A WOMAN has told a jury she wasn’t suspicious about almost £100,000 her partner claimed he had been loaned.

Rhianna Thomas, of Coopers Lane, Abingdon, denies illegally receiving and spending the money in the weeks before her wedding in April 2011.

The 24-year-old took the stand at Oxford Crown Court yesterday and said she only realised something was wrong when she was arrested in January last year.

It was the second day of her trial on four counts of possessing criminal property and three counts of transferring criminal property.

The prosecution alleges she spent £9,000 on a Suzuki GSX-R600 motorbike, £14,235 on a Volvo C70 convertible and £4,250 on breast enlargement surgery.

But Mrs Thomas said her husband Arron, 32, who has already admitted five counts of fraud and three counts of transferring criminal property, was entirely to blame.

He created four false invoices while working at Oxford-based builders’ merchant Grafton Merchanting and paid them into his partner’s bank account.

Giving evidence yesterday, his wife said she only discovered the first lump sum for £36,679.98 when Arron called her at work.

She said: “He told me to check my account online and I saw my bank balance was really high.

“He told me he had got a loan to buy a Range Rover Sport, but what he now wanted was to get married.

“I was a bit shocked about this, I wanted to get married but I said ‘can we talk about it when I get home?’ “Then he made a series of calls to me and said he had booked a wedding at Eynsham Hall on April 29.”

Mrs Thomas, who was already engaged to Arron, continued: “I was quite taken aback by the prospect of a wedding in 12 weeks.

“And I wasn’t very impressed because he was asking me to spend the rest of our lives together and taking out a loan of that value.

“I thought it would impact on our finances for years.”

Robin Griffith, prosecuting, asked why she wasn’t more suspicious of the money’s origin.

He asked: “How on earth would he persuade anyone to loan him over £30,000?

“What guarantee could they have of ever getting their money back?”

Mrs Thomas answered that her husband had shown her what he said was the ‘loan agreement’.

When further payments of £8,508, £29,895.67 and £24,162.97 were made to her account, Mrs Thomas said he told her these were ‘top-up loans’.

She said: “Until we were arrested I thought Arron was making loan repayments from his bank account.”

Arron Thomas’s sentencing was adjourned until after his wife’s trial.

The trial continues.