Deceitful online relationships are not uncommon, but getting swindled out of $100,000 because of one definitely is.
This is what happened to Patricia Meister, a 64-year-old woman from Queensland, United Kingdom, who fell in love with a man she had never met before.
After a handsome middle-aged businessman named Carlos sent her a request on Facebook back in 2015, she didn’t see the harm in accepting it. She was feeling alone and isolated at the time, had been single for quite a bit, and had never used a dating website before.
“We started chatting. He was charming, smart, and educated. He was very good with English, and he was very romantic. I was very much in love with him at one stage.”
Carlos told her he was of Italian and Scottish descent and was based in Brisbane. They chatted almost every day, and he would share almost every aspect of his life with Meister.
After a while of chatting online, they started having phone conversations.
Meister recalled hearing his voice for the first time on the phone:
“When I first spoke to him, I heard his voice, but he had a different accent to what I’d expected. I remember thinking, ‘What is that accent?’ I couldn’t place his accent. I wasn’t familiar with his accent at the time, but thinking about it now, he was definitely African… He was Nigerian.”
Although she had a few doubts about him, she continued to talk to him over the phone.
Approximately eight weeks after starting their first phone conversation, Carlos asked Meister if she could lend him $600 because his credit card was not working properly in Malaysia, where he supposedly was for work. She didn’t feel quite right about it but thought to herself that $600 was not a big sum to lose. She didn’t see it as a huge request, so she transferred him the money.
“A part of me thought it was wrong, so I questioned him, saying ‘You’re a businessman, your credit card should work…’ His story didn’t add up.”
But this wasn’t the end of his requests.
His requests for money started to multiply, and every time, Carlos would have a different excuse. Eventually, Meister sent him $7,000 because his goods were being held up by Malaysian customs on his way home to Brisbane.
Meister believed his story because he was able to back up all of his statements with documents and always had a lawyer on hand. After the $7,000 she initially sent him, something went wrong and he needed another $7,000. When he tried to pay her back, Carlos told Meister that his bank wasn’t able to complete such a large international transfer and that he therefore organized for a courier to deliver the money in cash. She was given a tracking sheet, where she was able to keep an eye on the movement of the parcel.
Unfortunately, the parcel was “held up” in Kuala Lumpur. According to the tracking sheet, a fee of $25,000 had to be paid to allow for the cash to leave the country. Since Carlos had put Meister’s business address on the sheet, Meister was worried she would get in trouble, so she paid the money.
When the parcel arrived in Melbourne, Meister was required to pay yet another fee.
“I pretty much paid it. Money was getting hard to find. He pretty much picked up the last amount of my money.”
Soon enough, Meister would realize what she had gotten herself into.
She received a phone call on the day her package was supposed to arrive.
“I got a phone call from someone saying Carlos and his lawyer had been in a serious car accident so they needed money for medical expenses. My stomach dropped to my shoes. I knew at that point, I’d been scammed.”
Meister stopped talking to him, but after a week, he tried to have her pay for his medical expenses. Meister refused to pay, and he texted her saying that it had been a terrible misunderstanding.
“You’re a scammer,” she messaged back.
He ended the conversation by telling her, “Catch me if you can, my dear.” The fraudster has now been identified as being from Nigeria.
Today, Meister has lost over $100,000. Although she knows she won’t make that money back, she hopes she can raise awareness about the dangers of online dating and scammers.
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