnant because Oldford falsely claimed to be suffering from prostate cancer and told her it was his last chance to have a family.

Three times Oldford, a car salesman from Taunton, Somerset, fixed dates for a church wedding and then cancelled at the last minute. On the last occasion Mrs Hibberd received a telephone call 20 minutes before the ceremony was due to start, telling her that he had been in a car accident and had to go to hospital. She never heard from him again.

She later contacted police but there was a long delay before the case was investigated.

Judge Jamie Tabor, QC, told Oldford: “You are a conman and you’ve conned Mrs Hibberd over a long period of time, which was utterly despicable. Three times you told her you would be getting married and three times you called it off. She was a widow and highly vulnerable and, as if that wasn’t enough, you then found someone else.

“This was a terrible breach of trust. Your behaviour was utterly disgraceful.

“If this case had been investigated properly and come to court in 2003 rather than belatedly now, you would have gone straight to prison.”

Deferring the sentence for six months, the judge warned him: “You say you cannot pay back this money. I expect to see £2,000 on the table and a lot more on the way. If you cannot find £2,000 in six months you had better have a good excuse.”

Mrs Hibberd said she had dated Oldford after he dialled a “wrong number” and chatted her up on the telephone.

The money he took had been compensation money awarded after the the death of her husband in a motorcycle accident. He told her he needed it for solicitor’s fees for a house sale and a divorce. He failed to tell her that there was no house sale and he was still married.

Mrs Hibberd was left homeless with three young children and another on the way because she had given up her housing association house to live with Oldford. Part of the money he stole was supposed to be the deposit for their new home.

Oldford pleaded guilty to obtaining £3,500 by deception from Mrs Hibberd on December 7, 2001. He also admitted obtaining a further £5,300 from her a few months later on February 28, 2002.

After the hearing she said: “I ended up being homeless and living with my mum for nine months because of his lies. I reckon he should have gone to prison.”

She said that Oldford had never met his daughter Sian, now aged 4. “Maybe when she is 18 I’ll tell her about her father but for now she is better off not knowing about him.”

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