Woman dumped for romance fraudster fights back

Rebecca Lewis, a sales assistant from Ross-on-Wye, discovered that her fiancé had started a relationship with a woman he met online. She packed her bags, but decided to check up on the mystery woman he'd never met in the flesh. That's when she discovered he had become the victim of a romance fraudster.

The Daily Mirror reported that Rebecca (30) discovered her fiancé, Paul Rusher (a 29-year-old sales assistant), had received a Facebook friend request out of the blue from a pretty blonde woman calling herself Kristen White. She had contacted him ten times a day for months, and despite never having met, the relationship had become romantic.

Rebecca confronted Paul, and he told her their relationship was over. She left the home they shared, but decided to do some checking on this mysterious woman who had ended their relationship. She told the Mirror she was suspicious because Kristen used several numbers to contact Paul, and her story about an inheritance she was set to receive sounded dodgy.

That's when she discovered romance fraudsters were using the picture of an innocent Russian model to reel him in, before asking for money. This revelation came after an internet search using the word 'Romance Scam' produced an image of 'Kristen'.

Paul was on the verge of sending the scammers £2,000 - supposedly so Kristen could fly over from Russia - when Rebecca told him what she had found.

In a final twist to the story, a year after all this happened, in May 2014, the couple got back together, and are saving for their wedding again.

Romance scams

This is a surprisingly common twist on romance scams - which overall are thought to have snared at least 200,000 people in the UK.

The more common version involves posting their details on dating sites (along with a photo of a model) and contacting lonely men and women claiming to have fallen in love with them. Once the victim is hooked, the scammer persuades them to speak by phone or email, and they start to extort money from them.

However, there are plenty of people on scam forums who say they have been a victim of exactly the same twist on the scam as Paul and Rebecca. It begins with an approach on social media to men in relationships, and ends with the horrible realisation that they have been duped.

To protect yourself from the new twist, you need to be absolutely certain you don't befriend anyone on social media that you don't know in the real world. You should be particularly suspicious if a new 'friend' is contacting you regularly and flirting.

As with the internet dating scams, it's always worth asking yourself whether something seems too good to be true. If someone incredibly good looking with a great job and endless wealth is using dating sites and befriending strangers, you need to ask yourself whether this is likely to be real or part of a scam.

And finally, never ever send money to anyone you meet online - regardless of how convincing their reason seems for asking for it. It may seem like the right thing to do in the heat of the moment, but the point you send any cash is the time where an embarrassing mistake becomes potentially financially ruinous.

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