A bigamist who wed a wealthy businessman while married to two other men has been jailed after fleecing him out of £200,000. Godsgift Tettegah, 39, pursued demolition company boss John Thurlby despite still being married to another Englishman who, like Mr Thurlby, was 26 years her senior. A court heard that Mr Thurlby, now 65, married the defendant - described as ‘strikingly attractive’ by the judge - in 2008. But while Tettegah posed as a wealthy, divorced woman, she was still wed to her previous husband, Roger Long. That couple married in 2004, when Tettegah is thought to have already been wed to a fellow Ghanaian called Biko, whom she would later try to pass off as her brother.
Tettegah, who is understood to have come to the UK in 1999, was running her own hair extension business in Grantham, Lincolnshire, when she met divorced father-of-three Mr Thurlby in 2007. Prosecutor Errol Ballentyne said she soon asked Mr Thurlby for a £40,000 loan to source hair extensions from China. When he refused, she suggested he invested in the business and become a director. Mr Thurlby gave her more than £65,000, which he never saw again.
Lincoln Crown Court heard he also handed over £10,000 after being told Tettegah’s ‘brother’, Biko, needed it to save his home from repossession. He then paid for a car for Biko, while £6,000 went to Tettegah’s father to buy land for development. Around £100,000 also went on building the couple a four-bedroom house to stay in on trips to her homeland, but it was never completed.
