Where to start - I've seen my mistakes repeated here, nearly every 3-6 months there is a note about a special relationship with a service provider.
I've had a few.  I don't regret them in the end, but they were unnecessary stress, and expensive, and never what they appeared to be / what I wanted them to be

There was the girl I did bareback who came to my house, used to let me sleep in her apartment after we finished but one day she was angry with me and said "do you really think you're the only one I do that [BBFS] with? ".  It scared me, it felt like a threat.  I cut her off for a while but ended up back with her until she got caught by immigration and deported.

There was the one I gave money to get out of the game, after a short break she started working at a "shop" that strangely was open the same hours as when she was on the game.  Eventually she came clean that she couldn't earn what she needed to give it up, and she went back on the game officially.

There was the one that made me feel special, until on here I saw she said the same sweet things to someone else and I had to accept I was just another guest, there was no special connection, I'd fallen for her scripted performance.  In the grand scheme of things a broken heart is par for the course in this hobby so I don't regret this one very much.

Let me tell you about one - the important thing is to understand the con of how this one got money out of me.  I want you to be aware of it to.

I read a report here the other day where someone said a girl straight out asked them for money and he turned her down.
Those ones are easy to spot and avoid.
The con I fell to was a love con essentially.
After seeing her a few times in a professional capacity.  She gave me a few extras like time off the clock and other things "she didn't normally do".
I got the back story - she was doing this to pay for her masters degree.  She was an orphan, she'd been molested as a child, she'd slept rough to get away from it, now she had pulled her life together and was doing this to get her masters.  I was so proud of her rags to riches story.

Once I was fully invested in her, starting to feel like there was a relationship, she started to withdraw.
What it essentially boiled down to was a message from her
"I really like you - I want to be with you - but I have this money problem so I can't come see you becuase I need to work - someone else has booked me for the whole day - by the time I'm finished it'll be too late to see you."

If I withdrew, as the odd friend who understood half the story would advise, she'd come after me, call me when I didn't call her, come see me because she'd finally got
some free time and we could be together.  But once I was warmed up again she'd disappear and ignore me when I called her because she was busy.

Eventually I saw the only way to be with her was to fix "her money problem".
So I lent her 9,000 GBP, then she came back with "additional fees she needed to pay for books and accomodation" and although I was uncomfortable I was young and insecure and thought if I don't lend her more and she crashes out of uni I'll lose what I've already lent.  So all up I lent her 15,000 GBP.  It was a loan with no interest, she'd pay
me back gradually after she finished studying.

She was true to her word, she got out of the game (or maybe she just kept one or two regulars for pocket money).  But now she had her expenses covered
she didn't need me anymore.  I saw her walking in the shopping centre holding hands with her Ex, basically now she was stress free she wanted to go back to what she'd had before.
She appreciated my help - but I was a former customer - not "the person she wanted to have as a boyfriend if only she didn't have to do this job."

I was learning about IT at the time and she'd used my computer a few times for checking emails, so I was able to recover her email password and check her emails and lo-and-behold I was the second guy she'd gotten money out of.  What sent a chill down my spine was the modus operendi was the same, there were emails from him begging to see her, explanations for why she'd gone silent, emails from her saying she was too busy, she needed money to pay for her tuition before the deadline, if only she didn't have to work so hard she'd have time to see him.

What came out too was she'd fed me a complete lie about her backstory - she was an orphan, doing this because she had no one to support her.  Actually she had a larg-ish (larger than me) family.  And now I had all their contact details.

I confronted her - it turned nasty - she argued "I never asked you for money, you offered it" and that was true, she never asked me, and if she had asked me i would have probably had alarm bells ring.  The beauty of her con was she got me and this other guy to offer by just making us feel special, then giving us the "I want to be with you but I have money problems" line.

In the end I got about 9 grand back of the 15, it was a sort of mutually assured destruction, she obviously didn't want her family knowing / argued they wouldn't believe me / argued I'd get mud on me too if it all came out.  I chalked the "already spent" 6K up to an expensive lesson.  I still made the same mistake later in life but now I think I definetly wont make it a third time (now I have a family and debts that go along with it so I don't just have money laying around to "help a friend" anymore).

I think it's a quiet common psychological problem of "white knighting" try to learn from my mistakes.  The best con woman will never ask you for money - you'll offer it to her happily to fix her problems.  When you do - remember this story

I guess if she checked your emails (maybe she already did), she would also see a few lies from your side.

I am sorry for your loss, but before passing judgement on all WGs, please understand where they are coming from. In their line of work, men's cheating is the norm. In fact, infidelity is the fuel that drives this business. So, the moment you walked through her door, you were already profiled as a liar. They just treat clients as some kind of subhumans. They do it to get even for the women cheated by men.

Thank you for sharing your lesson with us. Yes, we are all vulnerable to our own vanity and ego. When you gave her 10 grands, what was your motive? Did you want to empower this woman with education? Or did you want to groom her, then marry her, or did you just want to use her for sex?

I am an old man, and have been mongering for a long time. Here are some of the lessons I learned from all these years. (1) Go to a WG when you are horny, not when you are lonely. (2) Only visit WGs who are richer, or more highly educated than you are. (3) Never try to impress a WG. You can't. (4) Try not to lie to WGs. A seasoned WG can catch a lie even before you finished the first sentence. (5) Once you have found a woman you love. Stop punting.

An interesting read and one of many variations that punters can be caught out in not thinking straight. 15,000 GBP is a huge amount of cash and it was fortunate you got some of it back. Sorry that you went through what you did.

She put you through the 'be mean, keep them keen' phase to reverse psychology. Feeding you a story to initiate acts on your behalf without actually telling you what she actually wanted. Which in this case was money. This plays on our vanity as per @zebra's comment. And thinking with our little jimmy which clouds our judgement.

There may be exceptional cases whereby WG have hooked up with punters and have given up their job but those are far and few between. Your story is one for all to read and digest. To not be taken in with feelings of companionship or 'love'. Not to say it can't happen but moral is to stay strong and see it for what it is. A transaction for a physical act. No more no less.