They texted like two teenagers in love. Hundreds of messages pinged back and forth, punctuated with emoticons of wedding rings, hearts, flowers and kisses.
Much to the chagrin of her friends, Barbara (who requested her last name be withheld) was constantly checking her cellphone.
At 76, and a widow for four years, she’d decided she was ready to meet somebody new, so she joined a Christian dating website.
“When you are a Christian person you want to be with a Christian person because you have certain values,” she said.
It didn’t take long before the North Van senior got her first “smile” sent from an online admirer.
“His picture was there and he was a very nice-looking man,” she said.
She fretted a bit over the age gap. He was 63.
“But he said you don’t look your age and you’re beautiful and after all age is just a number,” she said. “So the flattery began.”
He told her his name was David.
“He told me he was a Christian and how he hated lying and deceitfulness and told me his personal story.”
He lost his wife to breast cancer and his daughter had been killed in a car accident. He had a 10-year-old granddaughter that he sent pictures of.
He was German, educated in Berlin, and now an engineer on a deep-sea oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico.
David was self-financing the oil-drilling project and had 40 employees working for him. He’d get paid when the project was completed. He sent pictures of himself decked out in a safety vest on the rig.
The budding online romance started in late July and quickly accelerated.
One day, 177 texts went back and forth. “Plus he would phone me and I would talk to him half a dozen or 10 times a day, first thing in the morning and at night.”
“I got a love email every morning from him,” she said.
One began: “To my wonderful woman who makes me feel like a feather in the wind.”
He also sent her roses. He talked about marriage and happily ever after. “He was smooth.”
But then came bad news. The drill for his oil-rig project snapped and needed to be replaced immediately.
“He had sunk all his money into this project. Could I lend him some money for the drill? I’ll pay you back, darling,” she recalled. “I believed him and sent money.”
With a new drill, the project was back on track and she received a note from a bank that $1.5 million was being delivered to her account. She asked him why. He wanted to pay her back and also buy a house when he came to Vancouver to be with her, he said.
But then more bad news. There’d been an explosion that injured him and several crew members. So he needed more money. She received another email form the bank alerting her that the transfer was being held pending investigation of the explosion.
She sent him around $300,000.
Still, blissfully in love, she never got suspicious, but her friends did.
The brother of a friend did some online sleuthing and came across a site dedicated to warning others about oil-rig scams.
“Barbara, there’s something wrong,” the friend said. “I argued with her. I was in denial.”
She thought about what her friend said and visited the RCMP the next day.
Sitting across from an officer, she said, “I’m 76 years old and I’m stupid.”
“He said ‘Oh, yeah. This is a scam, Barbara. This happens every five minutes. He said: No, Barbara, (you’re not stupid), you were on a Christian website, you are a Christian person, you are caring, you’re loving, you want to be helpful and this just sucked you in.’”
The chances of police apprehending the shadowy online Casanova are slim.
“They told me that when I transferred that money, because I transferred it to accounts in the United States that probably within 15 minutes of that money arriving it would be gone.”
She said RCMP detectives figure the suspects are from Eastern Europe. “That suits him because he had a German accent. The pictures that he sent are not of him. The story is not him. His name is not David.”
Cpl. Richard De Jong, North Vancouver RCMP spokesman, said online romance scams aren’t uncommon.
“It’s worldwide; it’s not just a new phenomenon to this area. But what it does is it builds up on the trust and vulnerability and good will of a relationship that is built online, hence (the) red flag for people to give money to somebody they don’t really know who they are.”
Despite the initial embarrassment, Barbara decided to share her story to warn others.
“When I have told my story to younger people, they look at me with total disbelief,” said Barbara. “How could you fall for something like that? Then I tell people closer to my age – they’ve never heard of those type of scams. I think there are a lot of seniors, particularly my age, who are widows, and they are lonely and they are looking for company and people talk about going online so they go online. That’s what I did,” said Barbara, a former VP of finance and administration.
“I am no dummy but I was vulnerable.”
When he tried to reconnect again saying he’d recovered from the explosion, she replied via text, “David, or whoever you are there is a God and some day you are going to answer to him.”
Falling victim of the scam means Barbara will need to leave the North Shore, her home since she was a child. “I have to sell my condo. I can’t afford the interest payments (the credit line she used to pay the scam artist is tied to the equity in her home),” she said. “My interest payments are $1,000 per month. I’m a pensioner.”
But she’s not stopping her life.
In fact, when a TV station came to do a story on her, they asked her to log on again to the dating site so they could take a shot. She forgot to log off and the next day she heard a ping and looked at the screen.
“I wondered if it was him. This David or whoever he was.”
It was somebody else.
“Interestingly enough, and my friends just shake their heads but I’ve met another man.”
But this time, she wasn’t taking any chances. When the new man told him which church he attended in the States she looked it up and called the pastor’s wife to inquire about the parishioner she’d met online.
“She said ‘Oh yes, he’s real. He’s a lovely man.’” She shared her story and the woman said, “You’re doing due diligence. Good for you. And she told me her daughter got scammed on the same site.”
Barbara has put the scam behind her. “I’m not going to get my money back; there’s no retribution, there’s nothing I can do. So life goes on.”
This weekend she’s planning a trip to Washington state to visit with her new boyfriend. “This (new man) will be part of my life.”
“I have very strong belief in God and this accident of (the dating site being left open) and meeting him. We both say God’s at work here.”
