Ex-Met Police officer from Fareham who took money from girlfriends to feed gambling habit is spared jail
Rollins repeatedly struck up relationships with women, then took money from them and gambled it away.
A Metropolitan Police officer who abused and lied to a string of girlfriends while taking their money to feed his gambling habit has been sentenced - but not sent to prison.
Lewis Rollins, 29, who was a PC in the Met’s Central West Command Unit, used women he met on dating apps to fund his out-of-control betting habit, and told a series of lies to hide his true financial situation. Southwark Crown Court previously heard Rollins 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.
Rollins, from Fareham was previously found guilty by a jury of two counts of coercive or controlling behaviour and three charges of fraud. He was also convicted at an earlier trial of assaulting a fourth woman, who stepped in to defend her flatmate, another woman the police officer had been dating.
Dr 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. She accused Rollins of “losing it” and attacking her in a Birmingham hotel room in July 2022, when he thought she had been texting an ex-boyfriend.
Financial transactions previously 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 more than £1,000 on another occasion to pay his rent.
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, jurors were told. 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.
Rollins stood trial for the first time in November 2024, after being accused by another of his girlfriends of intentional suffocation and causing actual bodily harm. He was cleared by a jury of those charges but was convicted of assaulting Helen Jackson, the flatmate of Rollins’ girlfriend, by grabbing hold of her during an altercation.
Rollins was on bail for offences against Ms Busby at the time of that incident, and spent several months in prison awaiting the first trial, jurors were told previously. Rollins denied all the charges against him.
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. The prosecution offered no evidence in relation to that charge on Tuesday.
In a victim impact statement during his sentencing, Ms Busby said: “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.
“He made me feel like I was never good enough. To this day I don’t feel like I have my life back. This experience has also affected my trust in the police.”
She added that she has lost of all of her savings and remains in debt.
Judge Christopher Hehir said the defendant had already served the equivalent of a two-and-a-half year prison sentence, but if he had been on bail throughout the proceedings he would have been given a sentence of two years and nine months.
The judge said if he was to impose that sentence now, the outcome would be that he would be released within weeks, or within a matter of days, and he added he “can’t see the point of you going to prison for a few days or weeks”.
Judge Hehir told the defendant he was going to give him a community order “because it’s an order with teeth”.
The judge sentenced Rollins to an 18-month community order and said he would have to do 30 rehabilitation activity requirement days. He also imposed a compensation order in relation to Ms Busby to pay back £3,132.50 within six months.
At the end of the sentencing, Judge Hehir said: “You are to some extent a fortunate beneficiary of the chronology of circumstance.”