A childless couple who were conned out of their savings by a cruel fraudster speak to Neil Hunter about their agony...

and reveal how their dreams have finally come true.

THEY thought it was the answer to their prayers – a clean-living university graduate and social worker who was willing to be a surrogate mother when all hope seemed lost.

The childless couple, who had endured the agony of numerous miscarriages, three failed IVF treatments, and were deemed “unsuitable”

for fostering, had reached their last resort.

Louise began to research surrogacy in late 2009 and after posting a message on an internet forum, received a reply from Samantha Cookes, who told her: “I’ll do it for you.”

During telephone calls, emails and a face-toface meeting, Cookes told Louise and her husband, Kevin, that she was a court-approved social worker who had been a surrogate before.

She claimed she had helped a wealthy couple in the Midlands become parents and said they would be prepared to provide references on her behalf – only to provide them herself.

The fraudster created a Facebook account in the name of the fictitious mother, Claudia Bronwyn, and exchanged messages with the couple about her “wonderful” experience.

She also provided what turned out to be fake surrogacy documents, and urged the couple to quickly decide if they wanted her help because she had others on a waiting list.

When police swooped on her home in Shropshire in July last year, they also found documents which claimed she was a social worker with an honours degree in social work.

The truth was that Cookes had left her course at York University in her first year and, after later resuming her studies, was excluded because she failed to complete certain checks.

It emerged during Tuesday’s court hearing that she had gone through the heartbreak of her daughter suffering a cot death in late 2008, and had never received necessary counselling.

What the judge, Recorder Ben Nolan, described as her “complex psychological and emotional background” saved 23-year-old Cookes from an immediate prison sentence.

But the couple she conned – both in their late- 20s and from the Northallerton area of North Yorkshire – angrily described the punishment as “no more than a slap on the wrist”.

In an emotional interview, they told how they used all of their savings, as well as cash from Louise’s business, as they chased their dream of becoming parents early last year.

The couple had earlier considered adoption but could only get a child of two or three, and were turned down for fostering because they were too young, and needed “more experience”.

Louise and Kevin had spent £1,500 on their first cycle and the same amount on the second round of fertility treatment. The third cost them £900 – but, agonisingly, all three failed.

They were on the verge of giving up their hopes of having a child until Louise looked into surrogacy, and their despair turned to excitement when Cookes contacted them in February last year.

“We emailed her and went on to exchange a number of emails to get to know each other,”

recalled Kevin. “She said she would come up and meet us, and it just went from there.

“She showed us documents which proved she had a child before – a surrogate for a previous family. Things just escalated from there.

‘SHE said she needed some money as a down-payment because she had other people who wanted her, and the money would secure her help for us.

“It kept going and everything seemed to be going ok and then she started to get hesitant, not texting and not answering the phone when my wife tried to contact her.

“It was only towards the end that she started being very reluctant to speak to my wife. It seemed like she was trying to get us to pull out.”

The couple told how as well as the lies about her job as a social worker, Cookes’s elaborate hoax involved the make-believe family she claimed to have helped two years earlier.

She made up email addresses and Facebook accounts in the name of Claudia, and Kevin said the messages she sent “added authenticity to her story and made her look real”.

He added: “It is heartbreaking to think she sat before us, in our home, bold as brass, drinking tea with us, discussing our hopes and dreams and all the while none of it was true.”

Louise: “She asked for money to cover the cost of drawing up the contract, health insurance, travelling costs, insemination kits.

“She told us we would have to have blood tests to make sure there would be no problems, and we both went to our doctors to have that done.

“She now makes me feel physically sick.

When I’ve seen her in court it has been very upsetting. I just hate being near her.

“I don’t think she actually realises how big an impact it has on a person. It is not just taking the money, which was bad enough. It is playing with people’s heads, their whole life, their hopes of having family.”

Since Cookes’ arrest, a family friend was so moved by the couple’s heartbreaking story that he offered to pay for one more IVF treatment – and they had a daughter earlier this year.

Kevin said: “There had been a lot of strain on us as a couple. We are stronger now, but we really went through a rough time, arguing all the time, and we could easily have split up, and we would not have been here today.

“Thankfully, we are and we have a beautiful daughter – something we could only dream about at one time.”

􀁧 The names of the couple have been changed to protect their identity.