A FORMER air stewardess has told how she lost her £50,000 life savings to a Nigerian scam that targets UK dating websites.
Divorcee Brenda Parke, 62, believed she was in a phone and email relationship with a blond 46-year-old Dutch widower called Bradford who claimed he was living in Birmingham with his 14-year-old daughter. But he was really a conman in the Nigerian city of Lagos.After a month, he claimed he and his daughter had been in a car crash while on a business trip to Africa. Brenda wired £9,000 for "hospital bills" then £40,000 for "flights" back to the UK, but she went to Birmingham airport and no one arrived.
She says: "My conscience would not let me leave a young girl in that situation so I sent the money."
Brenda reveals her cautionary tale on Channel 4 documentary 419: The Internet Romance Scam - named after the number for fraud in Nigeria's penal code.
Producers later flew to Lagos to interview reformed fraudster Felix Ekpa, who explains: "You put a picture on the website, an age, a profile, but nothing is real.
"When a woman emails, you get them to chat then throw in that you are having problems - been in hospital, a car crash (Felix laughs), an armed robbery, cancer... "
Desperate to believe "Bradford", Brenda, from West Sussex, had driven to the Birmingham address he had given. But a postman told her that no one of that name lived
She says: "I was now in a dreadful state - not eating, not sleeping, alone and scared. I felt overwhelmed by my own stupidity."
A second woman, known only as Caroline, tells the show, screened next Friday at 7.30pm, how she was duped by a man calling himself Sabastine who posed as a Greek-born Brit working in Nigeria.
Furniture painter Caroline, 55, of Tunbridge Wells, Kent, says he later confessed his TRUE identity as a Nigerian called Steven - and insisted he was in LOVE with her.
Caroline, feeling vulnerable after the death of her mum, flew to South Africa to share a holiday with him.
She tells the show: "At the airport he had tears in his eyes and I did too. It was really exciting, like Christmas when you were a kid."
They rented a flat in South Africa for three months and she later flew home - before investing £30,000 in supposed oil deals in Africa which police believe never existed.
Amazingly a relationship by phone still continues - as Caroline struggles to meet her bills. She admits: "Sad, isn't it, so late in life? It's insanity
Read more: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/features/3710589/Women-tricked-out-of-cash-in-online-dating-scam.html#ixzz1T40tzvyC
They are silly women who are looking for trouble. They warn people about these scams ALL the time. Why will you be sending money to a person you met online?
ReplyDeleteAnyway, wisdom has nothing to do with age!
Kai, oyibo women ma sef. It is sad that our men are so cold but these women too. 40k pounds for a flight...is it a private jet. Even Airclinics do not cost that much. I hope they bounce back alright but please, I do not know how many stories have to come out for these women to learn a lesson. No man that loves you and have never met you, will ask for money...haba.
ReplyDeleteI feel not an ounce of pity for this woman! Sorry, O, she be mumu! How do you just let go your hard earned money, $100,000 just like that to some fool you met on this fking INTERNET? Sight unseen? Really? I mean, seriously? For what? So she can eventually get someone to stroke her right at 62? All those years were a waste because she didn't learn shishi. Love ko, Conscience ni! She hasn't read of all these scams or was it because na oyibo name so she tink sey e no be scam?
ReplyDeleteNTAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW! Get back to work and begin working until you are 92 to earn that money back!
lol @ still in love.
ReplyDeleteOnly Greedy pple and those without brains still fall for this scam in this century!
ReplyDeletemmhh.....na wa for people o. Instead of blaming the fraudsters, una dey blame the victims!
ReplyDeleteKai.....na wa for una.
So na crime to fall in love?