An Australian woman, who thought to have found her love during an online dating, has been fleeced 100,000 dollars
An Australian woman, who thought to have found her love during an online dating, has been fleeced 100,000 dollars
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Katie Stuart, 55, who was scammed out of the amount, went public with her story, as Commerce Minister Simon O''Brien launched a revamped Consumer Protection WA ScamNet website.
The grandmother from Perth, who started online dating in 2009, eight months after a divorce, said that it all started due to her loneliness.
The man, whom she communicated with online, asked Stuart to be part of a joint venture to renovate a house in Florida, and having been involved in real estate projects before, she was keen on getting along with it, reports WAtoday.com.au.
Stuart, who drew money from her mortgage and sold her car and jewellery to get money to make the payments, sent a few thousand dollars at a time via Western Union to the man, who claimed to be an engineer, based in the United Kingdom, but actually was a scammer, based in Nigeria.
The whole fraud started to unravel when Stuart began receiving electronic goods, which had been sent to her and had been purchased by fraudulent credit cards in her name.
She called the police and tracked the man's real identity online, finding that she was not the only one to have been scammed by him.