EP 30 - Tina
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The friend of mine described it really well. She said, it's not like you're a catch-me-if-you-can type person.

I'm Andrea Gunning, and this is Betrayal, a show about the people we trust the most and the deceptions that change everything. Tina Maya is a successful e-commerce consultant in the U.K.,

In 2016, a casual romantic fling turned her entire world upside down. It showed her a dark side of humanity, one that she'd never seen before. There's definitely an element of control. He can walk away, but he can remotely control the rest of your life. Her story is also one of community.

Along the way, she found a group of other women who'd been deceived and betrayed by the same man. Tina's become their spokesperson, and the spokesperson for a much larger story. Tina was raised to be opinionated and strong-willed. So I was born in Iran, actually, before the revolution. We came here in 1978.

And I grew up in Southeast England, so very green, leafy parts of the world. When she graduated from university, she traveled and spent years living abroad. I went to Australia and Thailand and India as well, a lot of places, Costa Rica, you know. I spent a lot of time sort of building my career and living life.

In the 90s and 2000s, Tina was early to adopt the internet's potential, especially for commerce and online retail. She made a career working in digital sales. That ended up taking her to New York City, where she met her husband. By her mid-30s, he welcomed a son, Leo. He was an incredible baby, and I really enjoyed becoming a mother.

But her husband, on the other hand, struggled. He wasn't a very hands-on father. It was just me over me against the world for a while. When Tina was offered a prestigious job back in the UK, she separated from her husband and made the leap. Now, her daily life was focused on work and raising her son. For Tina, being a single mom to one child felt manageable. She loved that dynamic. I was at a mom's drinks thing in London.

I remember having a conversation with one of the moms who had a lot of problems with the second child. She said to me, "Oh my God, you got it right. Like one child, the dream." When her son started grade school, Tina had more nights to herself. He spends more time with friends, he goes to sleepovers, got a little bit more independence. I wasn't actively going out and dating or anything like that. I was so busy, I wasn't even thinking about dating. It wasn't on the radar.

In 2016, she attended a tech conference in London. That day, she must have met and exchanged contact info with at least 30 people, one of them being Neil Lawman. He's a very charismatic person. He's very good looking. I suppose he was a bit flirtatious. Neil was from Essex. To put it in American terms... I guess the American version would be Jersey Shore.

Think party culture and spray tans. Tina's interaction with Neil was nothing special, just a friendly exchange of business cards. She assumed it was a professional connection. But soon, Neil began texting her. And then one day he texted me and I had just closed a very significant deal. So I was in a very good mood and he said that he was in the area and asked me if I'd fancy going for a drink.

That night, her son was at a sleepover. I said, you know what? Why not? It was perfect timing. So they met at a neighborhood pub. We sat down and started talking. He was very open. Asked me about, you know, my life. She talked about her son and her ex-husband in America. And Neil shared details about his past. He told me that his ex-wife died.

They'd lived together in the U.S., and she had cheated on him, and she'd run off with his best friend. The reason his wife had left was because Neil couldn't have kids. She was very bitter about the fact that he couldn't give her children. And then he went on to tell me about the fact that he'd had cancer, and his testicular cancer, so it was impossible. It was a touchy subject. Neil seemed deeply hurt by his ex-wife.

Tina felt for him. He seemed almost a little bit vulnerable. Like he had this sort of emotional vulnerability about him. The night was going well. And before long, they found themselves in another bar, making jokes and inching closer together. She liked him, but she wanted to keep it casual.

I didn't see it as being a long-term, serious relationship prospect. That was not where my head was. It's not the sort of time that I had. I wasn't interested in bringing anyone into my son's life. It was just letting my hair down and having a bit of fun, really. And Neil knew how to have a good time. He had that sort of cheeky, chappy, Jack the Lad kind of thing about him. It was fun.

At the end of their night together... He walked me home in the very early hours of the morning. They kissed goodnight, and Neil said he wanted to see her again. He was often in her area because he owned and managed a few properties there. He promised to text the next time he was in her neighborhood, and he did. So after their first night out together... He continued to text me...

Tina couldn't remember the last time she had a fling like this. It had to have been well before her marriage. It was just what she needed. It made her feel sexy and confident before they slept together. I said to him that I wasn't on the pill. Does he have anything? He said, no, I'm really allergic to latex.

Tina was 41, and after his testicular cancer treatments, Neil couldn't have kids. Without the pill or using regular condoms, they settled on another method. I was quite adamant about using withdrawal methods. And I'd asked him, did you withdraw in time? Because I could have gone and got a plan B. But he was like, no, absolutely not.

Over the next few months, they saw each other whenever they could. And Tina got to know more about him. He said that he went to the London School of Economics, which is sort of Harvard Business School level. But when Tina tried to talk about the neighborhood where the school's located, Neil seemed confused, like he didn't know the area. But it had been decades since Neil was in school, so Tina didn't think much of it.

I didn't really question it too much. I wasn't thinking of him as husband material or something. So things weren't registering too much with me. Eventually, Neil's appeal started to wear off. There was just one too many things that just wasn't adding up or ringing true. Like he would make a plan and then have some weird excuse. And like, it's starting to be less fun now. She was ready to move on.

So she stopped responding promptly to his texts. Kind of wanted to phase it out anyway. So, yeah, it got a little cold. A few weeks later, she didn't feel quite like herself. I was misplacing things. I was looking for my car keys all over the place and realized that I'd thrown them in the wheelie bin with my rubbish when I threw the rubbish out. This feeling was familiar. Funny thing, I normally only do things like that when I'm pregnant.

I don't get morning sickness, I don't get cravings, but I get very forgetful. She confided in a friend about what was going on. She said to me, "Go and get a pregnancy test." And she said, "As soon as you do that, and you realize that you're not pregnant, then the period will come." I'm like, "You know, that's a really good idea." So she got the test. So I went to the bathroom and read the instructions. And then, yeah, pop the lid on, you're supposed to wait three minutes.

Immediately came up pregnant. Okay, I'll just wait the full three minutes for the knot to come up. She was pregnant at 41. Even though it was unexpected and unplanned, she felt immediately connected to this child. It's hard to describe, but she was very present in me very early on.

Even still, it was a massive shock because the baby had to be Neil's. But Neil was infertile. So this baby was a medical miracle. Tina turned to her friend who suggested maybe Neil would be happy about the baby.

She was like, oh, all these years he didn't know that he could have children. Miracle baby or not, Tina knew that she and Neil didn't have a future together. Now she had to break up with him and tell him the news. Wow, okay. This is going to be awkward then. She took a few days to think and finally sent Neil a message. So I said, I need to talk to you about to meet up tomorrow.

I'm coming to meet you, but need to have a little chat. And then he said something along the lines of, yeah, yeah, sure. I'll send my brother to meet you. And I'm like, no, because we need to talk. And he said, well, I don't see why there's anything you can't tell me here. I was like, really? You want me to tell you what I need to tell you over text? And he's like, yeah. I was like, okay, if you insist. And so I said, I am pregnant.

You are the only option of who the father is. And then he answered a little bit strangely. He said, nice try. I had a vasectomy. I was like, vasectomy? And I sent him a picture of the pregnancy test. I said, well, it didn't work. She wasn't expecting anything from him.

One of the things that I immediately said was, I'm not expecting or asking you to be a father to the child. I am letting you know because it's a responsible thing to do. And you can be as uninvolved as you wish. She didn't know how he would react, but she certainly wasn't expecting what happened next. Things turned nasty on his part, which took me aback.

He sent me a whole load of nasty voicemails. Hi Tina, let's talk about this baby, okay? Now, there's something very strange about this baby. Let me explain it to you.

And you could just hear in his voice that turn and how nasty he became. It was like real vitriol. In these messages, Neil doubled down on his story. I have zero sperm. It's medically impossible. If it were, I'd still be living happily with my wife in the USA. We split up because she wanted kids and I couldn't have them. As the messages and calls kept coming, it got more personal.

He said things like, you'll be a single mom and you won't be able to get a job and you won't be able to work and you'll be poor. Then, meaner. And, oh, he accused me of thinking of him as a cash cow. Then, kind of scary. And then he said that he had gone to the police and reported me to the police. At first he said harassment. And then he said that he'd reported me for entrapment.

And some of his messages were downright strange. He started to come up with a story. When he was in the hospital with his kidney infection, they found cancer cells. And how selfish I am and what a horrible person I am for having told him that I was pregnant and that I'm basically killing him. From her first date with Neil…

She knew he wasn't a keeper, but she had no idea he could be this cruel. Whoa, this is not normal. This was really strange. So I'm going to tell you something. I will have nothing to do with you, nothing to do with you claiming I'm the father of your child. You can keep the baby. Great for you. But it ain't mine, darling. It seriously, seriously isn't mine.

But Neil wasn't in shock. And he wasn't in denial. Tina didn't know it at the time. But this was something far more insidious. This is something that he's gone through many, many, many, many times over.

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Neil Lawman started sending her callous voice messages about how the baby could not possibly be his. He even accused Tina of harassment. Regardless of his disturbing reaction, Tina wanted to have the baby on her own. She was sure of that. So after his vitriolic messages...

She drew a boundary with Neil. I said, yeah, I'll let you know when she's born and you can decide if you want to have a DNA test or not. That's your right. And then he replied, no, thank you. I will not be participating in any DNA tests. Okay, no worries. As far as Tina was concerned, Neil was out of the picture. And I went on. Obviously, I had a lot to deal with. She blocked him and moved forward with the rest of her pregnancy.

It wouldn't be her first time as a single mom. Tina's friends and family rallied around her to provide support, and she needed it, especially when the baby was born. When I went into labor, both she and I got an infection. She went blue and she was there in an incubator. She also had very, very, very bad jaundice. Her newborn baby, Josephine, was in critical condition. She had a severe lung infection.

The doctor wanted to prepare for a blood transfusion. He said, "So, you know, just in case, the worst-case scenario, we're going to need to get medical history, blood types, the parents in cases, some kind of rarity, genetic rarity or something like that." And I was like, "Well, I could only give you half." But half wasn't good enough, especially considering Neal's history of cancer.

There was probably a complex medical history that we needed to know about before we give this baby a blood transfusion. She was two days old. Instead of reaching out to Neil, she decided to call one of his friends, the only friend of his she knew how to reach. I said, listen, here's my hospital number. This is the doctor's name. Can you just have him tell them blood type, any kind of medical history, anything like that?

Neil's friend tried to get him to go, or at least to call the hospital. And he's like, no, absolutely. I told him he needs to get his house down there right away. But Neil never showed up.

No call has come through to reception. So yeah, he's not here and has not been here. And then while Tina was lying in her hospital bed, she got a text from Neil. He sent me long, long, long abusive text messages that I wouldn't lift a finger to help your child. Even if she did have my DNA, I'm not giving any information to any doctors. I'm like, okay, okay.

You are a psychopath. This is a two-day-old baby, and all I asked is for you to make a phone call, which anybody would do for a stranger's baby, for a kitten. No human being would refuse to make a phone call to potentially save a baby. But Neil refused. He was not interested in helping the baby at all.

He was more concerned with lashing out at Tina. He called me vile-tongued, foul woman, all sorts of horrible names. So yeah, I'd just given birth. I was in hospital with needles stuck in me for the antibiotics and things like that. I was like, this is a really evil person. She was beyond anger. I was disgusted. I was disgusted. I was like, yeah, whatever you are, you have no humanity.

Up until this moment, she'd planned to raise the baby completely on her own, without asking Neil for a single penny. But after he showed his true colors, she decided, You know what? I'm just going to send the child support agency after you for the next 18 years. Bye-bye. She figured the courts could handle Neil, and she and her family could move on. Luckily, her newborn daughter recovered without needing a blood transfusion.

After a week of being in hospital, we were both able to go home. When she got home with Josephine, or Fifi as she calls her, their house was full of joy. Her son, who was eight, became a doting big brother. My son adored her from day one, and she was just the sweetest baby. Now with two children to support, Tina had to return to work just two weeks later. So I took the mandatory two weeks and went back to work.

I was back on a train in London. I had a nanny and a friend helped me out also with her. And yeah, back to work. One day while she was on her way to work, she decided to call the UK's Child Support Agency to get the paperwork started for child support. After they looked into Tina's claim, the agency contacted her with surprising news about Neil.

Meaning that Neil was on unemployment. But that didn't add up to Tina. She met him at a tech conference. He owned his own company. She'd met his coworkers. She tried to explain this to the child support agency.

And I said, well, he's not. And if he is, he shouldn't be because he's got a business. I mean, I've seen it. I know he has a functioning business. But the government didn't have records of his businesses or income. And that wasn't all. The other interesting thing was that five pounds a week was split between my daughter and three other children. I was like, OK, so here's a new spin.

Neil had three other children? What about his story of being infertile? Tina went into investigation mode, searching for business and personal records of Neil Lawman. I went all the way back to one from a number of years ago.

In Neal's records, she found the name of a woman, someone who'd changed her last name to Lawman. So I was like, okay, that must be his ex-wife. If she is an ex-wife, it might be his current wife. Maybe this was the woman he'd been married to in the States, but Tina didn't really know what to believe anymore. At this point, I realized that there's a lot of lies. So I go on Facebook.

And Norman isn't a common name. I pull it up and there's her Facebook profile. The first thing she noticed about her profile? She was not in America. She's right here in the UK. And the second? Pictures of two girls who are undoubtedly his daughters. Looking at the photos of two little girls, clearly related to Neil, made Tina's head spin.

At the very least, she knew she'd found the right person. So I text her on Facebook. And yeah, obviously I didn't know what to expect. I didn't know how she would react, if she would respond at all. I didn't know if they were still married and he'd lied about that. I had no idea what to expect from this, but yeah, what could I do? So I wrote her a message and she immediately responded. The first line was very long.

message that I'm so, so sorry that you have been his victim. This is Jenny Garth from I Do Part Two. Everyone's talking about GLP-1s like Ozempic, Semaglutide. With future health, you can find out if they're right for you too. Just go to tryfh.com. That's tryfh.com and find out if weight loss meds are right for you in just three minutes. Tryfh.com.

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When Tina applied for child support, she discovered a trove of information about her daughter's biological father, Neil Lawman. First, that he was on unemployment and claimed he was unable to make child support payments. He wasn't the high-flying tech guy he'd pretended to be. Second, that he was unable to make child support payments.

that he already owed child support for three other children. The whole story about him being infertile from prostate cancer was a complete lie, an elaborate deception from night one. When Tina began looking into Neil's background, she found the name of his ex-wife for going to call her Wendy. Yeah, we start talking and communicating. And his ex-wife had a story to tell.

She'd been with him for 10 years. They had two daughters together. Then one day, Neal walked out, leaving her with a significant amount of debt. If she hadn't have been bailed out by her parents, they would have been on the streets or something like that. And yeah, she seemed traumatized. Neal had claimed that his wife cheated on him, that she left him because he was infertile. He said she was still back in America.

But it turns out, Wendy very much lived in the UK. In fact, she lived in the same neighborhood as Tina. Now, Tina could safely assume everything he'd ever told her was a lie. So we now know that the whole America thing was a lie. Cancer thing, well, yeah, even if he'd had cancer, it did not cause infertility. I'm like, wow, okay, great. Now we're down a rabbit hole.

Tina and Wendy agreed to meet for dinner, to talk in person. So we met up in London. We both like sushi, so we went to a very nice sushi restaurant. Right away, Tina was struck by how familiar Wendy seemed. The two women had the same energy, independent, confident, and outgoing. Wendy had some important information for Tina, things she needed to know.

You see, after Neil left her, Wendy found out about two more children, two sons he had fathered before her daughters were born. Tina stared at Wendy, processing the reality that her daughter was one of five. How many more kids were out there? And what would that mean for her daughter, for their daughters? It was a reality Wendy had barely begun to confront herself.

She'd said that she had never told her daughters about the older boys that she'd found out about. Since Neil left Wendy, he'd barely spoken to their two young daughters. Nothing, absolutely nothing in all of these years, except an annual birthday phone call to one of the children where you would lie about having sent a gift that never arrived.

Tina and Wendy ordered another round of martinis and talked until the restaurant closed. Before they said goodbye, Tina got an idea. Let's do something a little bit funny. So we took a selfie. We were both giving the bird and we sent him an email with just a picture and entitled, The Other Mother, Mother, uh-huh. He went ballistic.

Neil started sending unhinged emails to Tina, to Wendy, even to his ex-father-in-law. And then he'd also sent a horrific email to my work. A very graphic, slut-shaming email addressed to the entire company, including the CEO. She was horrified.

This was too far. So I reported this to the police and they did take it quite seriously and they said that it was malicious communication. But this wasn't the first time the cops had investigated Neil. He was also involved in a very high profile fraud case with the Fimbo wine scheme. And his ex-girlfriend actually ended up serving time for that case.

He just walked away, got free. Allegedly, he'd been implicated in a multi-million dollar fraud scheme. And there was more. In total, he had 11 offenses and five convictions. But he never served any prison time. Like Teflon, nothing sticks. After Tina reported Neil to the police, she waited for an update. She'd given them all the information she had on him.

And the officers said they'd call her when they made an arrest. But months went by without word. When Tina called for an update... Strangely, the police were like, well, we can't find him. He went underground or something. And then after a year, the warrant was cancelled, which I found odd. Tina knew where he was. He wasn't hiding at all. It's like, well, I can find him. Why can't you? This got Tina thinking...

It crossed my mind that he might have been an informant and, you know, he got himself out of these things by giving information to throw other people under the bus. Again, that's just a theory. If the police weren't going to give her answers or justice, she was going to find them herself. So she reached out to Wendy. And together, they came up with another idea. We said, look, why don't we start a Facebook group

that has his name in it. So at least if someone's looking to sort of date him or get into business and they look him up on Facebook, it'll come up and maybe give them a red flag, give them a warning. So we set up this Facebook group called the Neil Borman Victim Support Group. It was a little tongue-in-cheek, but yeah, the interesting thing was that, you know, one after another, people actually started to join and tell their stories and

As the group grew, Neil tried to get it taken down. But Facebook declared it legitimate public interest. Through this page, they discovered that Neil was allegedly running quite a few schemes at the same time. There were lots of posts about his alleged shady business dealings. When it came to starting new businesses, the posts suggested that Neil had an M.O. He would...

befriend somebody, get into their lives, understand their business, and then take over the business. He would just make a copy of it and then take all the customers and try and start these businesses that were other people's. And then suddenly he's an expert. And then there were all the women he'd ghosted, women he'd met online and started serious, long-distance relationships with. There was a diplomat

He'd had an online relationship with for years. When this woman finally booked a trip to meet him in person, he said he would pick her up at the airport. But when she landed, he wasn't there. She tried to call him, and she realized he blocked her. She never heard from him again. He's done that a lot. He's done that a lot. It's been quite a few people that he's had these sort of online, ongoing relationships with.

These stories were bizarre. Was he doing it for the money? To resell the expensive hotel room bookings and concert tickets? Or was it all just one big game to him? Whatever the case, in every story, Neal didn't stick around. Instead, his victims were left to deal with the consequences of his actions. And some were never the same. Like one woman. She was only 18 at the time.

She wrote to Tina. In her Facebook messages, she said that she woke up in a hotel room disoriented. She alleged that she'd been drugged and raped. She didn't go to the police because she felt shamed.

Multiple women shared stories like this one. Their Facebook posts alleged that Neal was not just a con artist, but a violent man. The fact that they have these almost identical stories makes me think that, yeah, that's a pattern. As the group grew, Tina continued to wonder, did anyone out there have a story like hers? And then another mother came along.

Her son was now an adult, but she knew Neil was the father. And it turned out that her son was only a few weeks older than one of his other sons. And they lived down the road from each other. Their families knew each other. The boys never interacted, but they easily could have. I mean, that's how close they were.

Through the group, Tina learned more about Neil's backstory, and it was revealing. As far as I'm aware, he believed that his stepfather was his real father until he was about 14 and then the mother told him the truth. But he was rejected by his own father, but he was never in Neil's life. Like his mom, Neil also had his first child in his teens.

After that, it seemed like this became a pattern of his. And this wasn't just about having unprotected sex or fathering many kids.

He was intentionally deceiving women into believing he was infertile. These women who got pregnant would be tied to Neil forever. There's definitely an element of control. He can remotely control the rest of your life. He can walk away, but still keep that control. So how many children does Neil Lawman actually have? Well, four have been confirmed by DNA.

But there are many women who believe Neil is the father of their children. From people coming forward and talking to us, there are at least 13 credible children that, yeah, their mothers have said that he's the father. So the scheme clearly didn't end with Tina. The 13 mothers have become a kind of group. They've bonded. Some of them are even friends. Tina admits... He does have good taste in women. This is one redeeming quality.

And it's interesting because he doesn't tend to go for vulnerable women. He doesn't tend to go for women who he can control financially or who don't have close families and things like that. It's almost like a challenge to him that he will target women who are strong, who have careers, who are accomplished and break them down.

But of course, Neil's victims aren't just the women. Some members of their Facebook group are Neil's now adult children. Many of them haven't been confirmed by DNA, but one of them tried to find Neil. He told Tina about the experience. He told me about when he was a teenager, he'd gone to try and find him.

And he'd waited outside his office. He'd spoken to him on the phone and he seemed all right on the phone. But then when he went to meet him, he waited at a coffee shop across from where he worked. And then Neil came down and saw him and just turned the other way and walked away. A lot of these stories are very heartbreaking. Hearing these stories, Tina felt even more certain that justice needed to be served. And in talking to a police officer, she heard something that piqued her interest.

this could be considered rape by deception. Rape by deception is a situation in which a perpetrator deceives someone in order to get sexual consent. The victim wouldn't have consented if not for a crucial lie, like one around the perpetrator's STD or fertility status.

Rape by deception isn't a specific charge. It's a way of arguing and giving context to a situation as rape, even if it falls outside the typical definition of rape under the law. And it's been used before in cases like Tina's. There was another high-profile case.

whereby someone who is a convicted rapist was taken to court because he'd claimed to have had a vasectomy and got a woman pregnant. And the jury had ruled him guilty. He was given a sentence. However, they appealed it and the Supreme Court overruled the conviction. For Tina, there's still a lot of work to be done around this issue.

In the meantime, she's had to move forward with her life and focus on her kids. My daughter is an absolute blessing, a gift. She's a ray of sunshine. You know, the irony of this whole thing is that she looks just like him. Tina has learned to navigate some tough questions with care. For instance, her daughter has asked, Is my dad a nice person? I was like...

Your father, he's not a nice person, but that's nothing to do with you. She's like, oh, okay. She's just very matter of fact. And it's just funny how adaptable kids are. Friends of hers very innocently ask, you know, so where's your dad? And she's like, oh, I don't have one. Just a matter of, I don't have one.

When they do Father's Day things at school, she makes things for her brother. Tina and her two children have a strong little family unit. But now, that's not their entire family. Because Tina and Wendy decided to tell their kids about each other. When Wendy told her daughters... One of the things that the older daughter did say was that she wanted to meet her sister.

Tina does worry about her daughter and how the situation will impact her as she grows up. But at the end of the day... What hurts and what causes damage is the lies, not the truth. I've seen it over and over again that a lot of the children, the people, the victims have all been impacted so negatively by this trail of lies upon lies upon lies upon lies. And the best way to combat that

is by absolute truth. And my daughter will have a source of truth about her situation. She wasn't abandoned and it's not her fault. This is what he does. This is a him problem. We end all of our episodes with the same question. Why did you want to tell your story? Tina has a really specific reason. She wants to warn anyone who's just met Neil Lawman. If I can help one person,

avoid that pain, avoid going through this situation or to get out before it's something devastating. If I could help one of the mothers out there to feel not alone, that overcomes all of his darkness, all of his lies. I think that that can only be a positive thing. On the next episode of Betrayal. That evening, one of the strangest things happened.

I looked in the mirror and I said out loud that he's not coming home. And I thought, my God, am I being dramatic? Of course he's going to be home. And I dismissed it. 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.com. That's BetrayalPod at gmail.com. We're grateful for your support.

One way to show support is by subscribing to our show on Apple Podcasts. And don't forget to rate and review Betrayal. Five-star reviews go a long way. A big thank you to all of our listeners. Betrayal is a production of Glass Podcasts, a division of Glass Entertainment Group in partnership with iHeart Podcasts. The show is executive produced by Nancy Glass and Jennifer Faison. Hosted and produced by me, Andrea Gunning.

Written and produced by Monique Laborde. Also produced by Ben Fetterman. Associate producers are Kristen Malkuri and Caitlin Golden. Our iHeart team is Allie Perry and Jessica Kreincheck. Audio editing and mixing by Matt DelVecchio. Additional editing support from Tanner Robbins. Betrayals theme composed by Oliver Baines. Music library provided by MIB Music.

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