A DIVORCEE who lent her toyboy lover £500,000 to buy a flat is battling to get it back after he claimed he blew it all.

Christiane Shellard, 66, said the cash was a loan to help 29-year-old Romanian Cristian Mihalea turn his life around.

And she told The Sun: “Karma is a bitch and it is waiting for him.”

He claims it was a gift during their 18-month “full, loving and intimate relationship”. He said he spent it on online gambling, a bad gold deal and a flash Audemars Piguet watch.

Mum-of-one Christiane is suing for the cash at London’s High Court.

It heard overall she handed former courier Mihalea nearer £750,000 including more watches, a Porsche Panamera and £160,000 meant for his father’s medical bills.

Her barrister Ross Fentem said the disputed £500,000 was to buy a flat in her name in Brentford Dock, West London, that he could use until able to afford a mortgage.

Instead, he claimed, Mihalea “salted away” the cash in bank accounts in his homeland and bought his sister Mirela a £42,000 GLS Mercedes.

Judge Nicholas Cooke froze all Mihalea’s assets worldwide while lawyers investigate the trail of cash.

He told him: “You’re not going to get away from the juggernaut that’s approaching by saying, ‘It’s too late, I have spent all the money’.

“They will find whether you still have the money. The claim is . . . that you are telling a pack of lies.”

Mihalea insisted his only assets were £7,444 in a Lloyds account and a £4,000 Cartier watch.

That watch too is believed to have been a present from fun-loving Christiane, whose Facebook snaps include one of her in a Catwoman outfit.

Christiane, of Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, divorced the boss of a head-hunting firm for financial markets in 2013 and met Mihalea three years later.

He was working as a man-with-a-van running errands, usually from Heathrow.

She was unaware that in 2014 he had featured in a Sun article in which he boasted of being a successful businessman who had spent £37,000 on £250-a-time hookers.

He said at the time: “I’m young, I’m good-looking and successful — so why shouldn’t I be allowed to enjoy my freedom?

“If I were to have a girlfriend, she would have to be very independent and willing to stand on her own two feet.”

He now shares a riverside flat in Battersea, South West London, and runs Vos hair and beauty salon in Fulham.

He has told people he bought it two months ago for £50,000 but it is registered in his sister’s name.

A source said: “He claimed his cash came from a relative who had sold a field.

“He fancies himself as a big shot, swaggering around claiming he is going to be the next Richard Branson. In reality he is a fantasist.”