Bernie Pt. 2 | Betrayal Weekly

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Three weeks before he had first messaged me, he had actually absconded from prison. He was serving a sentence for fraud and he was on the run when he met me.

I'm Andrea Gunning and this is Betrayal, a show about the people we trust the most and the deceptions that change everything. Bernie Brown met a man named Leo on Grinder. Leo was unlike anyone he'd ever met, intoxicatingly charming, and it didn't hurt that he drove a Bentley. After a few weeks of dating, Leo revealed that he was actually a member of the royal family, and because of that, he couldn't come out as gay. His relationship with Bernie

He was like, Bernie, I can't take this life anymore.

Bernie drove across the country to pick him up.

He was in tears. He went asleep and I was stroking his hair.

The next morning, Leo made a proposition.

And it's like, I've got a serious question that I need to ask you. I want to move somewhere in Scotland. Would you come with me.

Leo had been looking to buy a castle in the Scottish countryside where he could live out the rest of his life the way he wanted to with Bernie, and.

He was like, I want to put an offer in and move within the month. I'm just done with all of this. I'm like, do you know what, We've got one life, Let's do it.

Leo drove them back to London. It was a five hour drive and they spent every minute of it planning their new life.

We had designed this entire life down to the jobs we would do, the businesses we would build.

On their drive, Leo's grandparents called. They were nearby, so Leo decided to meet up with them and spend the rest of the day with his grandparents. Bernie could drive the Bentley back to London, so halfway through their trip, Leo pulled off at a gas station where his grandparents were waiting. It was the first time Bernie had seen anyone in Leo's family. Leo asked Bernie to act like they were just friends.

He went over to this couple they must have been in their late sixties, and his granddad went to go to the bathroom. So I was like, okay, I need to toilet anyway, So I was like, I'll go and then I went in and then he came in after me, so I was like okay.

On the way out of the bathroom, Bernie struck up a conversation with Leo's granddad and he was like, oh.

Well, we live in Sussex. That's where the castle was.

They chatted about life in Sussex, then headed back to their cars. Leo went with his grandparents and Bernie drove alone back to London. Bernie was excited about starting his new life in Scotland, but his financial stress about the watch was mounting. It wouldn't be ready to resell in time for Bernie's next loan payment.

I'm panicking now, I'd missed one direct debit. February's was coming up, and it still was not happening.

As the weeks went on, Bernie kept asking his boyfriend for an update on the watch.

The watch is being almost dangled. It's like, oh, I'll bring it up, can I I'll come up to yours. I was like, okay, fine, I'll bring the watch up. He'd get to the house. No watch, Oh I forgot I didn't go home yet. For whatever reason, the watch would always either be forgotten or once the cleaner accidentally moved it and it was lost in the house somewhere, so he needs to go back and look for it.

It was getting absurd that Leo couldn't get the watch sorted out. Sure, there was a lot happening in Leo's life, but waiting this long was affecting Bernie's there.

Was something inside that I was questioning a lot more, but I was still hooked. I still agreed to go to Scotland with him.

Just weeks before, Leo had needed Bernie to drive through the night to be there for him. Leo showed him the house he was putting an offer on. Now Bernie wasn't even getting a text or a call back for days.

The gas lighting started. We'd have this call, for instance, and what are you doing today, Let's have a call tonight. Yeah, okay, and then we'd have a call arrange something, and then he would be like, we didn't arrange it. I was like, well we did, because you know, I put it here, I put it in my diary. I put it. No, we didn't have that conversation.

Bernie knew that Leo isolated when he was stressed about his camp or his family. Bernie wondered if things had gotten worse, but all the worrying was starting to take a toll on his own health.

End of January, February and beginning of March was and still is, to a degree, a blur. I got into the worst state of mind. I had to take time off of work for depression I got massively depressed. I lost so much weight I didn't eat.

Bernie knew something was wrong, and he started spiraling.

Of course, like anyone, I went straight into his seeing somebody else mode, somebody else is on the scene, and I went into that whole whirlwind. I did then do something cheap because I was like, I can't do this normal. I literally cannot do this anymore.

With Leo across the country, Bernie got an idea, what I.

Think I should download Grinder again. And with Grinder you can change location and search for profiles within that location.

So Bernie created a fake Grinder profile and set it to Leo's location.

Now I knew his type, so I found a decent looking ginger guy, put that on my profile, and I spent a good day at the location looking through profiles that didn't have pictures on Lo and behold, he found my profile.

Leo sent the first message.

So we're just talking. I'm like, what do you do is I'm a horologist, you know, I deal with watches, And he went straight into you and I'm a part of the Howard family, and then he sent me pictures. It was him.

At the same time, Leo was talking to fake Bernie on Grinder. He was avoiding real Bernie's texts.

He would reply to this person for literally about an hour, but I'm getting no reply. So I'm like, do you know what I'm done? Now? That's it. I need to get this watch and I need to get it soon. So I did actually confront him with it, and I was like, I know you've been speaking to people, and I sent him a screenshot of the profile, and of course he was like, how dare you try putting it

Regardless of Leo's royal status or cancer diagnosis. Bernie wasn't going to allow someone to speak to him that way. He hung up. Then Leo started blowing up his phone.

You know, I really love you and all of this and what about Scotland.

Bernie told him he wasn't coming to Scotland. Their relationship was over, the only thing he wanted from Leo was the watch.

So he's like, look, I'm going to bring the watch. It's finally ready. I was like, oh my god, I'm actually going to get this watch now, and he was like, I'm going to bring it down.

They set a time and place to meet.

He was like, are you're going to be okay seeing me? You know it may be a strain, and I'm like, listen, I'm sure I'm going to be fine. I just just make sure you bring the watch. Turns up, no watch.

That was the last time they ever spoke.

I said enough is enough. I'm worth more than this, and I blocked his number. I had just been like, I'm never getting that watch. I need to deal with what I can and this is the position that I'm in.

Bernie says he was a shell of himself. Over the course of nine months, his entire life had been rearranged. All of his savings were gone, he had taken out loans and max out every credit card he had. It left Bernie in a dark place.

My best friends literally descended on my house and were like, we've never seen you like this, and we need to pick it up. If I didn't have my friends around me at the time, I don't know if I would actually be here to this day. I genuinely, genuinely believe.

That Bernie's friend supported him emotionally, but he was facing his financial crisis alone.

I had to just bow and say I can't afford it. Default, and my credit score at one point went from the highest it had ever been straight down to zero. I'd never even seen zero on a credit score before. I was working in retail, and I had all this depth, and the debts that were coming out on a monthly basis because of everything that happened was higher than my entire pay let alone, when you take away bills and utilities and all of that.

Bernie was overwhelmed with shame. He was at risk of getting his car repossessed or his wages garnished. He was able to make a payment plan, but in the meantime he had very little money to live on.

He didn't take an obscene amount of money from me monetary wise, but what he did do was absolutely wipe me out. At one point, I didn't have the money to go to the shop to buy food. The monetary amount for me twenty thousand could have easily been five million. It was all that I had to my name to survive.

Twenty thousand pounds was a drop in the bucket for Leo. After all, his family lived in a historic castle. He drove a Bentley. But twenty thousand pounds was everything to Bernie, and Leo knew that.

I've reminded him time and time again. He knew exactly what my financial background was, what my current financial situation was. He knew about all of that, but he still pushed to take them credit cards. He knew all of that was coming, and I reminded him many times, every single day, almost that this is hitting. He absolutely did not care.

Slowly, Bernie came to terms with his financial reality. He continued leaning on his friends for emotional support. That's when one of his friends said something he hadn't considered before. This was theft he'd been robbed.

She was like, he's going to carry on doing it to other people until somebody actually puts a stop to it. At that point, I decided that actually I will contact the police because this isn't right.

Bernie walked into the police station and filed a report.

They did take it seriously. I gave everything I had to them, and they had absolutely no idea who this person.

Was according to the police database, Leo Howard didn't exist.

I emailed Arundel Castle, which is the official residence of the Duke of Norfolk, and there was absolutely no record of Leo Howard, Leo Bose Howard, or absolutely anything. So then I started doing my own research, but there was absolutely no trace.

Bernie knew the VIN numbers to Leo's Range, Rover and Bentley.

All of the car registration numbers had completely been erased, which is very hard to do. I don't know how that's possible.

The VIN numbers weren't listed on any database. It was like the cars never existed. But Bernie remembered riding in those cars, driving those cars. It was all so strange. He was starting to wonder what was even real.

It was as if I had completely imagined the entire year, completely imagined it, because this person just did not exist.

Leo had vanished into thin air. Even the police had hit a dead end.

The police could not recognize his picture. They had to just close the investigation. It must have been a good year later and I get a call when it comes up and it's the police officer that was originally dealing with the case. Then I answered and there was a nice of tears. You know, how are you? And then he said, do you watch Channel four? And I said, to be honest, no, And he said, right, okay, there's this documentary that's just been shown on Channel four and

Bernie had no idea that across the country other people had been reporting a very similar crime to the police. A broader case was developing. In fact, the story was already out as a true crime documentary. It was about a prolific and highly manipulative scam artist operating all over the UK. The detective calling wanted to know if Bernie recognized the man at the center of it.

He said, can you just google and have a look. As soon as he said that, I had that sinking feeling. My heart dropped to the ground. I knew it would be him. My hands started shaking, and my brain when complete depletely dead on just how to google something. But I managed it. I got there and it was his face.

A year after Bernie first went to the police, he got a call from a detective. They linked his report to a serial fraudster, someone who'd been conning men and women across the UK with the same mix of charm, money and elaborate lies.

There was a lot of press around it, and I broke down. I absolutely broke down in tears.

The story had exploded. Leo's face was all over the news. After Bernie got over the initial shock, a new feeling flooded in.

The wave of relief. Now I have proof that it happens, because, bearing in mind at that point, the only person who had ever met him was my best friend. We went out for one night. Apart from that, he didn't want to meet anyone. He didn't want to be photographed anyone that I told this story to. There was always, i'm sure, an element of doubt because it was so extraordinary to

There were dozens of articles Bernie clicked on. One about a woman who discovered her fiance was a fraud. He built a five year relationship in order to scam her out of thirty thousand pounds.

I read the article and everything that happened to me had happened to her.

Bernie knew that the documentary might hold answers to as many unanswered questions about Leo.

We sat down and we watched it, and as soon as I press play, it starts with his face again. I got that sinking feeling. It was surreal.

Scene after scene, Bernie realized he'd lived the same exact moments with the same con man. The luxury watch business a scam, the cancer diagnosis fake.

I'm heightened at that point, and the Bentley came up and I was like, that's that was the Bentley and the watch that I was handling, and the watch that I was supposed to be buying was actually in the documentary, just even little parts of the story. I was like, yes, he told me.

That, even though it was someone else's story, it was like watching his own true crime documentary. Andy learned Leo had a dozen aliases.

After the documentary, I did get emotional because I think that then sunk in exactly the severity of what was happening. I was just a number at that point. Straight Away, I found the woman in the documentary on social media and connected and I remember The first message was like, you don't know me. I've just seen your documentary and I met him such and such date. She came back and we had a few telephone conversations.

They had so much in common. This other victim helped Bernie fill in the gaps in his knowledge and pieced together a timeline. Most shocking of all, he learned.

Three weeks before he had messaged me, he had actually absconded from prison. He was serving a sentence for fraud and he was on the run when he met me.

Looking back, this explained something about Leo's behavior, how he was always nervous around the police.

He never really liked the police. He was kind of scared of the police, to the point he would wait around the corner if there was police cars from driving past. He was scared.

When Bernie met Leo. He wasn't in that campground because it was the only place he could be himself. He was there because he was in hiding. Leo had escaped while he was serving a five year prison sentence for defrauding another victim, and there were many more. He had victims across England.

There was me and one other person in the north of London, all the other victims were in the south of England, in Kent, in Sussex. The person that was in the documentary was in the Isle of Wight when he escaped from prison. He had then obviously traveled and he was in hiding.

What was so chilling to Bernie was that the.

Time the documentary was being filmed was when I was with him.

And Bernie wasn't the only person Leo was scamming while he was on the run. Remember Leo's grandparents, who Bernie met at the gas station.

I told the police my story and I said, look, I came into contact with his nana grandad. They're like, no, that was another victim. I was like, wow, he was doing exactly the same to them.

If Leo stayed behind bars, many people wouldn't have been victimized. He was a fugitive. The police were looking for him. But the problem was the police weren't as savvy as Leo.

Now, we do have a national database which comes up, but they didn't put him on that. So all the time that I was with him, there were actually campaigns to find this person. However, the police don't talk to each other over here, and when I had raised my case. They had no idea who it was until the documentary came out.

That's when police stations across the country started connecting the dots.

Channel four had done so many press releases that it really got the national scope. And I think we're on about ten people that have come forward and raised a case. Because of the heightened press and because all of this was going around, he decided to hand himself in.

Leo was sent back to prison and Bernie hoped justice would finally be served.

But he still qualified for early release. The mind boggles, But that's where we are and that's what we have to deal with, and that's what we are currently facing.

Through this whole process, Bernie was able to get a true understanding of who this man really was. He even heard from people who knew the real Leo before he became a criminal.

I've had so many messages over social media and TikTok where people have gone to school with him, and he used to make up stories to get people in trouble. He naturally gravitated towards fraud from a very very early age. His background is so far from the royal family it's unbelievable. From my knowledge, he is Polish heritage, very broken upbringing, and he, in all intents and purposes, created his own

And the life he wanted was one where he was wealthy, powerful and important.

He wanted to be part of the royal family setting, and he believed that he was destined for more. He had created his own reality, and I think the longer he believed it, the more he believed it.

Creating a string of fraudulent identities was more than just a dream of being rich. It was pathological.

Every time he created this persona this person himself so hard into it that he then started to believe that he was this person. And I do think there's mental issues there.

It's been three years since he met Leo, and Bernie still questions Leo's true motivations.

Was his intention to outright going and commit fraud on every single person that he encountered, or was it that his world at certain points starts to crumble and he has to get what he can do and run to create another life for himself. That other life that he's built up that is then crumbling.

He got back to their first date when he was asked to take off his clothes. Was that a test? Was it blackmail?

I've tried going back and be like, what did happen? Why did it happen? I have absolutely no idea, but I know it comes down to control.

After having his heart broken and his own financial stability destroyed, Bernie learned who Leo truly was. He was left picking up the pieces in the aftermath.

I don't know whether this is still my subconscious emotional tie, but I think there is an element that he had gone through so much and then he met me, and he had said many times that he was gay, he just couldn't be out. And I do believe that there's an element that I wasn't his typical target, and he wasn't there initially for money, and I do believe at some point he did get emotionally connected, because going after me for money wouldn't have made any sense.

Bernie still wonders if that dream of going to Scotland together was a genuine offer to run away together.

At some point, I do believe that he thought that he could get away from it all and escape with me and live that life that he had in his mind at the time. And I think potentially, once it started getting a bit too real with me, that's when he went into what I would call default mode. And that's when the watch came. Because the watch conversation came very very late in the day and then it ended very very quick because he had to have a new supply and obviously he couldn't leave empty handed.

Bernie's right, Leo never left empty handed. In fact, he was running a major fraud scheme and the watches were at the center of it.

Some businesses have come forward and said that that person had sold them a fake watch, and bear in mind, these are big companies. They know how to evaluate watches.

As more information came out, he learned that Leo defrauded Herod's department store out of a half a million pounds. It was all part of Leo's scam.

He was on top of his game with regards to watches that he knew how to see a fake, a very good fake, and improve it to the level that it was a very convincing actual piece. He scams half a million pounds out of Harold's Like you are a different level, a completely different level when you can do that. The knowledge that Leo had on watches, watched brands, the mechanics, the mechanical workings. There's no doubt in my mind he has studied watches for a long time.

Leo also knew cars. He scammed Bentley dealerships and financial institutions. He always had multiple scams going at once.

Absolutely the mind boggles. I do not understand that.

In February twenty twenty five, Leo was sentenced to ten months in prison for having absconded from his original fraud conviction and five year sentence. It's unclear whether he will be criminally charged with respect to his conduct. While he was on the run, Bernie took to TikTok, where he shared his story. Through that experience, he has found language to describe Leo and what he did.

TikTok was instrumental in me healing and starting that healing process. Somebody had commented on one of my posts and I went onto their profile and they talk about narcissist and narcissistic behavior, everything from the signs to the results of what it actually does to you for the long term, and instantly I was like this is exactly what he

We'll carry the experience with him for the rest of his life.

Your trust in other people after this is almost nonexistent.

He lost a lot, But now Bernie is focused on what he does have.

I have a beautiful soon to be a husband, and I've got a little puppy, and I've got amazing friends and family and actually neighbors. So I'm content. He will never ever in his life have what I have. Sat in this chair now and I think that's just incredibly sad. I don't hate him. I don't think too much other than just sadness.

Bernie wants to be a resource for other people who've been victims of scam artists and narcissists, and the best way for him to do that is on his TikTok at Berniet Brown.

When I went on and I saw the tiktoks around narcissism and around the discard, the gas lighting, all of that, that for me was just the awakening moment. Now I can do that for somebody else out there, and it does take a little bit of courage, especially if you're going through it or you are very fresh from a narcissistic encounter. I just want to be that point of call and be able to just listen.

We end every weekly episode with the same question, why do you want to share your story?

I know for a fact that there's thousands of leos around the world. That's why this conversation, I think is massively, massively important. You know, if I'd have known about certain things beforehand, maybe i'd have acted differently. Maybe I would't have gone through what I'd have gone through. Maybe I'd have acted differently halfway through and I wouldn't have suffered as much. But you know, what's happened to me is done.

On the next episode of Betrayal Weekly is.

Like, fine, I just want you to know if you continue down this path, I will take every single cent I have and every single cent you have, and I will spend it burning you to the ground.

If you would like to reach out to the Betrayal team or want to tell us your Betrayal story, email us at Betrayalpod at gmail dot com. That's Betrayal Pod at gmail dot com, or follow us on Instagram at Betrayal Pod. You can also connect with me on Instagram at It's Andrea Gunning. To access our newsletter, view additional content, and connect with the Betrayal community, join our substack at Betrayal dot substack dot com. We're grateful for your support.