"I'll Be Your Prince, You'll Be My Breadwinner": How Male Parasites in Czechia Con Women with Fake Promises of Wealth

A deception scheme is gaining momentum in Czechia in which men win women's trust with lies about non-existent wealth, promises of marriage and a shared future — only to leave their victims saddled with debts running into hundreds of thousands, even millions, of crowns. The story was uncovered by the investigative podcast "Ve stínu".

Petra Diváková, from České Budějovice, met a man named Svatopluk who convinced her he was financially well-off: he took her and her son from a previous relationship to expensive restaurants, bought them gadgets and shoes, and whisked them off to Germany for weekends. Just two months into the relationship she became pregnant, and the couple began planning a lavish wedding costing nearly three-quarters of a million crowns.

Friends — and even Svatopluk's ex-wife — warned Petra that something was off, but she brushed it aside. Meanwhile, the couple started house-hunting for properties worth up to ten million crowns, even though the man knew perfectly well he couldn't afford any of it. Shortly before the wedding, it turned out the deposits for the celebration hadn't been paid — the grand ceremony had to be cancelled, leaving only a modest family lunch.

After their daughter was born, trouble began: her husband turned rude, especially when drunk, never helped around the house and brought home no money — despite claiming every morning that he was off to work. It later emerged he had never actually worked for the company he claimed to — a fact confirmed by the firm's accounting department, which his previous wife had contacted while chasing child support.

Things came to a head when, in the middle of the night, an enraged stranger banged on the door of the flat where Petra was staying with her newborn daughter, demanding repayment of a 400,000-crown debt. For almost a year, the woman paid child support for all three of her husband's children, fought frozen bank accounts and enforcement proceedings, and took on babysitting jobs just to feed her family. She says her ex-husband's total debt is now estimated at 4 to 5 million crowns.

What saved her was that, seven months after the wedding, she had a notary formally divide the couple's joint property — meaning her husband's debts are, in principle, not her responsibility, apart from a 100,000-crown loan she took from her sister.

A similar story unfolded with another man, Lukáš Lední, whom the courts have designated a particularly dangerous repeat offender. Investigators say he swindled at least five women using a comparable scheme, leaving each with debts in the millions. One of his victims, Lenka, met him in the spring of 2017; a year and a half later she was left with a small daughter and a debt of 1.5 million crowns — the con man had also managed to squeeze another million out of her family. Since 1999, Lední has spent a total of sixteen years behind bars.

Experts from the Debt Advisory Consortium and the Rubikon Centrum organization urge affected women to go to the police without hesitation, even if they aren't entirely sure they've been scammed. "A victim cannot objectively assess this kind of behaviour on her own — manipulation can create a genuine fog in the mind," notes a representative of the organization.

Family law attorney Daniela Holá calls this tactic "future faking" — the simulation of a shared future: fraudsters conjure an illusion of domestic bliss, shower their victims with attention and affection, and push relationships forward at breakneck speed, with a quick pregnancy and an equally quick wedding. According to Daniel Hůle, an expert from the organization Člověk v tísni (People in Need), most of the debts among the women who reach out to them arise specifically within marriage — and these debts hit women even harder because the men often work off the books, out of reach of court bailiffs.

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Around Prague, based on reporting by seznamzpravy.cz