Gambling addict PC coerced girlfriends to fund bets

A former Metropolitan Police officer who abused and lied to a string of girlfriends while taking their money to feed his gambling habit has been sentenced.

Lewis Rollins, from Fareham, Hampshire, was a PC when he used three women he met on dating apps to fund his addiction, telling them a series of lies to hide his financial problems.

A jury at Southwark Crown Court found the 29-year-old guilty of two counts of coercive or controlling behaviour and three charges of fraud, while a previous trial convicted him of assaulting a fourth woman.

During a hearing at the same court earlier, Rollins was handed an 18-month community order and ordered to pay back £3,132.50 to one of his victims

Rollins, who had appeared on BBC Radio Essex in 2023 to talk about "overcoming" his gambling habit, was told by Judge Christopher Hehir that he had already served the equivalent of a two-and-a-half year prison sentence while awaiting trial.

If Rollins had been on bail throughout the proceedings, Judge Hehir said he would have been given a sentence of two years and nine months.

He instead told the Rollins he was going to give him a community order "because it's an order with teeth".

At the end of the sentencing, Judge Hehir told Rollins: "You are to some extent a fortunate beneficiary of the chronology of circumstance."

The court previously heard that Rollins, who worked in the Met's Central West Command Unit, was dating two women simultaneously and taking money from both of them.

He then struck up a relationship with a third woman, who was convinced to take out a £4,000 loan to help with his spiralling debts.

Georgia Miller, who met Rollins on dating app Bumble in April 2022, described his "bursts of anger", name-calling, acts of violence and controlling jealousy, including monitoring her phone.

Financial transactions showed Miller sent Rollins £1,000 for a bet on one occasion, when he had "insisted" that it would pay-off, and sent him more than £1,000 on another occasion to pay his rent.

When Rollins started dating Miller he was already seeing another woman, Alisha Steeds, after meeting her in February 2022. She gave the police officer £1,500 to cover his rent.

Rollins said he "always intended to pay her back", but the court heard that Miller had given him money to pay to Steeds, which he had gambled away.

The court also heard from trainee solicitor Emily Busby, who met Rollins on a dating app in 2023, and said she lent him money after feeling sorry for him.

She gave Rollins £800 to pay the deposit on his accommodation after he "gambled away" money he had been given by his parents.

In December 2023, she took out a £4,000 loan for Rollins, giving £2,500 of the money to him while using the rest to pay off her own debts.

In a victim impact statement during his sentencing, Busby told the court: "Lewis has changed my life forever.

"For the past two-and-a-half years I've been trying to recover financially, mentally and emotionally from what he did to me.

"To this day I don't feel like I have my life back.

"This experience has also affected my trust in the police."

She said the experience had "affected my trust in the police", before adding that she had lost of all of her savings and remains in debt.