Handout
A photo of Mark, not his real name, taken on a holiday paid for by Alice
Alice thought she was rekindling a romance with a childhood sweetheart when she started a relationship with a former school friend, Mark, in 2020.
Instead, she became the victim of romance fraud and was conned into handing over £42,000 – only for police to initially dismiss her case as a civil matter.
After breaking up with Mark, she discovered he had been leading a double life with another woman and Alice’s money had probably been used to fund it.
Alice, a solicitor from Shropshire, said the betrayal was something she was “really struggling to come to terms with”.
What makes her case unusual is that she knew her fraudster and they had a full relationship – a lot of romance fraud takes place between people who connect online or in some cases have never even met.
Anna Rowe, who runs a charity helping victims, said a lack of understanding meant “in person” romance fraud was not always taken seriously by police forces.
“If victims are walking into a police station and those police do not understand what romance fraud is, they’re making that journey more traumatic by shaming the victim or making them feel stupid,” she said.
Alice (with her back to the camera) with Romance Fraud expert Anna Rowe
West Mercia Police is now investigating Alice’s case after Action Fraud deemed criminal activity had taken place.
In the past four years, the force, which covers Shropshire, Herefordshire and Worcestershire, received 111 reports of romance fraud, 23 of which were investigated.
Only four investigations led to charges.
A Facebook message
Alice and Mark, not their real names, went to the same school, had a brief relationship in their 20s and had 50 mutual friends on Facebook.
For years their interactions were limited to exchanging happy birthdays.
But in October 2020, Mark began to message Alice regularly and they reconnected, sharing tastes in music and food as well as stories of the past.
“It was amazing. It was like my youth was back. We had a shared history,” she said.
They met up at a pub they had visited as teenagers.
“We were catching up about people we knew and it was really comfortable,” Alice said.
“I felt at home with him completely and very safe.”
Alice and Mark’s relationship blossomed online during the pandemic [BBC reconstruction]
Her old school friends remembered him fondly, too.
So when he first mentioned he had some bad business debts, which he blamed on the pandemic, she had no reason to doubt him.
He showed her threatening text messages he’d received and told Alice it was unsafe to visit his home.
His mental health was also
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