French Woman Loses Thousands in Online Dating Real Estate Scam

The fifty-year-old was duped by this lover with whom she had been in a relationship for 8 months. "It wasn’t a very serious story at first. I found this man on a dating app and I chose him on his physique. He had a magnificent torso and I love that. I’ve been single for 3 years and I’m treating myself a bit since then. I don’t really want to live with a man anymore and I’m looking for more casual relationships. I’m not ashamed of that. My friends know about it. My children too. [...] It happened that my daughter in particular told me that she thought a man wasn’t made for me, for this one she said nothing. And yet she saw him several times. Like me, she didn’t suspect he could be a thief," Carole confides.

"I was doing well with him. That’s why I started to project myself. [...] We talked about having a place of our own, where to go on vacation. It seemed like a good idea to me. He had a house project in Morocco that was already well advanced. I loved the idea. We had been there for a weekend and I had really enjoyed it. He showed me photos, he told me what he wanted to do. Rent it out when he wasn’t there but enjoy it to the fullest during the winter in France. I was completely in agreement with that. So when he offered me to participate so that it would also be a bit my house, I didn’t think twice. I was like a little crazy. I didn’t ask any questions when he started asking me for money, very regularly and more and more, I believed I was paying for the work on a house in Morocco. Our house," she details.

The fifty-year-old will add: "I thought I would get a return on investment. It lasted 5 months like that. He showed me photos. He let me choose things. By chance, I didn’t have time to go back there because of my work. That’s what allowed him to gain time, and more money. As soon as it was a question of my going to see what was happening on the construction site, he disappeared." In total, Carole says she gave her partner more than 12,000 euros; an amount which, she estimates, "was not disproportionate given the work and decoration that had to be done." "I mostly felt stupid when he disappeared and I found at home things I had already bought for over there, sheets, cushions."

The single mother admits to hesitating to file a complaint. "I don’t know if I want to start a procedure like that where I’ll have to repeat that I believed something as stupid and where I wrote checks without checking where they were going. The last check, which had not been cashed, I had it blocked. [...] I think I was a little in love, so I’m dealing with the feeling of having been betrayed and that of having been dumped by a man I was starting to love. I’m mostly sad, not really angry. I think the complaint is an act of anger. It will probably come later but for now I’m far from it. I’m rebuilding myself slowly. I’m with my loved ones. I’m staying away from men. I see a psychologist. I’m focusing on myself."