UK woman loses £113,000 to romance scammers

In the world of cyberspace, headlines have recently been occupied by an increase in email and text phishing scams and the ubiquitous threat of ransomware.

And while ransomware and phishing represent some of the most prolific online threats out there today, when it comes to the amount of damage a scam can do per individual victim, they both pale in comparison to online romance scams.

The success rate of online romance scams may be low. But what makes them one of the biggest threats on the Internet is the devastating impact they can have when they are successful. Not only in terms of their emotional impact for their victim, but because each victim can lose many thousands of pounds to the hands of such scammers.

Rachel Elwell, 50, from Brownhills, West Midlands is one such victim who lost £113,000 (GBP) to romance scammers and claims she is now facing bankruptcy. Much of that money Ms. Elwell secured from multiple bank loans.

It was part of a scam that continued for many months and it’s an all too familiar story. Ms. Elwell met a man on a dating website, and soon they were speaking outside of the confines of that site, despite never meeting in person.

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The man claimed to live in the UK but was currently working abroad in the Ukraine on an engineering contract. The romance blossomed quickly.

But soon, problems began to arise. The man claimed he needed money due to unforeseen circumstances arising from COVID restrictions in the Ukraine. The engineering contract was shut down and his equipment seized. He needed money for food and taxis, which Ms. Elwell duly sent over.

But there were more problems. Loan sharks, kidnappings and arrests all played key parts in the scammers story as the requests for money came thick and fast both over the phone and across the Internet. And the amount of money requested was only increasing at the scammer’s attempted to get as much money from their victim as possible. At one point the scammer claimed to have been abducted by captors and unable to escape, and sent over photos allegedly showing him stuck in a cellar.

Eventually the scam exposed itself as the scammer claimed he had been arrested at Heathrow Airport. After waiting four hours at the airport, it was the Border Police that had to break the news to Ms. Elwell that it was probably all just a scam.

Telling the BBC about why she sent over so much money, Ms. Elwell said –

When he said to me his life was in danger and I didn’t hear from him, I thought he’d been murdered.
…Can you imagine feeling you’re responsible for whether someone lives or dies?

Ms. Elwell even visited a property in Coventry where the man claimed to live with his daughter and her nanny. Neither was there. Both have likely never existed.

The man that Ms. Elwell had come to know and trust also wasn’t real. As with most of these scams, she was really speaking to someone completely different, using false information, from an entirely different country.

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All the red flags to a romance scam were here, but there are still so many who don’t understand exactly how these scams work.

Those red flags include –

– The claim that they cannot meet in person because they are living or working abroad.
– Claims that they need urgent money because of unexpected issues with their financial situation.
– Eager to speak outside of the confines of a dating website or app (which will be able to detect many signs associated with suspected romance scams.)
– May seem eager to advance the relationship and claim that the victim “is the one” or that they are in love.
– Will often ask victims to keep their communications private from friends and family.

According to the National Crime Agency, the average victim of romance fraud loses just over £10,000. This makes romance scams the most personally devastating Internet scam out there.

We have a larger article on romance scams which you can read here.