British Woman Duped Of £1.6m By Nigerian Fraudsters Via Online Dating Site (Photos)

A lonely heart woman was tricked
into handing over £1.6million to a
gang of dating site conmen who used
a copy of pick-up manual The Game
and posed as a wealthy engineer to
win her affections.
The woman in her 40s from
Hillingdon, north west London,
thought she was in an online
relationship with a divorcee father-
of-one called Christian Anderson.
But little did she know she was
actually being tricked by a gang of
fraudsters including Ife Ojo, 31, and
Olusegun Agbaje, 43, who duped her
into ‘loaning’ them a staggering
£1.6million, telling her the money
was needed to free up inheritance so
they could start a new life together
Detectives believe they were part of a
wider romance fraud gang – many of
them based overseas – who target
lone and vulnerable women on the
Internet.
On their arrest police found a laptop
containing records of conversations
between the woman and the man
called Anderson and a copy of The
Game, a bestselling book on the art
of seduction.
Detective Chief Inspector Gary Miles,
of the Met’s FALCON cyber crime
and fraud task force, said:”This is a
growing problem, in recent months
we have seen an increase in reports
of romance fraud.””Within the past
year Falcon officers have
investigated the loss of more than £4
million in relation to about 100
victims.
These victims were ruthlessly
manipulated by men and women
pretending to love them.”The
suspects showered them with
compliments and confided their
seemingly innermost secrets to them.
In many cases suspects were talking
to victims online or over the phone
for hours every day. In the latest
case the woman, from Hillingdon,
told police she had met a man called
Christian Anderson on a dating
website in February last year.
Unusually, they met in person after a
couple of weeks when he told her he
was an engineer working in the oil
industry and was divorced. As the
relationship continued he convinced
the woman he loved her but said that
he needed a loan of £30,000 for
equipment for an engineering
project in Benin, Africa.
The woman paid the cash and
handed over further sums in a series
of increasingly elaborate requests by
the man who convinced her they
would soon be living together.
At one stage the victim began house
hunting for them and even travelled
to Amsterdam to meet an associate.
The woman told detectives she often
doubted the man’s authenticity but
every time she asked for proof he
sent convincing but false
documentation.
DCI Miles said:”Victims of this fraud
must understand they are not foolish
and they are not alone.
These fraudsters go to great lengths
to convince their victim. But these
victims are not gullible, the
fraudsters are very professional,
often they are talking from carefully
prepared scripts.
“Police advise that people should
never send money abroad to people
they have not met or do not know
well, question people’s stories and
talk to friends about the
relationships.
Source: DailymailUK