A student whose lies about a terminal tumour on her kidney cost her college tutor from Portscatho her marriage, home, and job, has been jailed for more than two years.

Elisa Bianco, 22, moved into the home of Sally Rettallack, 49, after lying about her abusive parents, and after breaking up her tutor's marriage she faked a new internet love interest for her.

Truro Crown Court was told Bianco became an ''uninvited cuckoo'' in the home and used mind games to drive a wedge between Mrs Retallack and her husband, she set the St Austell College tutor up with a fictitious consultant physician, before killing off her creation.

Judge Christopher Harvey Clark QC called the case "the most extraordinary case I have had to deal with in a long time," and said: "You were like an uninvited cuckoo fledgling in the nest of a willow warbler – an unexpected offspring demanding to receive constant attention.

He added: "You heartlessly manipulated Mrs Retallack's deepest emotions. No sentence will compensate her."

Bianco, originally from Fowey, met Mrs Retallack when she was 16 and enrolled on a health and social care course in 2009.

She aced her first year, but after Mrs Retallack became her personal tutor in the second year, she seemed "socially isolated", the court heard, and falsely told her that her mother and step-father were alcoholics.

Philip Lee, prosecuting, said: ""She became increasingly demanding, and Mrs Retallack is sure, looking back, that the defendant had, by then, begun to target her as being a supporting person."

Bianco claimed to suffer panic attacks at college, calling Mrs Retallack to help, and said she had been diagnosed with various complex illnesses which she backed up with faked consultants letters.

Bianco later falsely alleged she had a black eye caused by her mother, and Mrs Retallack gave her £50 and her address.

Ten days after she left college with a triple distinction diploma in April 2012, Bianco arrived at Mrs Retallack's home in Portscatho with packed bags, saying she needed to stay for two days.

She then invented emails from her parents which she sent to Mrs Retallack, and stayed for months while her former teacher helped her with university applications.

Her victim even paid £750 in rent and equipment for her place at university, and the court heard the family were "relieved" she had left in autumn 2012.

But after three weeks she came back after she phoned Mrs Retallack and said she had blood in her urine and collapsed arteries, and stayed at the family home before pretending to undergo a kidney removal.

When Mrs Retallack, who the defendant started calling mum, asked about her getting a job in March 2013, she said she had a benign tumour on the other kidney.

Asking to be dropped off at hospital everyday, she would actually sit in the cafe in her pyjamas, buying dressings and forging medical letters, and eventually announced she had just months to live.

Mr Lee said Mrs Retallack and her husband became estranged as a result of "the overwhelming effect of the defendant's needs upon their family life," and "as she puts it, he had sought solace elsewhere.

Bianco set up Mrs Retallack with her fake consultant physician John, who she said had recently lost his wife, exchanging fraudulent emails which eventually became intimate, but when they arranged to meet he said he had lung cancer.

She told Mrs Retallack she wanted to die at home and she forked out £2,000 on a bucket list of activities, as well as a supposedly final birthday party in August 2013.

When Bianco threatened to take her own life, Mrs Retallack insisted they drive to see John, but on the way Bianco asked Mrs Retallack to pull over, and read her a text message saying he had died.

She also sent an invented death-bed love note and flowers which arrived the day after he was meant to have passed away.

Mrs Retallack's family grew suspicious and her husband tracked down Bianco's father who "told him something" of the truth.

On August 12, 2013, after Bianco said her father was planning to take her home, Mrs Retallack went to the Royal Cornwall Hospital where staff at the renal ward said they had no knowledge of the defendant.

On leaving the hospital she saw Bianco sitting in the cafe in her pyjamas and when she asked if she had made it all up she simply answered "yes".

A month later she was questioned by police and confessed she had lied about her home life and medical conditions, forged letters and created a fake email account.

Mrs retallack, who since has moved to France to start a new life - sobbed in court as she read out a victim impact statement, which said: "I was an outgoing, positive, career minded individual who loved her job and developed a real pride and satisfaction nurturing the young people who would be in my care."

She added: "I had a close, loving home life. My entire family had empathy for Elisa's personal situation and welcomed her into our home.

"Now I have no career, no job, no husband, little self confidence and have recently started to try and rebuild my life by moving to France.

"Very gradually throughout the period that Elisa was in my life, she manipulated her way daily more deeply into my life by lying, acting, increasing dependency by creating a fictional realm of both physical and emotional circumstances, that subtly started to build barriers between myself and my friends and family; in fact anyone that took my time, attention or focus away from Elisa.

"I trusted her and over time put her above my family and friends as I knew she would only be here for a short period of time.

"I truly believed she had no one else. I have to live with this guilt and the consequences forever.

"My husband and I gradually became estranged as my role as wife and mother was taken over by Elisa's increasing financial, emotional and physical needs."

She said the "darkest deception" was the fake relationship Bianco created and added: "This relationship developed gradually into a very deep mutual love and true relationship in every sense.

"To discover this entire person and relationship to be fraud, just a young girl playing, was devastating and embarrassing to a level that I find so hard to put into words."

Bianco pleaded guilty to stalking, causing serious alarm or distress on Friday and was jailed for two years and eight months.