The romance conman so brazen he was snaring a brand new sufferer on his cellphone even at his trial. No surprise the decide locked him up for a file 17 years!

No one suspected Nigel Baker had an ulterior motive for taking his mobile phone with him when he went on trial for romance fraud at Snaresbrook Crown Court.

Why would they? But Baker, who protested his innocence in a smart pinstripe suit, used it to groom another victim – yes, in plain sight, during the actual case.

In one text message, sent during a break in proceedings, to impress the woman he was targeting he told her he was on holiday and staying at a luxury country hotel.

It was accompanied by a picture of the so-called five-star establishment. In fact, the ‘hotel’ was the court itself, which is housed within a Grade-II listed building, set in 18 acres with its own lake, on the edge of Epping Forest.

The woman, who does not wish to be identified, only discovered the truth when she read about the trial on social media and realised the man she was falling for was in the dock.

Has a defendant ever displayed more shame-faced chutzpah than 56-year-old Nigel Baker?

The revelation emerged during our own investigation into the serial seducer after he was jailed for an unprecedented 17 years this week following a month-long trial in October when he was convicted of conning nearly £1 million out of middle-aged divorcees he met on dating websites.

‘You had not a jot of empathy for anyone at all,’ the judge told him. ‘You are an entirely selfish individual who women need to be protected from.’

The sentence is thought to be the longest ever handed down for romance fraud. To put this in context, Baker, who has a string of previous convictions for dishonesty, got more than many rapists and armed robbers.

The five victims on the indictment – they are not the only women he ‘mercilessly and cynically’ fleeced – include a businesswoman, an accountant and a police officer, who were all promised a second chance at happiness by Baker but ended up losing their life savings, pensions, family inheritances, even their homes in some cases, after being taken in by him.

Their money funded Baker’s gambling addiction, with any winnings going on expensive holidays, cruises and designer clothes for himself and his then partner, who was apparently oblivious to what he was doing.

Three of the women who gave evidence against him in court were all being strung along at the same time. They are still on medication and receiving counselling.

Baker’s ex-wife, who spoke to the Daily Mail, along with a number of his victims, revealed how even his parents, who afforded him a caring and comfortable upbringing, were ‘rinsed’ of their savings.

There’s also a more disturbing storyline behind the already shocking details which emerged in court. A sixth victim, due to testify against Baker, died in tragic circumstances and a seventh tried to take her own life.

Why were so many intelligent women convinced by him? It was not, said the judge, because of ‘any negligence or naivete’ on their part but because of the ‘high level of sophistication of the romance fraud’ and a ruthlessness in exploiting emotional vulnerability, which is the defining characteristic of predators like Nigel Baker.

Accountant Shelly Monk is one of the women who helped put him behind bars. She had been divorced for eight years when she met Baker in February 2020 on the dating website Plenty of Fish which is focused on mid-lifers and boasts: ‘Forget the days of awkward online dating and become part of a community of singles where you can come exactly as you are.’

It did not turn out that way.

‘I had not been online for ages but I thought, new year, new start,’ Shelly, 61, a mother of two, told us.

She cannot find the exact profile Baker used when she saw his bio on the website but he used different profiles and aliases on different dating platforms.

A typical one read: ‘Dave, 6ft 5 in tall, very positive, bubbly, easy going, laid back, not your typical shallow man, strong believer in manners, morals, values and politeness. Looking for lifelong partner, soulmate, best friend.’ Shelly was about to find out that everything, apart from his height, was a dangerous lie.

Baker travelled to meet Shelly at her Surrey home in a Mercedes with tinted windows just days after they ‘connected’ on Plenty of Fish and had chatted ‘intensely’ on WhatsApp.

‘I was relieved he looked the same as his profile,’ she said. ‘He carried himself very well and he was dressed from head to toe in designer clothes. You could tell he was from Essex. He was confident but not cocky. He came across as professional, a nice guy. He came along at what seemed the perfect time for me.’

Over the next nine months – which Shelly describes as a ‘whirlwind’ – she ended up giving him the astonishing sum of more than £250,000.

Baker engaged in a sustained pattern of emotional manipulation that was tantamount to coercive control to strip her of every penny he could get his hands on.

He told Shelly all the things she wanted to hear: that he ‘truly loved’ her, that he wanted to marry her, and convinced her of his business success as an online bookie working remotely from all over the world.

‘I want us ASAP forever x,’ he told her in one WhatsApp message. ‘Our time is near x. My kids absolutely idolise you. I dream of our own home x.’

The truth was that he lived with his on-off partner in a modest terrace in Hornchurch, Essex, and had gambled heavily at dog racing tracks where he gained a reputation for failing to honour his losing bets with trackside bookies.

Baker also had a prison record, serving a one-year sentence in the 1990s for forgery, theft and obtaining pecuniary advantage – the offences are too old to obtain any further details – and had a history of obtaining vehicles on finance, paying the deposit but not the instalments. So the shiny Merc he rolled up in to meet Shelly was almost certainly not his.

It was not long before the love-bombing was replaced by what might be described as a ‘reverse Midas’ strategy.

Baker claimed he’d been ‘wiped out’ financially by his ex-wife – other victims were given the same sob story – and, in order to secure their future together, he needed to borrow from her to open an account with Betfair to place ‘foolproof bets’ which had made him a fortune in the past.

Shelly agreed to bankroll him, giving him first a £40,000 payment, then £35,000, followed by £10,000. He ran up bills on her credit card, trousered an inheritance from her parents and a £200,000 bridging loan secured against the value of her house. ‘I had no means of being able to afford all this,’ Shelly explained,’ recalling the nightmare. ‘It was relentless. I had debts coming out of every corner.’

When she asked for her money back, he sent her a chillingly cold message on WhatsApp. ‘Your credit card is not my credit card,’ he wrote. ‘I was given permission by you to use it. The bridging loan you agreed to, not me. It’s in your name, you signed it.’

Shelly, who had to cash in two pensions to service the interest on her spiralling debts, ended up losing her home and had to move to Bristol to stay with friends.

‘I am not a weak woman but for once in my life I let my guard down with him,’ admitted Shelly, who now lives in Spain.

‘I met his kids. We were looking at selling both our houses and buying together. I thought we were going to be married.’

Before Shelly Monk, there was a string of other women: the businesswoman who lost more than £500,000; the mental health nurse who lost £4,320, which was ‘every penny she had’ to pay for her son’s wedding; the police officer who lost nearly £80,000.

All three, we now know, were being targeted by Baker at the same time. ‘He is a predator,’ said the 52-year-old nurse, who asked to remain anonymous. ‘He told me I could get my pension out so we could live abroad. He even asked me if there was any inheritance money after my mother passed away. He would not let it go.’

The police officer, a mother of two, who also asked not to be identified, told how, when she became suspicious of his Betfair scheme and asked to be repaid, he showed his true colours and tried to blackmail her.

‘He left me a quite nasty, threatening voice note,’ she said. ‘We had shared some intimate photos during our relationship and he said that if I reported him he would ruin me with these images when all I had ever done was support him. I feel ashamed, disgusted and used.’

Baker was unanimously convicted at Snaresbrook of 18 counts of fraud and false representation spanning eight years between 2012 and 2020. But the women who finally brought him to justice were far from his only victims.

He persuaded a former banker to sell her £380,000 home in Basildon in 2014 on the promise he would ‘double her money’ for a better life together. When he vanished, the woman had to work odd jobs in shops and bars to rent cheap properties for herself and her two sons.

Her eldest son said: ‘I remember her coming home, saying, ‘I’ve met this amazing bloke’. It hit us hard when he suddenly disappeared after promising us a new life.’

His mother, who was 59, never recovered and died recently. She was due to give evidence in a possible second trial against Baker which is no longer going ahead, given he is already serving such a hefty sentence.

Then there is Tamazin Morley, the owner and chief executive of a VIP concierge firm, who would have also taken part in a second trial. Tamazin, 57, was fleeced out of £60,000 and lost clients after Baker got hold of her phone and began approaching them, causing her business to collapse.

She suffered a breakdown and took an overdose. ‘He’s a monster, an absolute psychopath,’ said one of her closest friends.

Tamazin now lives in Scotland and has only recently finished paying off her debts.

As a younger man, Baker resembled one of those unsavoury characters in a Guy Ritchie film. He worked on his father’s market stall in Basildon, selling leather jackets, where, according to contemporaries he ‘scammed’ other businesses and customers over consignments of stock he either never paid for or didn’t deliver.

‘People warned me he was a wrong’un but I was naïve,’ said ex-wife Tammy Bardouille, 60, who lived to regret marrying him in 1993. ‘He never took money off me but he was an a*******,’ she said. ‘He was a bad gambler and a liar.

‘I loved his mum and dad and I still talk to his brother and sister, but he rinsed his parents – something to do with a mortgage.’

Around this time, Baker owned a successful greyhound called Bakers Flash – a name which also aptly described Baker himself.

It was after his marriage to Tammy that he began targeting women for their money. ‘He’s been conning women for more than 25 years,’ said a close friend from those days. ‘We all thought he must be selling ‘gear’ [cocaine] because he had so much money and it wasn’t coming from the dogs.

‘He spent money like it was going out of fashion and he loves his clobber, especially Gucci. He had racks of jackets, trousers and Gucci loafers.’

Holidays with his new partner included New York for Christmas, a Caribbean cruise, Thailand and Turkey – all effectively paid for by women like Shelly Monk.

Before he handed down his sentence at Snaresbrook, the judge told Baker: ‘You have shown not a jot of remorse. On the contrary, I have watched you every day of this trial and you found parts of the trial entertaining, you were enjoying the misery of each woman.’

Is there anyone who doesn’t believe Nigel Baker deserves every day of his record sentence?