A British warehouse worker, Dave Hazel, who was hoping to marry his online lover someday, has finally cried out years after he was scammed of £15,000 by a Ghanaian fraudster posing as a Canadian lover.
Dave said he fell in love and was planning to get married to the lady called ‘Linda Smith’ whom he believed was a Canadian after meeting her on a dating site in 2012 and over a year the pair developed their relationship through exchanging messages.
He said they began building up a relationship, having conversations daily, with the lady introducing herself as Linda Smith.
Dave said:
“I met her on a dating site and she looked like someone I’d met in London and she said she remembered meeting me.
“I even rang her and she spoke with an accent that sounded more English than Canadian.”
However, her requests for financial aid became frequent and extreme and Dave found himself caught in a web of lies when he discovered that his ‘Canadian’ lover was actually from Ghana.
Dave said he had sent a massive £15,000 in total to his internet love before confronting Linda about some flights he had paid for which he discovered had been from Ghana, not from Canada.
After confronting her and subsequently emptying all of his savings, she cut contact from him and has now disappeared from the internet.
“The first thing she asked me for was a VISA costing £500. I was ready to have a full relationship, and I was happy to help her. She asked me to send it through Moneygram – which works almost like PayPal and two weeks after that it was another £500 for a medical check,” Dave said
“She said she would marry me and have children – she was promising everything I’d always wanted.”
Dave said he paid for what he believed were plane tickets, visa complications and more – fully believing that Linda Smith was on her way to finally meet him.
Upon visiting his local bank, it was discovered that all the paperwork, which showed email correspondence between Dave and ‘Linda’ and evidence of where Dave had sent his money to, proved Dave had been a victim of a scam.
Bank staff also told him there was no way he could get his money back, as he had voluntarily sent it and it couldn’t be traced.
Dave added:
“It was the darkest period of my life – I asked them if they were joking, I couldn’t have been conned.”
