Christopher Collins boasted of ‘sure bets’ before stealing money from unsuspecting women

A love rat Lothario convinced women to open betting accounts before fleecing them of tens of thousands of dollars, a court has heard.

Tinder swindler Christopher Alan Collins has pleaded guilty to 24 charges, including theft, fraud, dishonesty offences and breaching bail.

Melbourne’s own Tinder swindler stole tens of thousands of dollars from unsuspecting women in the middle of swooning them on dates just three weeks after finishing a community-based order for similar offending.

Christopher Alan Collins returned to Melbourne Magistrates’ Court on Thursday where magistrate Cecily Hollingworth questioned whether he could be rehabilitated.

Ms Hollingworth said Collins — a serial offender with multiple convictions for crimes against women — had clearly not learnt from his previous dispositions from the court.

“How can I have confidence this individual has prospects of rehabilitation?” Ms Hollingworth said.

Christopher Collins is a serial offender with multiple convictions. Picture: Supplied

Ms Hollingworth said the offending she stands to punish him for happened a year after he was released from jail, and soon after he completed an 18-month Community Correction Order on December 11, 2019, for scamming six other women of $82,000.

Like his current deceptions, the gambling addict blew the cash on failed bets.

“Within three weeks, he’s back to his same old tricks,” Ms Hollingworth said.

“This time there’s more victims. There’s more money. We’re over $100,000 worth of offending.”

She said three months before his latest offending he had also successfully completed a program to tackle his gambling addiction.

Collins, 33, has pleaded guilty to 24 charges, including theft, fraud, dishonesty offences and breaching bail.

The court heard the love rat Lothario, who went by ‘CJ’ on Tinder and ‘Happy’ on Bumble, would boast to his dates that he was a professional gambler before convincing them to open betting accounts so he could earn them winnings with “sure bets”.

But what they didn’t know is that he had a serious gambling addiction and had been banned from most betting sites.

The suburban footballer and cricketer would then wait for them to go to the toilet or be on the dancefloor, before sneakily accessing their phones and transferring money from their accounts into the betting site.

Collins fleeced three women he met on dating apps of more than $100,000 in the year to January 2021.

Ms Hollingworth ordered he pay $13,000 to one victim and $19,000 to another in restitution.

The court heard he was sorry for his actions and wanted to pay the money back, but only had $10,000 of savings.

His lawyer Domenic Care is pushing for him to be given another chance on a longer CCO of two years, as opposed to jail.

But Ms Hollingworth was not willing to sentence Collins until he was assessed by forensicare to determine if he had a “deep-seated” personality or narcissistic personality disorder to explain his behaviour.

She adjourned the case to August for that assessment to take place.