‘Playing me’: Mum faces losing home after boss betrayal

A mum-of-three says she is fighting to save her family home after allegedly being tricked by her former boss into guaranteeing business loans that spiralled into a debt now worth almost half a million dollars.

Nicky Oakley, from Cheshire in the UK, says she trusted James Kenny, a man she had known for nearly 20 years, when he offered her what sounded like a dream job helping launch a pirate-themed festival.

Instead, she alleges that trust left her tied to loans secured against her home, facing repossession and owing more than $475,000 once fees and interest were added.

“My life is in absolute tatters,” Oakley told the Daily Mail.

“I’ve been used by a man I’d known for decades and am on the verge of financial ruin. I feel like such an idiot for falling for his lies, but I trusted him implicitly.”

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Oakley says Kenny asked her in 2023 to act as guarantor on a $114,000 loan, claiming the business was waiting on lottery funding and the debt would be repaid quickly.

She later agreed to a second bridging loan worth $270,800 after being told it would solve the first problem and protect her home.

She says she carefully checked the paperwork and believed funding was in place, but later discovered key documents had allegedly been faked.

Within months, repayments were missed and the promised grant collapsed because of fraud checks.

Oakley says Kenny repeatedly reassured her he was fixing the problem and even put her in touch with someone she believed was his solicitor.

“James assured me the $7600 (£4000) a month repayments would be no problem and I believed him. He hadn’t come to me with the idea, I’d asked him for work. I thought I knew him really well. Now, I feel like such a fool. It was the worst decision of my life,” she says.

In June 2025, she received written confirmation that the debt had been cleared, along with what appeared to be an official Satisfaction of Charge certificate.

Relieved, she and her partner pressed ahead with plans to move into their dream “for ever home” with their three children.

But just days before the sale was due to go through, her estate agent called.

“I was standing in my living room, with boxes everywhere, just a few days before we were due to move,” Oakley says.

“I got a call from our estate agent, saying: ‘Nicky, we can’t proceed, there’s a repossession order on your house’.

“My head started spinning. I rang James, sobbing, asking him what was going on. He told me there must be some mistake but I just didn’t believe him any more.”

A solicitor then uncovered what Oakley describes as the full scale of the alleged deception.

The debt clearance letter was allegedly forged.

The legal correspondence was fake.

And, most shockingly, Oakley says her signature had been forged on a court consent order linked to the repossession of her home.

Nicky recalls: “My hands shook with fury as I read the email chain with messages supposedly from me to the loan company, consenting to them taking my home. The rose-tinted spectacles just fell from my eyes. James wasn’t there to talk his way out of it; I had black-and-white proof that my signature had been forged. Nobody else could have done it. He’d been playing me all along.”

Oakley says Kenny later sent her video messages admitting he had signed the court document himself.

By November 2025, she says the debt had blown out to $408,677, and with ongoing interest and legal fees it now exceeds $475,200.

“My world collapsed. I felt so guilty that I’d got my family caught up in this mess,” Oakley says.

“Not only had we lost our dream home but we were weeks away from losing our current one.”

While trying to save her home, Oakley says she discovered Kenny had previously been convicted in 2008 after admitting he forged his then wife’s signature on mortgage documents.

She reported the matter to police and the UK’s fraud reporting service, but no action has been taken.

In May, Oakley lost a court bid to stop the repossession, with the lender succeeding on the basis that her case against Kenny was separate from its right to recover the debt from the guarantor.

She is now appealing and has launched a GoFundMe page in a desperate bid to save her home.

So far, only $3800 of the $28,512 has been raised.