I thought only fools fell for romance scams, then I lost £100,000. Here’s how I got my revenge…

Sitting on a bench overlooking the sea in a beautiful Cheshire village, I felt a deep sense of contentment.

This was only my second date with ‘John Wilmott’, but already I felt we had a special connection. Conversation flowed as if we’d known one another for years and we had so much in common, too. We shared secrets about our childhood, our divorces, the pressures of being a single 40-something parent. In fact, we sat on that bench talking for seven hours straight.

I thought I’d met a kindred spirit and, as the weeks passed, I fell completely in love. It would be 18 months before I accepted that John wasn’t John at all, but a man whose real name I still don’t know.

Because he wasn’t my soul mate; he was a fraudster — part of a sophisticated criminal gang that exploited my desire for love to rob me of over £100,000, including money I’d borrowed from my son’s inheritance. Before I became a victim myself, I thought women who got scammed this way must be desperate or stupid.

It took a year of counselling to accept I hadn’t been a fool, I’d been groomed; manipulated to the point I no longer knew my own mind.

Unless you’ve experienced it yourself, it’s impossible to understand the magnitude of the impact — destroying your faith in other people, and yourself, not to mention the financial devastation.

And it’s a growing crime. Recent research by Lloyds Bank found the number of people in this situation increased by 22 per cent in 2023 compared with 2022. In my case, only one of the scammers was ever caught and prosecuted. Two were never found — and it didn’t seem to be a police priority. But it should be.

Three years ago, I set up a Facebook group, Scam Stoppers, for victims of romance scams. Two of its 2,000 members have since taken their lives. This crime must be taken more seriously.

You assume romance scammers operate online from far-flung continents, but part of why I’d trusted ‘John’ was because I met him in person. Aged 43, I’d signed up to the dating site Plenty Of Fish in February 2015. It was two months after the end of a volatile 15-year relationship. I was also grieving the recent death of my father.

When John messaged me through the site, what stood out was how normal he was. I’d mentioned in my profile that I enjoyed volunteering for the blind and he said he made contact because he used to volunteer for a hospice, to which he still donated.

His profile picture showed a man in his 40s, with a lovely smile and receding hairline — attractive, but not intimidatingly so. For weeks, we messaged constantly. John said he lived in Liverpool, 20 miles from my home in Chester.

I told him about my recent, traumatic break up with the father of my two teenage children, and that I was still friends with the man I was married to before that, with whom I have three older children. He said his best friend was his ex-wife, who looked after their two children while he travelled as an intelligence agent.

He said he identified with my insecurities because his father, who lived in the Middle East, had made him feel a failure.

Now I realise he was mirroring my emotions to foster a connection — but any subconscious doubts were allayed when we met for a pub date.

Unlike internet daters who use a younger, more flattering profile picture (or someone else’s altogether), John looked the same as his picture. To me that suggested someone who was honest. He was polite and courteous. Dressed smartly in jeans and a shirt, he spent most of the evening asking me questions rather than talking about himself and kissed me on the cheek at the end of the evening.

I felt respected, understood — and was desperate to see him again.

The next day, we met again, driving to a village on the Wirral coast. On our way he said he needed to give something to his mum. ‘Come and say hello,’ he said. Embarrassed — it was only our second date — I stayed in the car. A grey-haired woman with a wide smile waved from her door.

When we arrived at our date spot we sat and talked for hours. I thought it was the start of something serious. I had no inkling that day would be the last time I’d see John in person.

Shortly after, he said he had to work in Tel Aviv for a while, nothing out of the ordinary for a man who’d told me he travelled a lot. Before he left he put his mum on the phone during one of our calls. ‘Look after my son,’ she begged me. ‘He’s been hurt before.’ My heart swelled protectively.

Then, a fortnight later, he rang to say his dad had died unexpectedly. He sounded so desperate as he asked me to fly out to Dubai to meet him and help sort out his father’s estate, which was substantial, with £7 million tied up in various investments. He cried and, asking me to hand the phone to my two youngest children, promised them I’d be in safe hands.

After I’d booked a return flight, John reimbursed me. While the situation was highly unusual, it suggested he was trustworthy. Then, as I came off the plane at Dubai airport, he called to say his boss wouldn’t give him any time off, and a colleague would meet me instead.

‘Phillip’ introduced himself at arrivals and drove me to my hotel where, later, John called again, apologising profusely and asking me to sign a document to release the money from his father’s estate on his behalf.

‘I don’t trust many people, but I know you’ll make sure it’s done properly,’ he said. I felt flattered.

So the next day, Phillip drove me to a building where I witnessed what I understood to be John’s dad’s will. Then Phillip opened a vault containing wads of U.S. dollars.

He asked me to look after a certificate he said would be needed to convert the money to sterling. It was bizarre, to say the least, but it wasn’t as if I was being asked to part with any money so I couldn’t see any risk. And Phillip seemed distraught by the death of his friend’s father.

I put the certificate in my handbag and tried to distract myself from John’s absence by sightseeing and sunbathing. But two days later, when Phillip asked for the certificate, I realised, to my horror, it was gone.

Stressed, Phillip said it would cost John £10,000 to replace. It wasn’t until much, much later I realised he must have taken it. I felt horribly responsible, so instinctively offered to pay the money, although my rented terrace home and carer’s job meant I didn’t have any funds to spare.

Borrowing £10,000 from a friend — I’d always been so cautious she had little reason to be concerned — I transferred it to Phillip, who said he was looking after John’s finances. Shortly afterwards, John, still apparently in Tel Aviv, told me complications meant the inheritance still couldn’t be released. It would cost £1,000 a week to store safely in a vault in the UK.

Still thinking the problem was all my fault, I borrowed money from my 25-year-old eldest son’s inheritance from my dad to pay it.

My son knew how careful I was with my finances, so didn’t object and I assumed it would unlock a large amount of money and I could soon reimburse my son and my friend.

‘I can’t thank you enough,’ said John, who told me he dreamed of setting up a children’s football academy with the money.

Promising he’d be home soon, he told me I was beautiful.

But months passed and I continued to pay Phillip’s account £1,000 a week. Friends I confided in grew concerned.

‘They think I’m being scammed,’ I told John one evening — we spoke regularly. ‘Stop telling them if it’s making you stressed,’ he said. So I did.

When my son’s inheritance ran out I started cashing in my life savings. By autumn, John said he was frustrated that Phillip hadn’t managed to release the funds and was going to get his diplomat friend ‘Doug’ to take over. Doug arranged to meet me in a London hotel.

Tall and besuited, Doug said the finances had been messed up by Phillip and he needed more money to release the cash — or John would lose everything. Already in so deep, I cashed in £28,000 of life insurance, that I’d been paying into since I was 16.

Still Doug said it wasn’t enough; I can’t remember how many times I transferred money in total.

Doug and I would meet up at the London hotel to discuss things and he seemed as out of his depth as I felt, tearfully telling me he was going to kill himself, that his wife had thrown him out because he’d also borrowed money to resolve the situation.

By the time I’d sold my wedding ring and the rest of my jewellery I’d reached breaking point; I was barely eating or sleeping.

So, when one evening Doug put his arm around me, before I knew it we were kissing. We slept together in my hotel room and again the following week. I didn’t want a relationship, but we were in the same boat, both of us dragged into a financial mess we couldn’t talk to anyone else about.

Then, in June 2016, a police officer appeared at my home. My son had told them he suspected John of fraud. I insisted it was nonsense. The policeman showed me a pamphlet detailing the signs you’re being scammed. One was that if you tell your scammer you’ve called the police you’ll never hear from them again.

So, in front of the officer, I texted John. He replied immediately. ‘Don’t worry. They’re doing their job.’

I felt vindicated, but on the train back from seeing Doug again in London shortly afterwards, John called. He had told me he was in Tel Aviv, but the code that flashed on my mobile was English. That one, tiny detail put everything into focus.

All of a sudden I realised my son was right. It had been 18 months of lies and deception. Phillip and Doug were as guilty as John — and I had been taken for an absolute fool. As fields flashed past the carriage, I couldn’t see a way out. I was up to my eyeballs in debt — over £100,000 — including mounting interest and bank loans.

Humiliated and isolated, I was hit with an overwhelming urge to jump off the train. The only thing that stopped me killing myself was leaving my loved ones to deal with my debt.

Instead, I went straight to Chester police station and told officers everything. They decided to do a sting operation and set a date, September 21, for me to meet Doug, where they’d arrest him.

But until then, as they carried out their investigations, for two months I had to carrying on acting as if I still believed his lies. It was the hardest thing I’d ever done.

When Doug kept asking for more money, I told him I was selling my house — that I’d give him the £26,000 he requested when it completed.

Then I pretended the sale of the house had gone through and told Doug I could send him a cheque.

I knew he wouldn’t accept —Doug wasn’t his real name — so I arranged to meet him with cash. Six plain-clothes officers accompanied me on the train from Chester and when I arrived at Euston station they dropped a GPS tracker into my bag, in case they lost me.

I felt sick as I waited for Doug in the lobby of the Park Plaza Hotel, the undercover police officers sitting on tables either side of mine. When he walked in, I put my handbag on the table — my signal for the police — and as Doug came to give me a hug, they swooped.

Despite the fact we’d slept together, I felt no sympathy as he was led away.

For weeks afterwards, John continued texting and emailing. When I didn’t reply and, presumably, he realised Doug had been arrested, he sent death threats, reminding me he knew where I lived.

I received messages from withheld numbers from people threatening to cut me up and kill me. The police installed panic buttons and cameras in my house and paid for counselling, but after arresting Doug they lost interest in finding John and Phillip.

They said it would be best for my mental health to draw a line under it and, in some ways, they were right. I threw my energy into working all hours to pay off my debts.

In April 2017, Doug — real name Ajibola Daudu, 50, a former car salesman and father of three from Essex — was convicted of what the judge called a ‘planned, complicated, sophisticated and systematic’ fraud at Chester Crown Court and sentenced to three years and nine months in prison.

At one point he started crying, saying he deserved everything, but this time, I wasn’t fooled. Police had told me he’d shown little remorse. He was a con artist, still putting on an act for the jury. He’s out of prison now, but I refuse to feel scared.

I’m proud to say, after years of careful saving, I’ve paid off most of my debt and I’ve found happiness with my partner of six years, a farmer. He’s a friend of a friend — I’d never return to online dating.

But even now, aged 52, the scars linger. The other day I was back at that seaside village in Cheshire and experienced vivid flashbacks of the afternoon on that bench; memories of the man I thought I’d fallen in love with, and the criminal who so nearly ruined my life.

As told to Antonia Hoyle.