How thieving Love Island wannabes travelled globe in designer gear & bought £2k dog – with £250k stolen from gym lockers
THEY look like they are straight from the cast of Love Island and living a life of the rich and famous.
With designer outfits, high-end jewellery and expensive holidays in Dubai, Paris, Croatia and Italy’s romantic Amalfi coast, Ashley Singh and partner Sophie Bruyea plastered photos of their enviable lifestyle all over social media.
Yet far from being even minor celebrities, they are criminals whose extravagance was funded by cash stolen from unsuspecting gym-goers.
Singh, 39, and his 20-year-old girlfriend raided lockers at gyms across London and the South East in a year-long spree, maxing out victims’ credit cards to the tune of at least £250,000.
Incredibly, Singh is a repeat fraudster who was jailed for the same offences in 2019. He would have still been inside now had he served the whole of his six-and-a-half year sentence, not just half.
This week, after he was caged again for three years, one of his victims told The Sun: “This is far too light a sentence for someone who is clearly a career criminal.
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“I was expecting he’d get at least five years, given his history. I don’t think this latest sentence is going to deter him — this is just what he does.”
Singh and Bruyea, who lived together, targeted 18 victims, rifling through their lockers and stealing bank cards.
They also took SIM cards from mobile phones, which allowed them to reset passwords for people’s personal bank accounts.
Bruyea flaunted their lives together on Instagram, where she posted pictures of herself dressed in the latest designer gear, including Louis Vuitton sliders worth £525 on a trip to Croatia.
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In a Facebook snap the couple are seen kissing at an airport where Bruyea is carrying a Louis Vuitton roll-on suitcase costing up to £2,570 and a £2,500 Christian Dior tote.
Singh looks to be totally decked out in Louis Vuitton, with a Keepall bag across his chest worth more than £2,000 and a black T-shirt also by the French luxury brand.
The thieving couple also splashed out at Prada and bought what appears to be a Pomeranian dog, which can cost up to £2,000.
On TikTok, Bruyea showed off life as a “dog mum”, sharing pictures of two dogs lying on Ralph Lauren pillows and snuggled up in Gucci scarves.
Holiday snaps include a trip to Dubai’s Aura Skypool, where access to the 50th-floor rooftop pool costs as much as £100, with a minimum spend of £214 per person on food and drink.
The pair, from Bromley, South East London, also posed for pictures at fine-dining restaurants, and Bruyea showed off images from celebrity hotspot Sexy Fish, where a croquette snack costs £15.10 and a glass of wine £16.
They both owned expensive gold jewellery, while cops who busted them also retrieved a Rolex watch.
In the end it was the couple’s brazen showing off online which led to their downfall.
A police officer grew suspicious of their bling and alerted tech experts.
Detectives in Lewisham traced the couple’s phones, cars and faces on CCTV to link the gym thefts together.
Singh and Bruyea were arrested at Gatwick Airport last January after flying in from Paris with around £1,700 worth of designer goods from a shopping spree.
They were both convicted at Croydon Crown Court of conspiracy to commit fraud by false representation between January 2022 and January 2023.
Bruyea was given 20 months at a young offenders’ institution, suspended for two years.
She was also told to do 120 hours of unpaid work and to undertake a rehabilitation programme.
Singh was jailed for three years.
Yet victims have been infuriated by the revelation that he had already served time for almost identical crimes.
He got his earlier six-and-a-half years after he and an accomplice, Tony Clark, 29, stole thousands from gym-users by breaking into lockers.
Singh was given what is known as a determinate prison sentence, which meant he could be released at the halfway point.
He and Clark had photographed their victims’ credit cards and replaced SIM cards in phones with a dummy to change PINs and take over accounts.
Police believed as much as £227,000 was stolen and spent on Rolex watches, jewellery, designer clothes and electronics.
After Clark was arrested in September 2018, Singh carried on his thieving spree and stole another £43,000 before he was finally caught.
Back then, the court heard he already had 19 previous convictions, including nine for theft and two for fraud.
One of his latest victims told The Sun how he had no idea his gym locker had been broken into until he got home, when spending notifications began showing up on his phone.
The 49-year-old office worker, who asked not to be named, said: “When I went back to my locker after an hour-long class it was hard to open, as if it had been compromised, and my phone was switched off.
“But I wasn’t overly suspicious because nothing seemed to be missing. They didn’t even take the cash out of my wallet.
“I later found out that my SIM card had been disabled and that my cards and phone had been taken to a local petrol station ATM, where Singh and Bruyea got my PIN code from a banking app on my phone.
“They took the money from my accounts and then returned to the gym and put the three debit cards back in my locker before my class had finished.
“They kept two of my credit cards to go out shopping and spent just under £9,000 in the Apple store.
“They took about £10,500 in total and had payments declined on another £9,500 worth of transactions.
“It was only when I got home and switched my phone back on that all these notifications started coming through for payments and I realised something was badly wrong.
“I think I was just a random victim because the gym was really busy that night and I had picked the first locker as you went into the changing rooms.
“I’m really surprised by the sentence, which just feels very light when you take into consideration he has done this before. Bruyea is just a young girl who might have a chance of turning her life around, but Singh is clearly someone who does this almost for a living.
“I don’t think there’s any chance a short sentence of three years will deter him.”
Detective Constable Luis Da Silva, from the Met’s economic crime team, said: “We know Londoners are worried about theft.
“It’s a horrible crime and it causes a lot of stress, pain and financial loss.
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“That’s why we take this crime seriously and a whole team of us were committed to catching Singh and Bruyea.
“You couldn’t fail to be moved by the devastating impact their callous behaviour had on people, and we hope by catching them this offers victims a little bit of solace.”
