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Best man jailed for 20 months after swindling stag party out of £8,000

Despite all of the fears of eyebrow-shaving and being handcuffed to lamp-posts in your underwear,...
Newstalk
Newstalk

13.18 21 Aug 2016


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Best man jailed for 20 months...

Best man jailed for 20 months after swindling stag party out of £8,000

Newstalk
Newstalk

13.18 21 Aug 2016


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Despite all of the fears of eyebrow-shaving and being handcuffed to lamp-posts in your underwear, when you get right down to it, your best man is supposed to be the one person you can trust the most in the lead-up to your wedding.

Not in the case of Martyn Galvin, who has just been jailed for twenty months after swindling the stag and the rest of his party out of almost £8,000 (€9,250).

As reported in The Guardian, Galvin told the future groom and sixteen other guests that if they paid up-front, he would organise the stag-do for them all in Prague.

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They all eventually found themselves in Newcastle without flights or accommodation, with Galvin telling them all there had been a major mess-up on the travel agent's end.

When the groom pressed for further details, Galvin 'confided' in him that he had been diagnosed with cancer. The groom told the court of his reaction to this news: "When Martyn told me he had suspected cancer I was absolutely devastated for him and his family. I offered to take over the organising but he insisted, stating a groom should never have to organise his own stag do. How could I not feel guilty? I felt I had put too much on him.”

Eventually, Galvin was found out, when his mother informed the groom that he definitely did not have cancer: 

“I could not believe that Martyn had done this to me. [...] The victim said he now felt like he was known as “the groom whose best man screwed his friends and family over money, and I’m ashamed. [...] For months he conned me and a lot of our friends into thinking he was seriously ill for the plain reason of money. At no point did he hesitate in his scheme. He had six months to organise a stag do but he didn’t. He just took the money he was asking people for.”

The groom would go on to have his wedding, with a different best man, while Galvin has been ordered to repay all the money he had taken, on top of his jail time.


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