Woman gets 2 years for marriage con

NEWCASTLE, England, Jan. 30 (UPI) -- A young British woman who conned men she met through lonely hearts newspaper columns was sentenced Tuesday to two years in prison.

Emma Golightly, 22, of Newcastle cried when a judge in Newcastle Crown Court ordered her imprisonment, the Times of London reported. Judge David Woods said he accepted the defense argument that Golightly suffers from a personality disorder but that she committed "serious breaches of trust."

"Over a period of quite a long time you befriended a number of men and pretended to them you were rich, terminally ill and in need of a husband," he said. "You encouraged them by offering lavish gifts whilst all the time you had stolen their check books or credit cards and were using them for your own advantage."

Investigators say that the men Golightly became involved with did not realize at first that she was spending their own money on gifts for them. At the same time, she was trying to use their credit cards to buy vacations and an expensive Range Rover.

She was sentenced for swindling three men out of more than 250 thousand pounds, about $500,000.