He’s left me a broken woman says victim of internet conman
A HEARTBROKEN widow who thought she’d found love online was scammed out of £12,000 by a fraudster pretending to be a US soldier.
The 66-year-old, who asked not to be named, says she “fell in love” with a man posing as a senior ranking member of the United States Army.
The con artist claimed to be General Mark Alexander Milley, and managed to convince the pensioner that he was going to move to Wales to marry her.
But just two weeks into their relationship, he demanded that she send him money because his son, who called her ‘mummy’, was in desperate need of medical treatment which he could not afford.
The grandmother began sending large sums of money through MoneyGram despite being warned by friends and family that she was being scammed.
But she said: “To me he was real. He used to say such lovely things to me and made me feel wanted.
“We would speak online every day, but he always had an excuse for not being able to talk to me over the phone.
“He told me he wanted to move to Wales and marry me, he even had me believing there were documents on their way to me in the post for me to sign so that he was legally my husband. Those documents never arrived.”
The victim says she enjoyed having someone to talk to after her husband died four years ago.
But his company came at a cost, and she now says she has nothing left of the inheritance left by her husband and has cashed out all of her savings.
She was even preparing to take out a loan in order to continue sending him money.
She has described their relationship as “sexual” and “intimate”, and says she now feels “dirty” and “embarrassed”.
The person posing as General Milley claimed he was in Afghanistan and then Ghana. A few months into the relationship she began to realise that something wasn’t right and contacted North Wales Police.
She claims police told her that “there was nothing they could do” and suggested that she contact Action Fraud, which she did not.
“He got into my head again,” she said. “He convinced me that he was who he said he was and that he was in love with me”.
She added: “After one argument, I tried to end the relationship, but then I received a message from someone who claimed to know him and he told me that Mark was in a coma in a serious condition after swallowing acid to commit suicide because I was arguing with him. “Everything was always my fault. “One month I wasn’t able to buy food or pay my gas and electric bill, but when I told him that, he asked me whether food and warmth was more important to me than him.”
She now has weekly meetings with a mental health professional and is on anti-depressants after she started feeling suicidal.
The conman even suggested two weeks ago that she sell her jewellery and wedding ring so she could send him money to get him to Wales.
She has now blocked the fake Facebook account and has changed her mobile number, but says she still feels vulnerable.
“Despite everything, I still miss him,” she said, “because to me he was real and I was in love. “He’s left me a broken woman. “I hope he rots in hell for what he’s done. If karma exists I hope it gets him.
“There’s nothing I can do about the money now, but my revenge will be stopping him from doing this to anyone else.”
The real General Mark Milley posted on his Facebook page in July warning people to be wary of online scammers.
He wrote: “There have been times that my image has been used fraudulently to victimize well-meaning people. These scammers prey upon the goodwill of others and harm the reputation of our great soldiers for their own personal gain.
“The best way to combat this is by educating individuals about the issue.”