Now it’s men who are the victims of lonely hearts fraudsters
THE threatening phone call demanding money woke pensioner Peter Lock in the dead of night. Though feeling muzzy-headed, the message he received was loud and clear.
Peter was to transfer a sum of money immediately, the stranger’s voice said, or he’d never see his girlfriend again.
It was the third night in a row that Peter, a retired businessman and tennis coach from Kettering, Northamptonshire, had been called and ordered to hand over money.
This wasn’t some elaborate kidnap ransom, however. The threat was supposedly from a Malaysian customs officer in far- off Kuala Lumpur, where his girlfriend Martha was trapped due to some administrative mix-up.
Peter had already emptied his current account of £1,000 in response to earlier, desperate pleas. Now they wanted more.
Heart pounding with growing panic, Peter couldn’t understand how his mundane life had been utterly transformed in just one week.
By now, most people will have worked out that Peter — a kind, gentle and, by his own admission, naive divorcé — had fallen victim to a dating fraud. While women are the classic victims of this form of internet deception, there is a growing number of men falling prey to criminal gangs who, by falsifying identities of single women, defraud them of money.
Last year alone, a staggering £27 million was handed over to online dating fraudsters by British men looking for love.
Action Fraud, an arm of the City of London police, receives an alarming ten or more reports of romance deception a day — 3,889 in the 12 months from 2015 to 2016 — and new figures reveal that 39 per cent of those falling victim to dating fraud are men.
Investigators believe the true scale of the crime is much greater, as many people — and particularly men — are embarrassed to admit they have been conned, so don’t complain. The ruse is wickedly simple. Using a photo of an attractive woman and building a false identity around her, criminal gangs target vulnerable men looking for love by responding to their online dating profiles.
As he now realises, 70-year-old Peter Lock fell hook, line and sinker. His would- be ‘girlfriend’ didn’t exist. The attractive, wealthy, 32-year-old blonde with whom Peter had been swapping messages all week was just a front used by a professional foreign gang.
Peter’s sorry story began with a friend suggesting he join an online dating site. Divorced for 20 years, followed by a couple of failed relationships, Peter decided he would.
‘I’d never been on a dating site before, so was a little nervous,’ he says. ‘But within minutes, I got a message from an attractive blonde purporting to be from Ilford, Essex, and calling herself Martha Alfson.
‘Her profile said she was only 32. When I pointed out that I was nearly 40 years her senior, she insisted: “Age is just a number.”
‘Naive it may have been, but I don’t mind admitting I was thrilled that this lovely young woman had seen my picture and biography and liked the look of me.’ But that was far from what was happening. As interactions are conducted via online messages, rather than over the phone, male criminals — usually working in teams and operating from bases in Western Africa and Eastern Europe — take turns to send emails and have no difficulty in pretending to be female.
Peter’s utter ignorance of the dating website scene and all its pitfalls was apparent from the start. He’d intended to sign to the hugely popular Tinder, as his friend had suggested, but inadvertently joined Ashley Madison, a website he’d never heard of but is most commonly associated with people seeking extra marital affairs.
Peter handed over his joining fee of £109.92 on Saturday, December 3.
Most of the women the site suggested as suitable matches were in America — then ‘ Martha from England’ popped up on his screen. She claimed to run a company selling fabric and said she was in Malaysia buying material, but was due to return home within days.
Messages went back and forth between them — Peter telling of his passion for tennis and Martha talking about her business, her £40,000 white Mercedes C-Class and her love for Arsenal football club, where she claimed to hold two season tickets.
It was this detail, says Peter, that really reeled him in. A keen sports fan, he couldn’t help his imagination running riot, conjuring up images of taking a seat at the Emirates ground in North London beside a beautiful young blonde. EAGER to get to know the woman behind the emails, Peter suggested they meet up when she got back, and booked a £250-a-night room at a hotel he knew to be a favourite of the England football team.
The clever drip-feeding of information alluding to a successful business, fancy car and lavish lifestyle, was the fraudsters’ way of duping Peter into believing that the person he was communicating with was a woman of considerable means.
That is why, just 36 hours after they began exchanging messages, when Martha told him she was having trouble leaving Kuala Lumpur because she was £1,000 short of the cash she needed to pay export duties, it never occurred to Peter that he was about to be defrauded.
To give weight to the deception, photographs of huge containers filled with fabric were sent to him, which Martha claimed were hers.
Unable, she claimed, to access her bank accounts, Martha asked if Peter would help her out, promising to repay him when they met up.
Peter agreed to lend her the cash, transferring it, as instructed, to an account number she had given him, via Western Union.
‘I felt so sorry for her, stranded in a foreign country far from home,’ says Peter. ‘Though I’d never met her, we’d told one another so much about ourselves, and had even started planning a future together. I referred to her as “my future queen”.
‘I realise, with hindsight, that all those messages we exchanged were just softening me up so that she could take my money.’
His description of Martha as ‘she’ shows that, even now, Peter finds it hard to accept this woman never actually existed. But then hurt, coupled with the humiliation of having exchanged sweet nothings with conmen, are difficult to bear.
Not content with having fleeced Peter for £1,000, a day later Martha claimed that customs officials were demanding even more money before they would let her depart. FEELING protective, and enraged on her behalf, Peter called the British High Commission in Kuala Lumpur, asking them to intervene — but an official there told him they had no record of a British citizen named Martha Alfson in the city.
Martha had her story ready. She was half- Spanish, she said, and, therefore, had a Spanish passport. And no, she couldn’t talk, as her phone didn’t work in Malaysia.
‘Then came the 3am call from a man claiming to be a Malaysian customs officer. He referred to Martha as my wife and said that if I wanted her to come home, I needed to send more money,’ says Peter.
‘I told him I didn’t have any more money to send, but he insisted that I’d promised more cash and needed to honour that. He sounded African, rather than Malaysian, but by then I was in so deep that I guess I couldn’t bear to let my mind explore what might really be going on.
‘Later came a message from Martha saying: “Why are you so heartless? I know you have the money — but you don’t want to help me.” ’
Passion can blind even the wisest to the truth, and Peter sent a further £640, via Western Union, emptying his current account.
A reply came back thanking him, saying he had ‘proved’ his love and promising to repay him.
The final message — a response to Peter asking when she would be arriving in the UK — came on December 9: ‘I will update you when I get things sorted out, dear . . . Love you.’
After telling the story to family and friends, and when his next messages went unanswered, it began to dawn on Peter that his dreams of a happy-ever-after with Martha were unlikely ever to materialise.
His final message, on Saturday, December 10 — just one week after his costly foray into the world of online dating — read: ‘Hurry back as you have left me with no money to live on. Heartless springs to mind!’
With no further word from Martha, Peter reported the crime to the police and Action Fraud, who have been unable to trace the thieves or to recoup his stolen cash.
Ashley Madison have not responded to our requests for comment.
Detective Chief Inspector gary Miles says the first trap Peter fell into was exchanging email addresses rather than keeping communication on the website where it could be traced more easily.
‘The people who perpetrate this type of offence are ruthless, organised, committed and without conscience to the pain, embarrassment and financial loss they cause to their victims,’ warns DCI Miles.
While a quarter of those targeted are men aged over 50, younger men are also vulnerable to this type of fraud — which can even lead to blackmail.
James Curtis, a 42-year-old lecturer from Devon, was one such man. Last August, James received a private message via Facebook, the social networking site.
An attractive blonde in her mid-30s claimed they had mutual friends and they had once met in London.
Believing she looked ‘ vaguely familiar’, he began exchanging messages with her.
A couple of days later, she asked if he would like to chat over Skype, an
online communication system where it’s possible to see the person you are speaking to on your computert screen.
James said he would, but was taken aback when he answered the call to find a blonde woman on a bed, naked.
A message came up on his screen asking if she could also see his body unclothed. James thought it would be rude not to reciprocate, but what happened next left him sickened. It could have cost him his job and landed him in prison.
‘The screen went blank and then five seconds later a video of me with my bits in my hand in front of another screen with child pornographyh on it appearedd on the screen,’ he says.
‘There was no sign of the woman and a typed message came onto the screen. It was utterly horrific.’
The message, he said, accused him of being the very worst thing a person could be accused of — ‘and as it dawned on me how foolish I’d been, I started crying’.
James was then told that if he didn’t pay them money, the video would be sent to all his Facebook friends and family. Terrified, James went straight to the police, where he was somewhat relieved to learn th thatt many otherth men h had df fallenll into the same trap.
‘The police said that if I’d sent the money, they’d have kept blackmailing me for more.
‘I also decided to post something on my Facebook page explaining what had happened and asking that anyone who received the video delete it immediately.
‘What these conmen want is for people to be too ashamed to talk about these incidents. That way, they keep getting away with it.’ Indeed, the police urge victims to contact them because the informationti helpsh l buildb ild a profilefil thatth t can ultimately lead to the arrest of the criminal gangs.
A spokeswoman for Facebook said the safety and security of its users is of ‘huge importance’ to the company, and anyone who breaches its standards for acceptable behaviour is ‘warned or removed’.
David Thurlow, 58, was also brave enough to go to the police after someone pretending to be an old friend named Kerry contacted him via a dating site — and then fleeced him of £1 £15,000.
Messages were exchanged for several months, withw Kerry — like Martha — pre pretending to be temporarily overseas.over Before long, she claimed she needed financial help to get back to England.
The day she w was due to arrive, David got a cal call from someone purporting to be an immigration officer and claim claiming that Kerry would be sent to prison unless he sent money for a document she urgently needed.
David later dis discovered from his bank that he waswa part of a much larger scam, tot totalling £7 million with numerous v victims.
‘ I was devas devastated by what happened and it’s massively changed my life,’ says David. ‘I don’t feel I can trust anyone. I felt so low that without Victim Support I don’t think I’d be here.’
Peter Lock is still counting the cost of the deception. ‘I was foolish and gullible,’ he says. ‘The experience has shattered my faith in meeting someone with whom I can live out my twilight years.’ Some names and identifying details have been changed.