![\"The](\"http:\/\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/i\/pix\/2017\/10\/24\/23\/458EB1AC00000578-4999858-The_64_year_old_woman_revealed_the_moment_she_fell_head_over_hee-a-23_1508883600073.jpg\")
<\/p>\nA 64-year-old woman has opened up about how she was swindled out of $100,000 after falling for a man she’d never met.<\/p>\n
Patricia Meister, from Queensland, struck up an online relationship with who she though was a dashing middle-aged businessman after he sent her a friend request on\u00a0Facebook in 2015.<\/p>\n
Speaking to Daily Mail Australia, the woman revealed the moment she fell head over heels in love, before discovering her Italian lover named ‘Carlos’ was a Nigerian fraudster.<\/p>\n
Ms Meister said the man seemed keen to share every aspect of his life with her when he messaged her every single day.<\/p>\n
‘I’d never been on dating websites, and I only used Facebook for business. So when I got the friend request, I thought it couldn’t do any harm, can it?,’ she said.<\/p>\n
‘I guess at the time, I was going through a period in my life where I felt isolated. I’d been single for a while and I’d never been on dating sites.<\/p>\n
‘We started chatting. He was charming, smart and educated. He was very good with English and he was very romantic. I was very much in love with him at one stage.’<\/p>\n
She said the man who claimed he was based in Brisbane\u00a0had told her he was working in interior design and his heritage was Italian and Scottish.<\/p>\n
The pair exchanged messages on a daily basis before he started calling her to have phone conversations.<\/p>\n
‘When I first spoke to him, I heard his voice but he had a different accent to what I’d expected. I remember thinking “what is that accent?” I couldn’t place his accent.<\/p>\n
‘I wasn’t familiar with his accent at the time, but thinking about it now, he was definitely African… He was Nigerian.’<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Despite casting some doubts on him, Ms Meister continued speaking to him as the weeks passed.<\/p>\n
Within eight weeks into their relationship, ‘Carlos’ asked her if she could lend him $600 because his credit card wouldn’t work when he was in Malaysia for a project.<\/p>\n
‘It didn’t feel right but I thought “well, it’s not a huge amount of money to lose”. It wasn’t a huge request so I did a wire transfer to him,’ she recalled.<\/p>\n
‘A part of me thought it was wrong so I questioned him, saying “you’re a businessman, your credit card should work…” His story didn’t add up.’<\/p>\n
But his request for money didn’t end there.\u00a0He would make up a different excuse each time he asked her for money.<\/p>\n
‘Carlos’ was planning a trip home to Brisbane when his goods were held up in Malaysian customs. And so he needed a payment to retrieve them.<\/p>\n
‘The first amount I sent him was $7,000. When he went to get the money, he told me he needed another $7,000,’ she recalled.<\/p>\n
‘Everything he said was backed up by “documents” – and there was always a lawyer in the background when we spoke over the phone.<\/p>\n
‘When he tried to pay me back, he said his bank couldn’t do the large international transfer so he arranged for a courier to deliver the cash instead.’<\/p>\n
Ms Meister said she was given a link to a website with a ‘tracking sheet’, in which she kept a close eye on the parcel’s movement.<\/p>\n
But when the parcel reached Kuala Lumpur airport, there was a $25,000 fee to let the cash leave the country.<\/p>\n
‘Carlos had listed my business address on the documents so I was worried. I thought, “God, there’s a brief case full of money with my name on it”,’ she said.<\/p>\n
‘By that time, I thought it might look suspicious if I let my money in my name sit there, I was kind of thinking “well I’ve got to pay this money to get my money back”.<\/p>\n
She made the big payment but when the parcel got to Melbourne airport, she was hit with another fee.<\/p>\n
‘I pretty much paid it. Money was getting hard to find. He pretty much picked up the last amount of my money,’ she said.<\/p>\n
On the day she was scheduled to supposedly get the parcel with the money she’d been promised, she received a phone call.<\/p>\n
‘I got a phone call from someone saying Carlos and his lawyer had been in a serious car accident so they needed money for medical expenses,’ she recalled.<\/p>\n
‘My stomach dropped to my shoes. I knew at that point, I’d been scammed.’<\/p>\n
She didn’t pay for their medical fees – and the pair stopped talking for about a week.<\/p>\n
‘He then tried to request more money to cover his medical fees but at that point, I had gone through my last dollar,’ she said.<\/p>\n
‘I couldn’t pay him anymore and I even told him I wasn’t going to send him any more money. Shortly after that, he made a “miraculous recovery” but I’d stopped talking to him by then.’<\/p>\n
Ms Meister even tried to report the incident to police but there was nothing they could do after she was conned out of $100,000 in total.<\/p>\n
And two months later, she received a text message from Carlos, saying: ‘This is all a terrible misunderstanding.’<\/p>\n
Without a second thought, Ms Meister fired back: ‘You’re a scammer’.<\/p>\n
‘After I accused him of being a scammer, he ended our conversation with: “Catch me if you can, my dear”,’ she recalled.<\/p>\n
Ms Meister said she eventually found a support group called Romance Scams Now where women share similar tales of their ordeals.<\/p>\n
‘I used to hear about the TV stars who were scammed and remembered thinking “how can you send money to someone like that?”,’ she recalled.<\/p>\n
‘I think I was sort of aware but I had no idea these things could be so complex or how well developed they are.\u00a0It’s a worldwide business, it’s very difficult to catch them because they’re sitting behind a computer.<\/p>\n
‘People think you’re stupid but they’re not walking in our shoes. It’s not a matter of being stupid. Even the most intelligent, educated women are getting scammed.<\/p>\n
‘I know I’ll never get my money back but all you can do is raise awareness. There’s a lot of lonely people out there, the dating websites are riddled with scammers.’<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
Source: Daily Mail Australia<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A 64-year-old woman has opened up about how she was swindled out of $100,000 after falling for a man she’d never met. Patricia Meister, from Queensland, struck up an online relationship with who she though was a dashing middle-aged businessman after he sent her a friend request on\u00a0Facebook in 2015. Speaking to Daily Mail Australia, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[117],"tags":[1695,1696,1004,1697],"yoast_head":"\n