how i lost everything when i fell for lonely hearts conman
So did middle-class divorcee Annie. Now she’s £50,000 poorer — and tormented by self-reproach
WHEN single mother Annie Ruddock joined an internet dating site she was confident she would be able to sort the wheat from the chaff, describing herself as ‘independent’ and ‘fiery’ on her zoosk.com profile. To further deter chancers, the 48-year- old divorcee wrote: ‘If you just want to contact me for a quick thrill, don’t bother.’
Only one of many replies stood out for Annie. The profile picture of Matthew Samuels, 50, showed a confident man i n sunglasses leaning out of a swimming pool, chin resting on tanned arms. ‘I like strong women,’ he told mother-of-three Annie via the website, ‘tell me about yourself.’
And so began an online flirtation in January 2013 which soon progressed to phone calls, dates, romance and the promise of a future together. Samuels may not have lived up to his profile picture (he was ‘little with tiny hands’ says Annie) but he was clever, witty, polite and an exceptionally good listener.
He was certainly all ears when Annie talked about her two failed marriages and another failed long-term relationship she had recently emerged from. He was sympathetic when she opened up about the recent death of her father. Samuels told her he was a semi-retired businessman worth £80 million. He claimed he had a law degree and, yes, that was his luxury Range Rover in the carpark of the Herefordshire pub where they met.
Together, they joked about the hopeless duds they had previously met on lonely hearts internet sites. Matthew repeatedly assured Annie he was ‘one of the good ones’. If only.
By the time Annie realised Samuels was anything but ‘a good one’ he had scammed her out of a substantial chunk of the £80,000 her father left her, leaving her £22,000 in debt and a shell of the feisty woman she once was.
‘I was incredibly stupid, there’s no skirting around that, but he was so convincing, compel- ling and clever. I thought I was a good judge of character. I thought I could spot a bad one but I was completely fooled.
‘When he offered to help me invest my inheritance and pay off my debts, I thought: “Well if he’s got £80 million he’s not going to be coming after my money.” I wasn’t after his money, he hadn’t even mentioned he was a millionaire on his profile, but I thought he could show me how to make my own. It seemed like a wonderful opportunity.’
Annie was not the only one to fall victim to this conman. Last week, used-car salesman and father-of-ten Samuels was jailed for eight years after being found guilty of conning five women and one man out of £180,000 over three years. He had denied 11 counts of fraud. The court heard Samuels left his former wife Caroline Morris, mother of seven of his children, £11,000 in debt on her credit cards, and with a mortgage of more than £111,000. She had to declare herself bankrupt. The couple were briefly involved in a ‘ menage a trois’ with Samuel’s then lover, a 21-year- old stable girl called Anne Marshall, said in court to be the mother of his other three children.
He also fleeced £12,000 from a female detective constable, £110,000 from an elderly widow, £7,500 from a Russian optician, £10,000 from another girlfried, Susan Vasey, and almost £50,000 from Annie. The court heard Samuels spent the money on cars and a flamboyant lifestyle to support the alter ego he had created to fool women. Indeed, he could still be conning other victims had Annie Ruddock not gone to the police in search of justice.
It was her complaint that triggered the police investigation which led fraud detectives to Samuels’s other victims and finally put the conman behind bars.
‘I have lost everything. My money has gone. I will never get it back so the least I can do is make him pay for that and stop him conning another person. Yes, it is humiliating and embarrassing but it has been worth it.
‘He robbed me of the person I used to be. He brought me to my knees and there were times when I didn’t know how I would get back up again,’ says Annie, a supply chain manager for a packaging firm from Ledbury, Herefordshire, whose onoff relationship with Samuels lasted 12 months.
‘Matthew may not have raped me but it felt like he did. It was as if evil had touched me and I felt dirty. In my naivety I opened the door to him but he never cared about me at all. He was just after the bigger prize; my money.’
‘At my lowest I wanted to die but I am a fighter and the very least I could do was make sure he paid for what he did. This was about stopping him, so perhaps he was the stupid one for conning me. My life is back on track and I won’t let him or what he did define me. Right up until the verdict I still believed he would get away with it. Luckily, the jury weren’t stupid — unlike me — and were not taken in by him.’
No one could be harder on Annie Ruddock than she is on herself. Even now as she tells the remarkable story of how she was conned by Samuels, she shakes her head as if she can’t quite believe how he managed to pull the wool over her eyes.
Today, the £ 22,000 debt she accrued during her second marriage (using credit cards to pay off loans and vice versa) still exists. The money from her father that she hoped would clear it and give her some financial security is nowhere to be found.
Annie did not even fancy Samuels when they met for their first date. He was dressed in jeans, Chelsea boots and a black jacket and her heart sank when she realised that he was barely the same height as her: 5ft 5in.
‘As we chatted he grew on me. He was very easy to talk to and I thought, if nothing else, we could be friends,’ says Annie. ‘He had this knack of getting you to open up and kept telling me: “Let your guard down, you can trust me.” There were no alarm bells ringing at all.’
Samuels claimed that he founded the internet insurance firm elephant.com, which he and a partner then sold, netting him £50 million. These days, he told Annie, he was semi-retired.
He claimed to be involved in a debt consolidation company and also had a worldwide property portfolio, which had boosted his worth.
‘I was thinking “Wow! Crikey!”. Here was someone who was really successful and knew about money.
‘ I was never interested in his money, only mine, and building security for the future. I believed him when he said that he could help sort out my debts and i nvest my inheritance.
‘After our first date, he asked me if I wanted a relationship. He told me I was the first woman he had been interested in during the three years since his marriage ended.
‘He kept saying how pretty and attractive I was. To be honest, I thought we were chalk and cheese. I am very feisty and outspoken and I worried I would not fit into his lifestyle. I thought he would be embarrassed by me but he told me he’d be proud to show me off to his friends.
‘He said I put myself down too much and said: “I want you to be happy. You deserve some happiness, you’ve been through some rough times. Let me show you how to enjoy life again.”
‘He told me I was really intelligent, obviously not as it turned out, and he made me feel good about myself.’
Samuels wooed Annie by sending flowers to her workplace. He took her out to expensive steak restaurants, where he talked about his children, giving the impression he was a devoted, loving father.
He took her to his home in Staffordshire, a gorgeous cottage with a fleet of gleaming luxury cars on the drive. He proudly showed off oak f urniture which he claimed was bespoke.
Samuels talked of a wonderful future together. He offered her a £50,000-a-year job managing his property business, plus a soft-top Mercedes, and sent marriage proposals by text message.
Annie, told the court she was ‘rubbish’ with money. ‘I said to him: “I feel really uncomfortable with you having that much money because I am r eally insignificant. How could you get into a relationship with me?” ‘He told me that despite his wealth he was just an ordinary guy, whose only weakness was luxury cars.
‘He said all he needed was a nice house and to make sure his children were looked after, which was another tick in the box for me.
‘He just seemed like a nice, decent person. We got on really well and he kept telling me I was wasted in my job and had great potential. He said
‘He told me to let my guard down, to trust him’ ‘I even gave up my job to work for him’
He had a fleet of gleaming luxury cars on the drive
we would be an amazing team. When we talked about my inheritance, he sounded so wise. He told me: “You’ve got £80,000 coming. It seems like a lot but it isn’t. You will get through that sooner than you think”. I got through it a lot quicker with his help.’
Even Annie struggles to understand how easily Samuels parted her from her money. Without a shred of doubt in her mind, she transferred £3,900 into what she thought was a debt consolidation company and a further £45,700 to be invested in an offshore account.
From the remainder of the inheritance, she made gifts to her three children and put some aside to buy some new furniture or replace her old car.
He sent her no paperwork or details about the account, despite many increasingly anxious requests for him to do so. He told her she was ‘too impatient’ and was being unreasonable. ‘You can trust me,’ he said, ‘I will never hurt you.’
The day Annie received an email confirming his job offer and detailing the terms and conditions, she immediately handed in her notice in May 2013, giving up a £30,000-ayear salary. No new job materialised after she had worked her threemonths notice, leaving her unemployed. She had to use what was left of her inheritance to pay the bills and buy food.
‘Once he had his hands on my money, I hardly ever saw Matthew. He was always either too busy to see me or had some excuse and I started to think: “What’s the point? This is going nowhere.” I wanted to end it but I kept thinking: “How will I get my money back?” ‘I knew there was something off, but I didn’t know what it was. I wondered if he was still married or if he Poorer but wiser: Annie cannot believe how Samuels fooled her was trying to manipulate me by having control over my money. I just wanted out of it.’
Each time Annie pressed for the return of her money, Samuels would hook her back in; usually with a sob story. One time he claimed to have collapsed in his shower, banging his head; another time he said he had cracked a rib. Then he told her he had prostate cancer, which meant hospital treatment might keep him away from her.
‘It was all lies. I don’t think anything that came out of his mouth was the truth,’ says Annie. ‘I was reduced to playing some horrible game to try to get my money back by pretending we still had a future together. If we split up or he died, my inheritance would disappear with him.
‘I had to grovel to him, which is not the kind of person I am; I don’t grovel for anyone. I had to tell him how sorry I was whenever we had an argument, and he’d act all indig- nant over the fact I doubted him. There were four months, while I wasn’t working, when I felt I had just died. I used to sit in my house, burning with shame at having to pretend that I still liked and trusted him, just to try to get my money back. I had no job — and I’ve worked all my life — and my inheritance was gone.’
That October, Annie burst into tears in his car as they were driving around supposedly l ooking at houses to buy together.
‘I cried: “I still haven’t got my money. This money has been a curse to me, it wasn’t millions but it was life- changing for me. Now I don’t even have a job.” He told me: “Look you’re being silly. I’ve got money to l ook after you.” He showed me a bank account on his phone with £ 98,000 in there. I wanted to scream: “Well, give me my money back then!” ’
Annie says she was so broke as Christmas approached she had to beg Samuels to lend her some money to buy presents for her three adult children. He sent her some, but as the New Year dawned Annie decided enough was enough.
She sent Samuels an email telling him not to contact her again and demanded the return of her money within the month. When it didn’t arrive, Annie confessed to her mother and stepfather, who tried to intervene on her behalf.
Samuels apparently told them he had paid off Annie’s debts and promised to forward documentation about her investments.
When they failed to materialise, Annie, who changed her number when a panicked Samuels kept trying to call her, went to the police.
She was stunned when she found out how many other women — including a policewoman — had been conned and says if this interview puts Samuels’ face in the papers again to warn others, then the embarrassment is worth it.
Since Samuels’s arrest last year, Annie has been rebuilding her life. Her former employers gave her a another position working in customer services, which she admits was a lifeline. She now has a new partner and says she is happy.
‘When I look back, it feels like I am looking at someone else and not me,’ says Annie.
‘I’m a lot wiser now and stronger. I thought I was destroyed but he hasn’t broken me. It is humiliating but if I had not gone to the police, he would be conning someone else right now.’