Most wanted con-woman has married 15 army men, emptied their bank accounts

US:  These days she looks an unlikely femme fatale, but Bobbi Ann Finley always knew the way to a man’s heart.

Especially a military man.

She got married to at least 15 servicemen during the last two decades and was engaged to several more.

One fiancé, Rodney Wegg, explains: “She was a fun person, had a line for everything, real witty, funny, someone you like to be around.

"She would come over and cook these lavish meals, clean, be the perfect Good Housekeeping housewife.”

But the spell that Finley cast over her men lasted just long enough for her to empty their bank accounts, dupe them out of their savings and leave their lives in tatters.

Along the way she had nine babies, but some fathers aren’t even sure if they have children, let alone where they are.

Branded the Military Mistress, she used at least 30 aliases and many of her marriages in nine US states took place before she had bothered to get divorced.

She has been named on dozens of arrest warrants and jailed for forging cheques (eight months) and theft by deception (three years).

She has wreaked so much havoc in the lives of US servicemen that one branded her a “domestic terrorist”.

Finley, 39, is currently wanted in Colorado, Oklahoma and Oregon after an alleged crime spree with husband number 15, Zackerie House, 27.

This time she seems to have roped him in to her operation rather than ditch him, and the couple are both wanted for writing fraudulent cheques worth more than £9,000.

“She is on a mission – she is mad,” says ex-fiancé Wegg, a former army reservist who fell for Finley in a karaoke bar in Houston, Texas in 2004.

“She’s a domestic terrorist,” says another ex, Ben Giles, who says he lost £65,000.

“We were sworn to protect this country against all enemies, foreign and domestic. She is targeting military members. She’s destroying their lives.”

Ex fiancé Harvey Lynn Parker (the only man Finley says she has ever loved) adds: “She’s a disgrace for what she did to our military.”

Entranced by her fun personality and perfect housewife act, her victims were duped with sob stories ranging from claims that she was a wounded Iraq War veteran, the daughter of a general who had to marry to claim a vast inheritance, or even that her kids had been kidnapped.

At least four former husbands, including Wegg, believe she may have borne their children.

“She said she was a divorced mother whose husband had kidnapped her kids,” he says.

They got engaged but then he noticed money going missing. Finley put it down to their wedding plans.

“She was like, ‘Oh, the tux place, I had to go and put money on the tuxes.”

Unlike other suitors, suspicious Wegg called off the wedding and reported Finley for forging cheques.

And in a rare interview, she brazenly admitted: “He gave me the cheque book and I wrote cheques knowing he didn’t have the money in there to cover them.”

Her first husband is thought to have be ex-marine Jacob Anderson. They wed in 1993, but it was annulled after only six months.

He has said Finley was “definitely smart, charming, beautiful, witty and a very convincing liar.

“You’d come home... it was clean. Our food was cooked, and the food was excellent. Dishes were done, house was immaculate. You were going like, ‘Wow, I couldn’t ask for anybody better.”

No  2 is believed to have been sailor Shad Bauers, who met her in 1994.

He recalls: “She was like, ‘Oh! Why don’t we get married?’ After only a few weeks, I went, ‘OK, why not?’ I would get more money from the military, so we did.

“But when I’d go out to sea, she’d drive my truck everywhere. In a couple of weeks she put on 2,000 or 3,000 miles. She was lying about few other things. I said, ‘OK, that’s it, I’m leaving.’ I can’t believe she’s still getting away with it.”

Shane Cheeseman, thought to be hubby No 3, married Finley in 1998.

“I met her at a country club in Texas when I was with the army,” he said.

“She told me she needed to get married by a certain time frame to inherit a whole bunch of money. We got married on the Monday, the next weekend she was gone.”

Three days after the marriage his credit cards were maxed out and his bank account empty.

“The police told me she was still mar­­ried to seven other service people. There is a possibility I have a little girl… it hurts, it really does,” says Shane tearfully.

Then there was Eric Neyer, financially ruined after he was posted abroad in 1999. Finley is accused of passing £20,000 in bad cheques in his name.

Five months after her engagement to Wegg, she married Lance Corporal Cory Wynne after meeting him near his south California marine base.

This time her sob stories were even more extravagant.

“She told me she was pregnant from a rape and didn’t believe in abortion and wanted to keep the baby,” he says.

She also said she was estranged from her parents and her sister had been murdered by a serial killer.

Oh, and she was a Wrangler jeans heiress who needed to wed by her 29th birthday to get £500,000 in her grandfather’s will.

“I felt a lot of sympathy for her,” he explained. “I really started to care very deeply for her – I was the rescuer.”

But while the soldiers and sailors were putty in Finley’s hands, one woman wasn’t buying any of it.

Wegg’s mother Katie, who didn’t trust her from the start, uncovered 40 victims, female friends as well as men.

She says: “She tends to go for guys being deployed outside the US so when they are gone they can’t close the accounts.”

In a TV interview with America’s ABC News, Finley claimed: “I may be the most hated person in America. But I’m not a con-woman.

"I didn’t put a shotgun to their head and say, ‘Hey, you’re getting married to me right now.

“I grew up very poor and sheltered so if someone offers me something, I’m not going to turn it down. I did hurt some people, but I was hurt in the long run also.

"When you think of military, you think of heroes and to know that I hurt those people is devastating. But I’m not the monster they make me out to be

“To this day I still don’t know how to love or deal with relationships. I have screwed people over... I know I’m not the greatest person on earth.”

And she’s still at large. A sheriff’s office in Oregon says that from March 11 to 30, she and current husband Zackerie House wrote bad cheques in three states for camping and survival goods.

Last week Alabama police seized the stolen car they were living in with their dog, but freed them because they were not suspected of any local crimes.

House’s mother Vickie Martin has pleaded: “I just want him to come home, turn himself in, do the right thing.”

She’s not the first military mom to fear for her son in Finley’s hands.

A posting on website Navy Moms says: “Hi everyone, just got news that Bobbi Ann Finley aka the Military Mistress, is now back in Oklahoma, writing hot cheques and causing trouble again.

“Please notify your sailors to be very careful around her. And if you know anyone who is the other branches of the military get word to them.”