[kellyhound]

An Australian woman has told a heart rending story about how she lost her life savings of $350,000 to Nigerian scammers who hooked her via a dating site.
Jan Marshall thought she’d finally found love, but not only has she had her heart broken, her life savings of $350,000 have been ripped away.

The Melbourne woman is just another victim of the online dating scams which have cost Australians almost $30million in the past year alone, the Mail Online reported today.

Ms Marshall, 61, signed up to dating website Plenty of Fish in the hope of finding love after moving to Melbourne from Brisbane in 2012, and matched with one ‘Eamon Donegal Dubhlainn’.

According to his dating profile, Mr Dubhlainn was from Manchester, England, but working in the United States as a civil engineer.

Within a matter of months, she had accepted his marriage proposal, arranged to meet him and started sending money to his bank account.

Little did she know that Eamon Donegal Dubhlainn didn’t exist, and his profile was invented and managed by a group of fraudsters in Nigeria that specifically targeted Ms Marshall.

‘We continued to communicate and very quickly he got me on email and phone and then instant messenger.’

‘Within a month it got very serious and he asked me to marry him, and I accepted, I was fully drawn into his love and attention.’

But for those closest to Jan, the alarm bells were ringing.
‘Several friends tried to warn me, when you were in these things they cut you off from your friends, encourage you to disassociate with them,’ she admitted.
‘They (the scammers) tell you that no one understands what we have, afterwards I had to go back to family and friends – your initial reaction is of shock shame and embarrassment.’
But the tactics were as effective as they were exhausting.
‘They talk to you morning, noon and night, they are professional and manipulative fraudsters, that’s the truth of the matter, just calling them “scammers” trivialises what they do,’ she added.

‘He’d returned to England and then supposedly took a short-term contract in Dubai and promised he’d come onto Australia six to eight weeks after that,’ Ms Marshall said.

‘Once he said he was in Dubai, the money requests started, initially he said he had to pay some taxes he hadn’t allowed for.

‘It all happened over six weeks, and I only paid out to him expecting to get it back.

‘And then it was money for business materials, and it got worse, he supposedly got robbed on the way to pay those taxes,’ she added.

More excuses and elaborate stories began to build, as did Jan Marshall’s expenses.
‘It was always amounts like $40,000, which I gave to him twice, then he said he was in trouble with those he’d contracted work to and had to buy out the contract for $77,000,’ she said.

‘The larger amounts went to bank accounts, those of $40,000 and $30,000 went through Western Union, even thought there is a limit of $10,000 and I was doing it in multiples of 10.

‘Then, when he was apparently on his way to the airport (to come to Australia) he had a car crash and was in hospital, they had other people like nurses and doctors contact you, a document showing the expenses and others playing other roles,’ she said.
‘I didn’t realise it was a scam until he got on a plane to England, he said “I’m on my way now, thanks for everything”, it wasn’t until then that I realised.

For Jan Marshall, the heartbreak and financial ruin caused by the online scam won’t end any time soon.

Now Ms Marshall is fighting the Australian Taxation Office, which is pursuing her for $76,000 after she accessed her superannuation for the ‘man’.

Victoria Police investigated, passing on details to Western Union ‘so the names used could be stopped, as only they can do this’.

‘The only follow up I received is that the money was collected in Nigeria, though I had sent it to Dubai,’ Ms Marshall said.

http://thenewsnigeria.com.ng/2015/05...tralian-woman/

[MrCorpse]

Congrats to the Nigerians for a well organised operation and a well deserved reward. For the victim - if you're that stupid you deserve to suffer, I wish I'd taken the money off you instead.

[commondenom]

[Mr Poo]

That Nigerian just won the damn lotto..

Some people are beyond gullible.

[rapeWhistle]

A fool and their money...

[Kelseecat65]

laugh

[DiamondSmiles]

These women are pathetic!

I guess they haven't watched those, "Datelines: To Catch a Scammer."

Judge Alex Ferrer sued them for scamming him and has money earning interest somewhere in Africa!

[Drusilla]

Originally Posted by diamondsmiles ↗

These women are pathetic!

I guess they haven't watched those, "Datelines: To Catch a Scammer."

Judge Alex Ferrer sued them for scamming him and has money earning interest somewhere in Africa!

For what it's worth, elderly men can be dopey bastards too.
Back in about 2004, friend of my mother's told us he'd been sent one of those 'Nigerian Prince' letters.
My mother, who had never even TOUCHED a computer knew about these scams from the goddamn NEWSPAPER & told him it was a bad idea.
She asked me(animator & enthusiastic pc owner/gamer) to confirm this. Which I did. However the old guy was a sexist as fuck and told us he didn't need our opinion and knew what he was doing. Said if he wanted advice he'd ask the pastor at his church.
Well, you can guess what happened.
Lost his house and spent his final years living in an old caravan.
When asked after the fact why he didn't listen to us, he said,"Women don't usually know anything about computers." Yeah, like an animator who studied computer animation, writes all my scripts on a pc, scans artwork etc wouldn't have a clue.(not that I can type for shit though!)
To this day his refusal to listen or at least get a second opinion on our warning still baffles me.

[Steve]

I have no sympathy for gormless people, if the mere utterance of the place called Nigeria didn't set off alarm bells then she deserved getting scammed.

[DiamondSmiles]

Originally Posted by Drusilla ↗

For what it's worth, elderly men can be dopey bastards too.
Back in about 2004, friend of my mother's told us he'd been sent one of those 'Nigerian Prince' letters.
My mother, who had never even TOUCHED a computer knew about these scams from the goddamn NEWSPAPER & told him it was a bad idea.
She asked me(animator & enthusiastic pc owner/gamer) to confirm this. Which I did. However the old guy was a sexist as fuck and told us he didn't need our opinion and knew what he was doing. Said if he wanted advice he'd ask the pastor at his church.
Well, you can guess what happened.
Lost his house and spent his final years living in an old caravan.
When asked after the fact why he didn't listen to us, he said,"Women don't usually know anything about computers." Yeah, like an animator who studied computer animation, writes all my scripts on a pc, scans artwork etc wouldn't have a clue.(not that I can type for shit though!)
To this day his refusal to listen or at least get a second opinion on our warning still baffles me.

This is true, Drusilla! Some of the men were featured in Chris Hansen's reports, too.