A woman has told of being conned out of £200,000 by a romance scammer who bombarded her with gushing messages every day for two-and-a-half years.

Elizabeth, who is in her sixties and lives in rural England, handed over her life savings, took out a loan and remortgaged her home to meet the man’s ever increasing demands for money.

Sharing her story in public for the first time, she bravely revealed how she fell victim to an elaborate catfishing plot orchestrated by a fraudster posing as an oil industry consultant from Texas. In reality, the criminal was based in Nigeria and had stolen photos of a real man before concocting a string of crisis scenarios to trick the kindhearted mother of two. At one point, he even pretended he had a daughter who had lost her newborn baby.

During the whole period of the scam, he repeatedly promised to pay back the money and even delivered a fake cheque to her home for $1.832 million dollars.

Elizabeth, who did not want to give her real name for privacy reasons, said she ‘can’t believe’ she fell for his evil lies, but was vulnerable at the time after breaking up with a ‘toxic’ partner.

Hers is the latest account of the misery being caused by romance scammers, who conned British victims out of more than £88 million last year. While these have involved individuals from multiple countries, many cases are linked to Nigeria, which is known to host informal academies — known as ‘hustle kingdoms’ — which train individuals in the art of tricking vulnerable victims.

Elizabeth, who is now being assisted by the charity Victim Support, was first targeted in March 2022 while browsing a Facebook page dedicated to dogs. Her long-term relationship with a ‘toxic, gas-lighting partner’ had ended just months before.

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‘I got talking to one of the members who asked if we could message each other outside the group on Skype,’ she told MailOnline. ‘He said he was having an issue with rabbits eating some plants he had bought for his daughter. I’m an empath who always wants to help people, so I looked on Amazon and found some mesh that he could use to keep the rabbits out.’

‘Days later, I got a photo showing the mesh being put up and a message saying “thank you so much”!’

After this ‘ordinary’ conversation, the scammer began sending Elizabeth messages several times a day. ‘We started talking about food so he would send recipes and photos of what he was eating,’ she said. ’He said he was divorced, worked as a consultant in the oil industry and had a boxer dog, which he sent me lots of photos of too.

‘At the time I was very vulnerable after coming out of this lengthy toxic relationship, so I guess I was an easy target. Each day he’d be messaging asking how I was and how my night had been. Having someone be kind and asking questions when I was in that frame of mind made me really open up!’

By July — five months after the scammer first approached her — he began ‘love-bombing’ Elizabeth by sending her photos of flowers and hearts. He would also play word games with her and speak about how desperate he was to meet up.

At one point, Elizabeth became suspicious when she noticed his Facebook profile said he had been to college in Nigeria — despite his claim to be American. But he batted away her concerns by claiming his profile had been changed by someone else. She was also confused when the scammer phoned her on Skype one day and she heard his Nigerian accent.

‘I said I was having real difficulty understanding him,’ Elizabeth said. ‘But because in my brain I had thought he was Texan and American I just assumed that was what he sounded like — which is mad with hindsight.’

At the height of the love-bombing campaign, Elizabeth said the man was messaging her several times a day and speaking of his ‘very strong feelings’ for her. She said that by August — after he had subjected her to half a year of relentless grooming — she began to think “gosh, I really like this guy”.

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Delighted at what she thought was a budding romance, Elizabeth shared the news with her two best friends and two sons. ‘One of my friends asked me to promise him to never give him any money,’ she said. ‘My eldest son warned me that he sounded like a scammer and to watch Tinder Swindler. But I completely ignored him!’

It was around this time that the scammer began laying the groundwork for two of the stories he would use to squeeze money out of Elizabeth. One related to a new oil rig project the man said he had started in America after taking out a loan and remortgaging his house. The other related to his invented daughter, who he said had just split from her husband and was in desperate need of money. The scammer said he would have given this to her himself had he not just borrowed such a large sum of money.

He asked her to send £1,500 using iTunes gift cards, which can be transferred between people using a code. This is a popular method used by scammers, who then sell on the cards online at a discount.

‘It started in Autumn 2022 with me sending money for his daughter,’ Elizabeth said. ‘He then told me that a really expensive part of the rig had broken and he needed £10,000. I tried to send that via my bank but a man from the fraud department blocked it.’

‘The scammer said I should forget about all the money if it was causing me hassle. So for a few days I felt relieved, but then he came back and said I should use PayPal instead. He eventually got the money and said he was eternally grateful!’

The man invented a string of other scenarios to persuade Elizabeth to send him cash. By December 2022 she had pawned her late mother’s jewellery in a bid to help him — something that she said now makes her ‘sick to the pit of my stomach.’

The scammer’s behaviour showed a keen awareness of human psychology. He demonstrated this in March 2023, when he showered Elizabeth with sympathy and affection after one of her close relatives died. ‘The scammer appeared to be so kind and supportive — and the “empathy” he showed was unbelievable,’ she said.

‘He actually Facetimed me when I was driving but the call only lasted for two minutes. My sons now believe that was AI rather than him. I was in love with an image of someone who had been tailored to my specific needs. So I was totally brainwashed.’

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Showing the depths he was prepared to plumb, the scammer even posed the death of his imaginary daughter’s baby. Elizabeth was subsequently sent emails from the ‘heartbroken mother’ asking for money. Another time, he posed as a doctor who wanted Elizabeth to help pay his medical bills after he had supposedly fallen seriously ill. Desperate to help, she would go on to take out a loan and remortgage her home.

Ironically, the documents relating to these transactions would prove crucial to extricating Elizabeth from the scam after one of her sons found them in her bedroom and staged an ‘intervention’ with his brother in August 2024.

Recalling the moment they confronted her, Elizabeth says: ‘They asked “what is this, what has gone on?” but I was very defensive initially.’

In an experience that was remarkably similar to Elizabeth’s, the scammer posed as a charming American oil-rig worker named ‘David West’. In reality, this photo shows an American doctor whose photo had been stolen.

Ironically, the documents relating to these transactions would prove crucial to extricating Elizabeth from the scam after one of her sons found them in her bedroom and staged an ‘intervention’ with his brother in August 2024.

Recalling the moment they confronted her, Elizabeth says: ‘They asked “what is this, what has gone on?” but I was very defensive initially.’

The man had repeatedly promised to pay Elizabeth back and went as far as forging a cheque for $1.832 million and having it delivered to her home via FedEx in October 2023. She said she presented this cheque to her sons as that the man was genuine, but they quickly realised it was a forgery.

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‘My eldest Googled the address and saw it was a funeral home — it was also covered with biblical quotes,’ she said. ‘When the reality hit, I just went to pieces. I realised that I meant nothing to this man — if he even was a man — and I was just a means to an end. I was so blinkered and sucked in. You believe someone because you want to believe them and completely lose touch of reality.’

After realising she was the victim of a heartless scam, Elizabeth contacted the police and Action Fraud, the UK’s national fraud reporting centre for cyber-crime. Aided by her sons, a ‘fantastic’ Action Fraud caseworker and the charity Victim Support — which she described as a ‘life line’ — she was able to persuade her bank to pay her back two-thirds of the £200,000 she had lost.

Elizabeth was visited by a policewoman and gave a full account of what happened, but was told her case could not be pursued because the scammer lived outside the UK. She confronted the criminal on Skype, but he denied everything. Skype eventually agreed to block him and she has now deleted all the messages he sent her.

Looking back on the experience, Elizabeth says she ‘can’t believe’ she was taken in by the scam but urged onlookers not to judge.

‘You reflect on it and you can’t believe it was all a lie,’ she said. ‘I can’t believe that I did what I did. But if you’re not in that situation you won’t be able to relate to. If you haven’t walked my path then you can’t judge.’
(MailOnline/TRIBUNE)