A devious mum who faked cancer to raise thousands in donations to fund a gambling addiction has been ordered to pay back just £5.

Nicole Elkabbas, who falsely claimed she needed to pay for private ovarian cancer treatment, was convicted in 2020 of defrauding well-wishers out of £45,000.

But since then, investigators probing her accounts have calculated she made a total of £360,000 due to criminal exploits.

The eye-watering sum was revealed in confiscation proceedings at Canterbury Crown Court.

Now, the 44-year-old from Broadstairs has been given 28 days to stump up the paltry £5 sum.

The order was made after it emerged Elkabbas has no assets or a “realistic prospect” of paying back the cash she defrauded.

She had pleaded not guilty and claimed she believed she had cancer, but was convicted of fraud and possession of criminal property by a jury at the same court in November that year.

Jurors heard Elkabbas created a GoFundMe page and groomed kind-hearted donors in order to rake in money to splash on a lavish lifestyle.

Going on holidays abroad, buying Tottenham Hotspur tickets, gambling and eating out at restaurants were cited as some of the luxuries she enjoyed, the trial heard.

Sentencing Elkabbas to two years and nine months in prison last year, Judge Mark Weekes said she embarked on a "lengthy, involved and sophisticated deception" of hundreds of people in order to "obtain large sums of cash to sustain your very significant gambling habit".

He dubbed her ploy "pure wild fantasy and a deliberate deceit".

The former Harrods fashion consultant, of Edge End Road, tricked almost 700 victims by posting a bogus picture of herself in a hospital bed.

The mum-of-one claimed she needed to pay for her own life-saving cancer treatment, then transferred tens of thousands from well-wishers - who were convinced she was dying - into her personal bank account.

A message on the fundraising page said the “loving mum” who was “recently diagnosed” needed cash for life-saving treatment.

It came with a photo portraying Elkabbas as frail, laying on her back in a hospital bed under a blanket, with her eyes closed and mouth open.

But the picture was actually taken after she had undergone an operation to remove her gall bladder months before.

"The deception was cunning and manipulative..."

Elkabbas’s deception was unearthed after the consultant oncologist, who gave her the all-clear just weeks before, discovered the scam page called ‘Nicole Needs Our Help Treatment’, seemingly written by her mum Delores, who actually suffered from the deadly disease.

Her former friend and leading London gynaecologist Dr Nicholas Morris also stumbled across the GoFundMe page - where she claimed to be in a Spanish hospital - and realised the snap had actually been taken at the Spencer Hospital in Margate.

When police began exploring cracks in Elkabbas’s web of lies, it emerged Barcelona’s Teknon Clinic, where she said she was staying, had never heard of her.

The doctor she claimed was in charge of her treatment, Filipe Suarez, didn’t exist, according to Spanish medical officials.

Following her sentencing, Judge Weekes told Elkabbas: "The deception was cunning and manipulative. You produced detailed and at times graphic accounts of the treatment you were receiving with a view to keeping those you had snared in your web of lies paying you money.

"All the while, you were gambling, enjoying shopping trips and luxuries in Italy and Spain at their expense."