Drama As Swedish Woman Travels To Nigeria To Meet The Man Who Defrauded Her
Unlike many victims of online dating scams who want the criminal prosecuted, Maria Grette boarded a plane to see the Nigerian 419er and forge a new relationship with him.
She had fallen in love with a 58-year-old Danish man, only to find out that he was actually a 24-year-old jobless Nigerian graduate.
“The most terrible thing was not that he had cheated me, but that he had lost his innocence,” the 62-year-old woman tells BBC. She then was consumed with the need to “make a difference to the people of Nigeria“.
She met Johnny through a dating platform where her friends had created a profile for her. Johnny described himself as “a Dane raised in South Carolina, USA; a civil engineer working on a contract in England; a widower with a son in a Manchester university.”
Their relationship kicked off. He called her using a UK number and she couldn’t place his accent.
“I wanted to meet him because I liked him,” she tells BBC. “He had a way and a sweetness I had never known in a man before. And he was innocent in a way that puzzled me.”
He got her to speak with his ‘son’ Nick over the phone, and then told her that they were travelling to Nigeria for a job interview. He called her, claiming they were at Heathrow Airport, and later, that they had landed in Nigeria. The next call she got from him, he claimed they were mugged in Lagos; his son was shot in the head and he didn’t have the €1000 requested by a hospital for treatment because his bank has no branch in Africa.
“I will never forget how I rushed to the Western Union office, trembling while I did the transfer,” Maria Grette says. “All I could think of was to get the two persons in Nigeria out of danger.”
The request for money increased and with time, she came to her senses. She stopped responding to his messages. Three weeks later, he called to confess and revealed his identity. He had fallen in love with her and had been fighting guilt. He described himself as the devil.
Their relationship transformed and he never asked her for money again. In 2009, she travelled to Nigeria to meet him.
“When I saw him at the airport in Abuja, tears fell over his face, and I knew I had known him all my life.”
She had fallen in love with a 58-year-old Danish man, only to find out that he was actually a 24-year-old jobless Nigerian graduate.
“The most terrible thing was not that he had cheated me, but that he had lost his innocence,” the 62-year-old woman tells BBC. She then was consumed with the need to “make a difference to the people of Nigeria“.
She met Johnny through a dating platform where her friends had created a profile for her. Johnny described himself as “a Dane raised in South Carolina, USA; a civil engineer working on a contract in England; a widower with a son in a Manchester university.”
Their relationship kicked off. He called her using a UK number and she couldn’t place his accent.
“I wanted to meet him because I liked him,” she tells BBC. “He had a way and a sweetness I had never known in a man before. And he was innocent in a way that puzzled me.”
He got her to speak with his ‘son’ Nick over the phone, and then told her that they were travelling to Nigeria for a job interview. He called her, claiming they were at Heathrow Airport, and later, that they had landed in Nigeria. The next call she got from him, he claimed they were mugged in Lagos; his son was shot in the head and he didn’t have the €1000 requested by a hospital for treatment because his bank has no branch in Africa.
“I will never forget how I rushed to the Western Union office, trembling while I did the transfer,” Maria Grette says. “All I could think of was to get the two persons in Nigeria out of danger.”
The request for money increased and with time, she came to her senses. She stopped responding to his messages. Three weeks later, he called to confess and revealed his identity. He had fallen in love with her and had been fighting guilt. He described himself as the devil.
Their relationship transformed and he never asked her for money again. In 2009, she travelled to Nigeria to meet him.
“When I saw him at the airport in Abuja, tears fell over his face, and I knew I had known him all my life.”
Comments
Post a Comment