A man who conned his wife and her family into believing he had terminal cancer took £2,000 from his mother-in-law before his lie was exposed.

David Carroll, 35, told his future wife, Lucy Witchard, he had leukaemia when they first met in 2006. In 2015, Witchard’s mother, Linda Eccles, gave Carroll money to get treatment in the US after he said the cancer was terminal.

Witchard, of Leicester, said Carroll would not allow her to attend his chemotherapy sessions in hospital and frequently said the leukaemia got better and worse.

“He would say ‘I’m protecting you from this’ and I’d get too emotional being there,” Witchard told the BBC. “When I questioned his treatment he threatened to leave me, saying our relationship could not work if I didn’t trust him.”

The family became suspicious while Carroll was in the US as he appeared to be enjoying a holiday rather than receiving treatment. Witchard asked her husband about this on his return and she said he went “ballistic” and tried to keep up the pretence.

“He even got a work friend to call me pretending to be his doctor,” she said. “I knew after that phone call our marriage was over.”

Last week at Leicester magistrates court Carroll was given a 26-week prison sentence , suspended for two years, after being found guilty of fraud by false representation. He was also ordered to complete 180 hours of unpaid work and pay £2,000 compensation.

The district judge Sally Fudge imposed a 12-month restraining order preventing Carroll from contacting Witchard, from whom he is divorced, or his former mother-in-law.

Carroll’s defence lawyer, Gordon Hart, said his client was a man of previous good character who was suffering from a personality disorder at the time of the fraud. “He had a medical condition … It has been recognised and he has had recognised treatment. This fraud is definitely a one-off event,” he said.

Hart said previous fundraising by Carroll, who lives with and cares for his mother, had not been for personal financial gain. “There is no suggestion that the money he raised for charities at that time went anywhere else than to the charities it was intended for.”

Eccles told the Birmingham Mail: “I rue the day that my daughter met this man. This has torn our lives apart and I am amazed that he has not been sent to jail. I just hope people read this and he is not able to con anyone else out of money by lying about dying of cancer. How could he do that – and to his own family?”