A Nanaimo senior has lost close to $100,000 in a “notorious” dating-site scam similar to others that have duped seniors, Nanaimo RCMP say.
The woman, in her early 70s, went online to meet people after the death of her husband, police said. She was lonely and signed up for Match.com, a free dating site, and soon began exchanging emails, texts and phone calls with a man who gave his name as Jonathan Lucron. He told her he was a civil engineer working in China.
Their correspondence developed into what the woman felt was a relationship. After a number of months, he started asking for money to support the projects he said he was working on. The woman sent money to accounts around the world, although she had never met Lucron in person.
Several weeks ago, Lucron told her he was travelling to a city near Nanaimo, which police did not name, and was planning to ask her to marry him. She went to the city to await his arrival, but after two days of checking with airlines, she realized he wasn’t going to show up.
She realized she had been scammed and called police.
Police have found no record of Lucron. The area code of the phone number he was using has been traced to southern Ontario, but there is no record of the number or of Lucron in any police databases.
Entering “civil engineer dating scam” or “dating scam” in a Google search will show many testimonials from other women who have met the same fate, police said.
Nanaimo RCMP Const. Gary O’Brien said efforts are made to inform seniors about such scams. “I’ve given dozens of presentations to seniors’ groups,” he said. “Some seniors haven’t gone public but they’ve made disclosures to me that they’ve lost anywhere between $40,000 and $60,000. Others would have lost money if it hadn’t been for an intervention by local employees at chartered banks.”
O’Brien said “alarm bells” should go off for anyone if a person they know only from online contact starts asking for money. “You can be anybody online,” he said. “You can develop a fake persona and this is exactly what the person did.”
Police recommend visiting the federal government’s Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre website at antifraudcentre.ca for more information on dating scams and on reporting scams.
jwbell@timescolonist.com
