A SERIAL bigamist from York has narrowly escaped a prison sentence after impersonating a partner in a bizarre attempt to obtain NHS drugs.

Former model Emily Horne, who used to live in South Bank, York, cropped her hair and wore a baggy football shirt and trousers to fool a doctor into believing she was her then partner, Craig Hadwin.

The 33-year-old met her first husband, Paul Rigby, while at school in York and married him the day after her 18th birthday at the city’s Register Office.

In 2009 she was given a ten-month suspended sentence by a court in Manchester after it emerged she had had five husbands simultaneously.

This week, Horne, now of Tucker Street, Wells, in Somerset, admitted two charges of fraud by false representation and asked for a further three similar offences to be taken into account at Taunton Crown Court. Recorder Jonathan Barnes told Horne that he was not going to send her to prison despite being in breach of a suspended sentence imposed after the case in Manchester.

“You have come terribly, terribly close to being sent to prison. This will be the last chance,” he told her.

“If you come back before the courts for any further offences of this kind – and I am talking about the obtaining of prescription drugs from the NHS by deception – I do not have the slightest doubt that the judge dealing with you will send you to immediate custody.”

He imposed a 12-month community order with supervision and a 28-day electronically tagged curfew from 7pm to 7am.

The court heard how in May this year Horne telephoned the NHS out-of-hours service claiming to be the sister of Craig Hadwin, phoning to say she needed painkillers after being the victim of an assault.

Horne was prescribed two diazepam tablets.

She then successfully obtained codeine phosphate tablets by giving the name of Cassy Hadwin.

Following a failed attempt to get drugs from a doctor’s surgery in Ilchester, she then made an appointment for her husband to see a GP at the Millbrook Surgery in Castle Cary.

Prosecutor Nigel Askham said: “She posed as Craig Hadwin.

“She had short cropped hair, baggy clothing and the doctor believed her to be Craig Hadwin and he prescribed two sleeping tablets.”