A Perth woman “desperate for love” has been left homeless after losing more than $780,000 — her whole life earnings — in two online romance scams.
Annette Ford says she was first conned on the online dating site Plenty of Fish in 2018 after her 33-year-long marriage fell apart.
“I was gullible and foolish and I thought I was in love . . . we’re all so desperate for love,” she said.
“I had been protected for 33 years and my husband did all of our accounts . . . and seeing him move on with a new partner (was difficult) and I thought I needed to do the same.”
The 57-year-old says she spoke to William — who claimed he worked in Kuala Lumpur — online “for months” before he asked her for $5000.
“He said he had been mugged outside the site he was working on (in Kuala Lumpur) and they took his wallet and his cards,” she said.
“The next thing I know he’s in hospital and I’m being landed with a $5000 hospital payable to an Australian doctor.
“I (paid) that . . . then there was a hotel bill, and he said he couldn’t pay the workers on the site because he didn’t have access to his cards.”
Ms Ford says she quizzed William, and at times, even accused him of being a scammer, but said he always had a logical explanation.
“He always had a back-up plan, he always had an answer,” she said.
“There were many times I had huge arguments over the phone saying, ‘you’re scamming me, do you think I’m stupid?’ but it kept going.”
Ms Ford says William swiped more than $300,000 and even “drained” her self-managed super fund.
Ms Ford says she filed a report with the Australian Federal Police but “got nothing”.
“Apparently what I should have done was gone straight to my local police,” she said.
Four years later, in 2022, Ms Ford met the second scammer, Nelson, on Facebook.
Ms Ford said Nelson — who allegedly lived in Amsterdam but claimed to have a friend working for the FBI — asked for $2500 to help with an investigation.
“He threatened me and said, ‘I can’t go further with the case’, and I said, ‘go for your life, I have nothing . . . you can’t take anything away from me that anybody else hasn’t done,’” she said.
Then Nelson started sending her money, asking her to deposit it into a Bitcoin ATM.
“Every time I had to go to the crypto machines . . . it would have been $1000 a pop, and that happened on many occasions,” she said.
“There was money coming into my account and going out of my account that I wasn’t even aware of.”
Ms Ford even visited Amsterdam twice, but after failing to meet him, quickly discovered there was “nobody there by that name”.
Ms Ford says Nelson swindled her out of about $280,000 — the entire capital gain of what she earned from selling her house.
“I was foolish enough to keep going,” she said.
Ms Ford — who was self-employed at her own dog grooming business — says she worked so hard to earn extra money that she injured her shoulder.
“I was doing eight or nine dogs a day, so I was earning really good cash and working myself to death . . . and it was going straight out the door, straight into somebody else’s bank account,” she said.
Now, Ms Ford is couch-surfing in Helena Valley and says she is looking to find a permanent home at an affordable retirement village.
She is reliant on Centrelink benefits and is in the process of applying for a disability support pension.
According to Consumer Protection’s WA ScamNet, Ms Ford is just one of 57 West Australians who fell victim to online romance scammers in 2024 — a decrease from 71 reported victims in 2023.
Consumer Protection commissioner Trish Blake said the dip in numbers was promising, but warned people to stay vigilant.
“The drop in victim numbers gives us hope that people are learning to identify the red flags sooner and that friends and family are playing a role in stopping these scams before any money changes hands,” she said.
“However, we must remain vigilant as scammers are constantly adapting their tactics and using a wider range of channels to target their victims, including dating sites, gaming apps and social media.”