Bachelor killed himself after series of dating scams
A CORONER has highlighted the dangers of internet dating scams following the suicide of a lonely bachelor after he was cheated out of thousands of pounds by fraudsters posing as potential girlfriends.
Ian Doney, 51, sent money and paid for flights after believing that he had met one girlfriend online who said she was travelling to the UK.
After he spent all day waiting at the airport, he gave more money for medi- cal bills because he was told her visit had been prevented by an accident.
Mr Doney, a shopworker from Grimsby, Lincs, was so desperate for happiness that he resorted to starving himself so he could afford to meet the incessant financial demands of his online “partners”.
An inquest yesterday heard that Mr Doney was unable to separate fact from fiction and even changed his Facebook status to “in a relationship”.
He was sectioned under the Mental Health Act after repeatedly trying to take his own life. He was finally found dead at his home and died penniless.
The inquest heard Mr Doney had visited a website for single people looking to travel abroad when he began speaking to an individual online in the summer of 2015.
His sister, Gillian Doney, told the inquest at Cleethorpes Town Hall that he intended on meeting the person during the trip but the rendezvous never materialised.
But after returning home, he changed his Facebook status to “in a relationship” despite never having met the woman behind the messages. By this time he had already started sending money to the fraudster without his family’s knowledge. Ms Doney said her brother had hopes of getting married and starting a family. She said: “He had not had a relationship with anybody. He just wanted a family.
“He was borrowing money to send over there. He wasn’t eating properly and he was starving himself. Anything he could sell, he sold it.”
The court heard Mr Doney later took an overdose and was sectioned under the Mental Health Act. But as he appeared to get better, he began messaging other dubious characters online.
Mr Doney died on August 30 last year. Recording the death as suicide, Assistant Coroner Jane Eatock said: “It’s quite clear that the mental health difficulties stem from these really unfortunate relationships with fraudsters. It is a huge problem.”
Ms Eatock asked mental health managers to look into what could be done to support people who are vulnerable to such instances of fraud. She also recommended the police send evidence of the correspondence between Mr Doney and the scammers to the UK’S cyber crime reporting centre, Action Fraud.