'I clicked on the wrong person who became my scammer'

A great-grandmother who was conned out of £10,000 by a man she met on an online dating site says she does not expect to live long enough to get her money back.

Dorothy Fox, 85, from Westbury in Wiltshire, lost her husband of 39 years in 2001. In 2016, she joined a dating site looking to meet someone.

She was contacted by a man using the name Mark. At first, he was charming and sent her gifts, but after a few months he started asking her for money.

Johnson Ani Opare, from London,was convicted in 2017 of money launderingand ordered to repay her the full amount. But more than eight years on, with nearly £7,000 still outstanding, Fox said she does not think she will ever see it all repaid.

"Unfortunately, I clicked on the wrong person who became my scammer," Fox said.

"Basically he was a bit like a fisherman - he was reeling me in."

The man she knew as Mark told her he had lost his briefcase, with his wallet and passport in, and he did not have any money.

The pair had been chatting for many months online and Fox now believes she was the victim of what she describes as a "RomCon", also know as romance fraud.

But at the time, Fox said she believed he was interested in a relationship, even when Mark failed to turn up to arranged meetings.

In the end, it was her family who convinced her she had been conned, when he sent her a photograph from hospital.

"My daughter looked at the photograph and said 'Mum it's a scam, that head doesn't belong on that body'," she said.

Fox then looked up an address Mark had given her, only to find out it was fake.

"When I said 'I'm not paying, and the house you said you lived in doesn't exist' he slammed the phone down on me," she said.

Police were able to take Opare to court for receiving Fox's money, but he was not charged in relation to the alleged actions of 'Mark'. He was requested to make regular payments, but Fox said these became sporadic.

She said she thought she would be waiting a long time to get the full amount.

"I anticipate - I mean he hasn't paid for two months now - that I'll probably be about 102, 103 and the chances of me living that long are pretty remote," she added.

The fraudster's actions are something that Dr Elisabeth Carter, a criminologist and forensic linguist at Kingston University, said is typical of romance scams.

She said it is normal for victims to be groomed for many months, so that by the time the request for money is made, it is in the context of what seems to be a legitimate relationship.

"These fraudsters use all sorts of different types of language techniques," she said.

"They use words such as 'just' and 'only' to make something feel as though it's not such a big deal at all, or they use words like 'us' and 'together' to make you feel like it's you and them against the world," Carter added.

The scam was reported by Fox to Action Fraud, now replaced by the new Report Fraud service, the national police reporting centre for cyber crime and fraud.

Det Supt Oliver Little, at City of London Police, the national lead force for fraud, said it is often an under reported crime

"I think part of that is people often feel ashamed or embarrassed, so one of the key messages is for people not to feel embarrassed about reporting to the police," he said.

"Last year we saw 10,000 reports of romance fraud to us, and people have lost some life-changing amounts of money.

"Probably the most important thing to do is report this to your bank and to Report Fraud so that we can use that information to stop someone else falling victim," he added.

Where Fox lives in Wiltshire, 114 people reported romance fraud in the past year, totalling just under £1m.

"I'm angry, not just for me but for other people who are going through this experience," Fox said.

"I can't believe that one human being can do it to another human being, it's truly wicked."

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