A Metropolitan Police officer who violently abused and lied to a string of girls while taking their money to feed his gambling addiction has been found guilty of fraud and coercive control.
Lewis Rollins, 28, who was a police constable in the Met’s Central West Command, used women he met on dating apps to fund his out-of-control betting habit.
Southwark Crown Court heard Rollins was dating two women simultaneously and taking money from them both. He then struck up a relationship with a third woman and convinced her to take out a £4,000 loan to help with his spiralling debts.
Rollins was found guilty by a jury on Thursday of two counts of coercive or controlling behaviour and three charges of fraud.
The policeman, from Fareham, Hampshire, had earlier pleaded not guilty to all the charges against him.
Dr Georgia Miller, who met Rollins on dating app Bumble in April 2022, told the court of his ‘bursts of anger’, name-calling, acts of violence and controlling jealousy.
She accused Rollins, who also monitored her phone, of ‘losing it’ and attacking her in a Birmingham hotel room in July 2022 when he thought she had been texting an ex-boyfriend.
Dr Miller described being thrown out of bed by the 28-year-old and then ‘slammed’ against a wall.
She said: ‘He pushed me against the wall… he had me by the throat, but like with one hand so I could still breathe.
‘I don’t think he was trying to kill me, he was just trying to scare me.’
Dr Miller said that she lent Rollins ‘so much money’ that she was struggling to make ends meet just as she was graduating and starting work as a doctor.
Financial transactions seen by the jury showed Dr Miller sent Rollins £1,000 for a bet on one occasion when he had ‘insisted’ that it would pay off, and sent him over £1,000 on another occasion to pay his rent.
Dr Miller said she felt ‘trapped’ in the relationship as she tried to help with his debts, and even helped him to apply for a loan from the Met Police.
Earlier in the trial, prosecutor Rekha Kodikara told jurors that Rollins was controlling in the relationship with Dr Miller by repeatedly threatening to kill himself, creating an ’emotional burden’ on her.
When Rollins started dating her he was already seeing another woman, Alisha Steeds, who he met in February 2022. She later gave the police officer £1,500 to cover his rent, the court heard.
Rollins insisted that he had been brought up to believe that ‘if you owe someone money you pay them back’, but the court heard that Dr Miller had given him money to pay Ms Steeds which he instead gambled away.
Trainee solicitor Emily Busby, who met Rollins on a dating app in 2023, described how she lent him money out of sympathy.
She gave Rollins £800 to pay the deposit on his accommodation after he ‘gambled away’ money he had been given by his parents, jurors were told.
Ms Busby said: ‘I think I could sense his urgency and I was hesitant to give it to him as you can see because it was a large amount of money but he kept pushing and pushing.
‘I think the way he was messaging was in a way to make me feel bad for him, like I was the only one who could help him and there was no one else.’
She added that Rollins threatened to take his own life ‘a lot’ which was ‘one of the reasons’ she was so worried about him.
In December 2023, she took out a £4,000 loan, giving £2,500 of the money to the constable while using the rest to pay off her own debts.
When giving evidence, Rollins insisted to the jury: ‘If you owe someone money you pay them back – you don’t buy things, you don’t go on holiday, you don’t do things until you pay people what you owe.
‘That’s how I have been brought up.’
The jury failed to reach a verdict on a sixth charge, of damaging property, after Dr Miller accused him of breaking a necklace during an altercation on a night out.
