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I was scammed by my soulmate: The shocking rise of online dating fraud
By Anna Moore For You
Published: 00:03, 20 March 2016 | Updated: 09:38, 21 March 2016
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He says he’s single, honest and looking for love – just like you, in fact. All he needs is a little money to get him through a tricky situation… Last year in the UK, online dating scammers conned their dates out of £33 million. Anna Moore investigates the crooks who target smart, successful women
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The sentencing in January of two ‘lonely hearts’ conmen, Ife Ojo and Olusegun Agbaje, has put dating fraud back in the headlines yet again.
Using a fake profile on the popular dating site Match.com (they operated as ‘Christian Anderson’, a divorced engineer), the pair managed to persuade a newly divorced mother of two to sign over a staggering £1.6 million, some of it her own, the rest borrowed from family and friends.
The victim, a company director in her 40s who lived in West London, never met Christian face to face. She believed he was working on a project in Africa.
The first payment was (she thought) a loan to buy specialist equipment to help him finish the project and get home. The next was apparently to settle a police fine.
Then came the inheritance that needed ‘freeing up’.
On the basis of just these scant facts, it seems incredible that a well-educated, successful and responsible woman would even consider handing over her life-savings to an apparent stranger – and yet chilling details from the trial hint at the sophisticated brainwashing involved.
There was the well-thumbed copy of the seduction handbook The Game by Neil Strauss found in the home of one of the conmen.
Based on the secret techniques of pick-up artists, the book contains step-by-step instructions on how to ensnare a victim, such as ‘Select a Target’, ‘Isolate the Target’, ‘Create an Emotional Connection’ and ‘Blast Last-Minute Resistance’.
Police also found a copy of For You, My Soul Mate by Douglas Patel, a book of heartfelt messages to share between lovers.
A few transcripts of exchanged messages revealed the mind games and guilt trips that were used.
When the victim questioned the sums of money requested, she was accused by her ‘lover’ of being insecure, or of making him ‘feel down’ when he had only phoned to enjoy a ‘sweet good Friday’ together.
Using age-old marketing techniques, Christian created a picture of their life together so real that the victim actually went house-hunting for the two of them. The life he described would all be theirs, if they could just get those few final obstacles out of the way…
Dating fraud is becoming more sophisticated, more successful – and more devastating to its victims. According to police, such fraud increased by 16 per cent in 2014-15, with recorded losses of more than £33 million.
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