Horrific tale of a shattered romance and financial ruin
A MAN from Carmarthen has spoken of his horror after discovering his mother had handed over tens of thousands of pounds and put her house up for sale after falling in love with an online fraudster.
The con started back in March. The woman, who is in her 60s, has been living on her own since the death of her husband.
Unbeknown to her son and the rest of the family, she had met someone online.
Their relationship started through Facebook, and her son believes it could happen to anyone who is lonely and vulnerable and who might be desperate for company.
“I couldn’t go and see her because we were in lockdown,” said the man, who doesn’t want his mother’s name published for fear it will embarrass her.
“I still live in Carmarthen but she’s since moved to another town in South Wales, so she was on her own and we had no idea what was going on.
“The first we heard about it was when the police’s fraud team got in touch with the family.
“They had been contacted by my mother’s bank because there were large amounts, £10,000 a time, leaving her account.”
The widower had been chatting with a man who called himself Mark Anderson. Conversations went on between the pair for weeks in a normal and friendly fashion.
Mark, who said he was a doctor, wanted to know everything about her, but nothing that would immediately ring alarm bells.
Then he said that his account had been hacked and that they should move the conversation off Facebook and on to another platform. From then on, they chatted via email.
Shortly after this, “Mark Anderson” said he was having financial problems. He needed money to come back to the UK so they could finally meet. They were going to have a future together, he said.
He even said he had an eight-year-old son named Richard, who began conversing with the woman too. It got to the stage where he called her “Mum” and said he loved her.
By this point, the woman, seduced by his charm and his pleas for help, transferred £10,000 into an account he had provided the details of.
Soon after, she transferred thousands and thousands more. By the time her family came to know about it, she had transferred £61,500.
But that was not the worst part. Having run out of money, she decided, or was coaxed, to put her house up for sale to raise even more funds. Adamant that she wanted a quick sale, she agreed to sell her home for £109,000, an amount her family claimed was far less than it was valued at.
“Over the course of a few months this person asked a number of personal questions of my mother and by the end he knew everything about her,” said her son.
“There were red flags along the way. He wanted her to get into Bitcoin but she said no because she didn’t know anything about it, so she did have suspicions at certain points but she was fixated with this person. She was living on her own and she was vulnerable.”
Eventually, the woman’s affair came to an end when police called at her home – a home she had by then agreed to sell.
“The bank obviously noticed this activity on her account and they notified the police.
The local police fraud team broke the news to her: she had been a victim of fraud.
“She was absolutely devastated because, in her eyes, she was in love with a real person,” said her son.
The police are currently investigating the matter and the woman’s family are trying to cancel the house sale on the grounds it was done under duress.
This type of fraudulent activity has become known as “romance fraud”.
Dyfed-powys Police said that the technique, in its area alone, had cost people more than £1.3m.
They called it “a particularly cruel crime” which “takes advantage of people’s need for affection”.
A fraud safeguarding officer at the force, Rebecca Jones, said the very nature of the scam and its devastating effect on people was a reason why not enough victims talked about it.
“People feel ashamed about being tricked, often after having opened up about their desires or private feelings,” she said.
“This is not just about losing money: romance fraud can have a lasting impact on victims’ physical and mental wellbeing, their existing relationships with friends and family, and their ability to trust future potential partners.
“But there is no need to feel embarrassed; these people are professional criminals.”
The man from Carmarthen whose mother has been so badly affected is now, along with his family, trying his best to repair his mother’s life after it was ripped apart.
“These people prey on the elderly and the vulnerable,” he said. “He even said to her things like ‘don’t tell your kids about this’. He didn’t want anyone else to know because he knew we would see straight through it.
“He would tell her, ‘I will be able to come to Wales soon so we can meet in person, it will be amazing’, things like that. The questions these people ask are so personal and they are able to really get into someone’s head. The scary thing is, it’s very professionally done. They’ve clearly done it before and they’ll do it again.”
If you have concerns about a relationship, or fear you or someone you know has been a victim of romance fraud, you should contact your local police force by calling 101.