Australian women Annette Ford,57, was defrauded and lost over 4.3 crore to online scammers.
Annette Ford, 57, felt lonely after her 33-year marriage ended in 2018. To find companionship, she joined the online dating site Plenty of Fish and met a man named ‘William.’
After chatting online for a few months, William told Ford that he was in trouble. He said thieves had stolen his wallet during a fight outside his office in Kuala Lumpur. William first asked Ford for AUD 5,000 to cover his urgent expenses. Later, he said he needed more money for hospital bills, hotel stays, and to pay his workers, claiming he couldn’t use his bank cards.
Ford began to get suspicious and accused William of being a scammer. She said they had “big arguments over the phone,” but William always had a good reason for everything. In the end, William tricked her into giving him over AUD 300,000, which emptied her self-managed superfund, according to reports from the Daily Mail and The West Australian.
Ford reported the scam to the Australian Federal Police, but she said she never heard back from them.
In 2022, Ford met another scammer, this time on Facebook. The man, who called himself ‘Nelson,’ said he was from Amsterdam and started another online romance scam.
Nelson’s first request for money was AUD 2,500. He claimed it was to help a friend working for the FBI on an investigation. Later, Ford was told to send money through a Bitcoin ATM, with each transaction costing her $1,000.
“There was money coming into my account and going out of my account that I wasn’t even aware of,” Ford said.
Ford was determined to meet Nelson in person, so she traveled to Amsterdam twice. But she eventually realized that Nelson wasn’t real. By the time she found out, she had lost AUD 280,000, which was the entire money she made from selling her home.
Ford is now applying for a disability support pension and has to rely on Centrelink benefits. She is currently homeless and trying to find a place in a retirement village.
“I’m not physically or mentally capable of going back to work at the moment. I’m extremely embarrassed,” she said.
