Photo: 62 year old Swedish woman swindled by a Nigerian Internet love fraudster forgives him, pays him a visit
62 year old Sweden
woman, Maria Frette pictured above has been swindled in another Internet love
scam involving a Nigerian. Maria, who is a divorcee, had opened a profile on a
dating site and met with a "58 year old Danish man" who eventually revealed
himself to be a 24 year old Nigerian man.
Speaking to BBC, Maria
who is an arts teacher, painter and arts therapist, said she received a lot of
notifications saying people were interestedin her and wanted to meet her but
she did not bother checking until one day when she took time to and was drawn
to the profile of a man who 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.
"I was caught
up by the atmosphere and by something in his words," she said.
The pre-amble
Johnny: "I wish I could see through your eyes and
see what you like to see"
Maria: "I like to see the truth, and often the
truth is more beautiful and greater than people dare to realize"
Johnny: "You talk in parable´s. I can´t wait
to see you"
Maria: "I cant understand how you can think so
dedicated of me, when you have never met me. That scares me."
"We spent some time
writing, then he called from a UK number."
Grette who had lived in
different countries across Europe, was surprised that she could not place the
man's accent. She mentioned this to him but didn't give it too much thought.
He told her that he was
planning for his retirement; had Sweden in mind for a place to settle; owned a
house in Denmark inherited from his parents; wanted to leave that to his son,
Nick, who was very attached to it, while he looked for a new home for himself
in Sweden.
"I wanted to meet
him because I liked him," she said. "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."
Grette put all these
qualities down to "an old fashioned upbringing and an isolated life -
living in hotels and spending his free time on golf courses owing to much
travelling".
After three months of
communicating, the man agreed to come over and visit her in Sweden. But before
that, he and his son needed to make a quick trip to Nigeria for a job
interview, he said. Johnny called to let her know that he was at Heathrow
Airport. And to say that he had landed in Nigeria. He also got her to speak
with Nick. The next phone call was to tell her that he was in a Lagos
hospital. They had been mugged, his son shot in the head, and they were
without money and papers. Unfortunately, his bank did not have a branch in
Africa, he added, so it would take time to transfer money from his UK account.
Meanwhile, the hospital management was requesting €1000 to proceed with
treatment.
"Honey, I am in the hospital right now using the doctor´s laptop to send you this message so you can know my situation. Honey, if Nick dies I will also die with him, I have been crying, I wish I could call you, I wish I never came here, I will never forgive myself for bringing Nick along with me. I will call you with the doctor´s phone and send you an email later if I have the chanse. Honey, I am happy to hear from you and I am still at the hospital. The doctor said we where lucky we where not kidnapped. The bank does not have a location in Africa, so it will take time to get money and the management are requesting 1000 euros to proceed with treatment. Nick is all I have got and I will not forgive myself if anything happens to him. I am confused, and I do not know where to turn at the moment......"
"I will never
forget how I rushed to the Western Union office, trembling while I did the
transfer," Ms Grette said.
"All I could think
of was to get the two persons in Nigeria out of danger."
The plot developed after
that initial transfer. Medical complications called for more money. The doctors
demanded more advance fees.
Several thousands of
euro later, in what she describes as "coming to her senses", Maria
realised that something was amiss.
She stopped responding
to his messages.Three weeks after her silence, he called her and confessed. He
told her that he was not who she thought he was.
"I said I already
knew that. I asked him to tell me his true identity and he did."
He was a 24-year-old
Nigerian 419 scammer. He had finished university two years earlier but had no
job.
He further described
himself as a "devil" who had wronged "a lovely woman".
"He said he had
never met anyone like me before, that he had been fighting his feelings for me
for a long time. He said his scamming mates had warned him about falling in
love with a 'client', that he had ignored them because he trusted me and did
not want to lose contact with me."
From this point on, their communication took a new turn. There were no further requests for cash.
"The attraction I
started feeling was to the person who was revealing himself to me... It was
still him, but with a new name and different age and circumstances," she
said.
Johnny sent her a
photograph of himself, but Maria was not satisfied with that.
"I wanted to meet
him," she said. "I could not live with this relationship unless it
was adjusted to reality in all senses."
Unable to get him a visa
to travel to Sweden, she made up her mind to go to Nigeria.
In October 2009, Ms
Grette travelled to Africa for the first time in her life.
"When I saw him at
the airport in Abuja, tears fell over his face, and I knew I had known him all
my life."
Ms Grette described her
two weeks in Nigeria as blissful, a period during which she and Johnny
succeeded in transforming their romantic feelings for each other into a good
friendship. She met his friends, many of whom were also scammers. It was
while enjoying their company one night in a local bar that she began to wonder
how she could make a difference.
"I asked myself what I could do to prevent a situation where healthy, good young men fall into this trap," she said.
An idea came to
her two years later, in 2011, after she saw an article on a Nigerian news
website about an arts exhibition.
Over the past six years,
Ms Grette has arranged for a number of African artists to visit Europe for arts
exhibitions, workshops, conferences and competitions. She has assisted
them to source international grants and other funding to advance their
work. She has also visited Uganda to give talks on art, and is looking
forward to another visit to Nigeria scheduled for later this year.
Ms Grette, now 69 and living in Norway, is elated at the opportunity to improve the lives of these young artists.
"Johnny has given
me more than he took," she said, "Without him, I would not have met
Africa."
When she'd visited him
in Abuja, Johnny promised Ms Grette that he would give up scamming.
With her assistance, he
left Nigeria shortly afterwards, to study in America.
Although they have not
met each other again since, she continued to provide him with financial
assistance until he completed his degree a few years ago and got a job in the
American oil sector.
They still communicate
frequently, updating themselves on each other's lives; and last year, he bought
one of her paintings which she shipped over to him in America.
"He is very dear to
me," she said.
"He has asked me so
many times to forgive him and I told him that the most important thing is to
forgive himself."
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