Laura McPherson, 35, tricked her boyfriend into shelling out almost £30,000 to pay for a raft of fake treatments after she claimed to be suffering from multiple kinds of terminal cancer
A despicable mum who pretended to be terminally ill so that she could trick her boyfriend into paying for a boob job, has been ordered to pay back over £30,000 after being caught out for her crimes.
Laura McPherson, 35, faked having terminal cancer and even took photos of herself in a hospital bed and wore clothing that said ‘breast cancer support’ as part of her ‘elaborate tale of deceit’ in order to trick company director Jon Leonard into paying for a string of demands.
While dating Mr.Leonard, the fraudster claimed to be suffering from various types of cancer including cervical, ovarian, colon, bowel and breast cancer – and even went so far as to let her young daughter believe she was dying.
As a result of her lies, Mr.Leonard was duped into shelling out £25,000 on fake treatments and at one point even gifted his then-girlfriend a £30,000 Rolex as a celebratory gift for receiving the all-clear from one type of cancer.
Ms McPherson has now been ordered to pay back £30,714 by January 5 following a crime hearing.
Earlier this year, Ms.McPherson narrowly avoided jail for her crimes, when a judge handed out a community order back in March 2025 after she had plead guilty to fraud at an earlier hearing.
Following Monday’s hearing, Mr.Leonard said in a statement: “It’s finally over. Today marks the end of eight and a half challenging years. She never had cancer and it has now come to light she has been making up having cancer since she was in secondary school long before I knew her.
“She has been exposed for the horrible, lying, manipulative individual she is.”
In March, the court heard she tricked the company director, who runs Ultra Events, a platform for charities, into giving her £24,248.52 for a range of treatments he thought could potentially save or extend her life.
Among these treatments was a trip to the luxury Mayr Resort on Lake Worthersee in Austria where she enjoyed a weight loss programme, as well as a boob job after claiming to require a mastectomy in Manchester.
In an emotional victim impact statement read to the court at the time, Mr Leonard, then 44, said she had stolen eight years of his life and left him “wracked by self-doubt and emotionally scarred.”
Dubbing her a compulsive liar, he also went on to recall how she had enveloped her own daughter in the lie, after scaring the youngster by telling her she was going to die.
This led to Mr.Leonard taking calls from McPherson’s daughter’s school, because she had broken down worrying about her mum’s health and the chance that she may soon pass away.
“Even after pleading guilty, she has spent the last three years spreading disgusting lies about me,” he said, “And she has never shown any remorse.”
Describing how he had been “gaslit” during their relationship, Mr.Leonard recalled being woken up by her screaming at him for sleeping through when she claimed to have been up sick all night.
At one point, he even bought her a £30,000 Rolex watch reasoning that it was wrong to deny it to someone whose life would soon end.
Fearing for her wellbeing, Mr.Leonard also reached out to one of Britain’s leading cancer specialists to arrange a private consultation, but McPherson declined the appointment and claimed to want to keep her treatment with the NHS.
This led to a tense fallout with one of Mr.Leonard’s closest friends, who was working as the deputy head of nursing at a hospital in Swansea, after they pointed out there were some huge holes in McPherson’s story, as someone with cancer “wouldn’t be going straight to the gym after having chemotherapy.”
The couple first met back in 2011, when Mr.Leonard was running the highly successful company Ultra Events, which raises money for charitable causes – and employed McPherson as a marketing director.
However it wasn’t until 2017 before McPherson began to make claims about being diagnosed with cancer, when she announced in March of that year that she had cervical cancer and was undergoing treatment at Royal Derby Hospital.
Between 2018 and 2022 she went on to claim to have been diagnosed with ovarian, colon, bowel and breast cancer, and undergoing various treatments (at Mr.Leonard’s expense.)
When her lies began to unravel and she was finally questioned over the allegation of fraud in 2022, McPherson denied the charges and instead accused her boyfriend of being controlling.
In mitigation, her barrister Laura Pitman appealed for compassion as she told the judge that her client suffered from “depression, anxiety, and symptoms of trauma.”
She also requested that she be spared jail, and instead be supported by the probation service to get to the root of what had caused her behaviour.
Now supported by her parents, a new partner Alex, and a mum to a baby born in March 2023, Ms.Pitman detailed how “awful” her client now feels for her actions as she highlighted how McPherson had “sought outside help for her behaviour.”
“There’s a more constructive way Laura McPherson can be dealt with rather than custody.”
McPherson was given a community order for her crimes, and additionally was also told to undergo a 7pm to 6am curfew for five nights of the week. She was also instructed to spend 30 days with the probation service – on the condition that if she she broke either condition she would be sent immediately to prison.
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