He thought this scam had started with the dodgy law firm, or possibly with his girlfriend’s daughter.
Although the police had warned him back in 2019 that this was all a scam, the fraudsters went to great lengths to convince him that his girlfriend was legitimate, forging her death certificate and various other documents to bring him back on board.
You were waiting for news, but I was in a difficult position. Although you were the one who wrote to me for help finding the truth, your partner had trusted me with deeply personal information, so I couldn’t betray his confidence.
However, while I was busy separating facts from fiction on his behalf, I encouraged him to come clean to you.
It didn’t take me long to confirm that all the letters from the various banks, including his own, Action Fraud and the solicitors were fake, which was enough to stop him handing over anymore “fees”.
He blocked the phone numbers the fictitious lawyers were using to call him on, hoping this would be the end of it.
But then something happened that left both our jaws on the floor: his girlfriend miraculously came back to life. In an email purporting to be from her, she failed to explain why she’d faked her death, but sent a photograph of herself in which she appeared to have aged dramatically.
I suspect the woman, or one of her accomplices, felt this was the only way to get him to engage again.
Several days later I tried to call your partner, but he said he was “in and out of meetings”. He later confessed, to my horror, that he had been on a train to an address the woman claimed to be living at.
He quite understandably wanted answers, but he never got them because she stood him up. I advised him never to make contact with her again and, to my knowledge, he has not.
Your partner waited until after your birthday and then came clean to you about everything.
Although you were deeply upset to learn of his betrayal, you say you’re glad you wrote to me as it has opened your eyes to the truth and made your partner face what he has done. You are no longer lovers, which he is devastated about, but he accepts this is down to his own stupidity.
Since my involvement your partner’s bank, Lloyds, has been investigating the fraud, which spanned over many years and involved a total of around 4000 payments totalling far more than the £500,000 he originally thought he’d lost.
As a result it has refunded £150,000. This is 50pc of the money your partner gave his girlfriend during the phase of the scam where she was still alive, but purporting to need money for the trust fund.
A Lloyds spokesman said: “We have also assessed that we could have done more to intervene during the earlier stages of the scam, given the unusual pattern of payments that had emerged. We have therefore provided a partial refund of those transactions, totalling around £150,000.”
The bank has said it will not refund your partner any money he lost after he was warned by the police in 2019, which I think is fair enough.
Like others reading this, you’ll likely be left wondering how on earth a supposedly intelligent man could have believed this fraudster and her far-fetched tales, even when the police warned they were all lies.
Although I don’t have all the answers, my observation is this: this woman and her accomplices found the perfect recipe for fraud by combining a frighteningly clever knack for inventing elaborate storylines with the age-old knowledge that some men can’t help but think with what’s inside their trousers.
Your now ex-partner may be no saint, but no-one deserves to be extorted in the cruel way he was.
You have agreed to remain friends, as you still care deeply for him. After coming clean to you, he now faces the humiliation of telling his children that he has handed most of their inheritance to a Tinder swindler.
Although the chances of him getting any more money back are slim to none, an active police investigation into the case is underway and, with any luck, the perpetrators will receive the justice they deserve.
