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She saw a Facebook photo of her husband. He was standing next to another bride.

We’ve all made some unsavoury discoveries on Facebook from time to time. But none quite as bad as this.

Tina Pierce was trawling through Facebook one day when she noticed something a bit… odd.

The UK woman had stumbled across a photo of her husband of six years in a suit, smiling with a bride she’d never seen before. It appeared that the couple were married — and it was the first Ms Pierce had heard of the union.

bigamist caught on facebook
Caught in the act. (Image: iStock.)

While Ms Pierce and her husband Simon Keeton had been separated for a while, they weren’t divorced, which made it illegal for the 47-year-old man to be married to another woman.

 

Related content: “I saw my friend’s husband on an online dating site.”

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According to Mail Online, 47-year-old Keeton had a rather unusual relationship history: He had married Ms Pierce in 2008 just a month after divorcing his first wife.

Ms Pierce had paid for the pair’s wedding and honeymoon –and when Keeton, from from Cheshire, England asked her for a divorce in 2010, she was reluctant — partly due to the fact she hadn’t even been reimbursed for those hefty expenses yet.

It allegedly soon became clear to Ms Pierce that she had been little more than a meal ticket for her husband.

As her lawyer Karl Sholz told Chester Crown Court this week, Tina Pierce “rapidly came to realise the relationship was one where she was being viewed as providing him with a roof over his head and paying all the costs.”

bigamist caught on facebook
Chester Crown Court. Image: Google Maps/kgphips
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After Ms Pierce’s bizarre Facebook discovery, Mr Keeton was charged with bigamy. A subsequent lawsuit unearthed the fact that Keeton had registered for his marriage to his new “wife”, Catherine Noble, in April last year — a full nine months prior to Ms Pierce learning of the pair’s nuptials via Facebook.

Read more: 10 suburbs in Australia in where people are most likely to cheat.

While he had notified the registry of his first marriage, he failed to inform them of his present marriage to Ms Pierce.

On top of this indiscretion, Mr Keeton had appeared in court on 15 previous occasions for crimes including deception’

“You are sadly no stranger to deception,” the judge said.

“It seems to me you have behaved in a very careless way when you arranged to marry Miss Noble and you behaved in a way which I think is connected with some of your other antecedence,” the judge told the court.

“You are sadly no stranger to deception. You are no stranger to not being truthful when it suits you not to be, as has happened in this case.”

Related: The family that listed a four-year-old girl for adoption on Facebook.

Mr Keeton pleaded guilty to one count of bigamy, and was given a four-month suspended jail term. He will also pay the equivalent of more than $1897 in fines and costs.

His divorce to Ms Pierce will be heard later this year.

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