How a “Greek widower” cheated a 33-year-old mother and stole $85,000 from her – He also “wrote” her a love poem

A young woman, single mother she fell victim to a Nigerian scammer, who managed to extort her 85,000 dollarspretending to be one charming greek widow and writing her a love poem, which she later discovered she had stolen from the internet.

Christine Settingsgaard of Barrington, Illinois, met “Mark Godfrey» on a dating app, who appeared as a charming architect engineer from Greece. But in fact, as it turned out in hindsight, he was talking to one Nigerian scammer who managed to get her to trust him and grant him an untouchable $85,000.

The charming “Greek widower” who turned out to be a fraud

When she saw the huge negative balance, Settingsgaard immediately contacted Mark, who played dumb and continued to make excuses, until she finally received one last strange message from his account.

“I’m Fiorani, E6 representative of the state Federal Bureau of Investigation,” the message said.

“We regret to inform you, Mrs. Settingsgaard, but none of this person’s information is true. The perpetrator manages to steal information from various people, open bank accounts in their names and use their identity for money laundering.”

Mark’s account at Facebook he stopped responding after that, and Settingsgaard realized that Fiorani, like Mark, was a fraud. But after three weeks of silence, the account messaged her again and simply said ‘hello’, with a furious Settingsgaard immediately replying ‘you ruined my life. Who are you; Where are you;”.

The scammer replied that his real name is William Ojo, and in a last desperate attempt to keep her in the scam, he confessed his love to her, this time sending a “real” photo of him, which looked very different from the last one. He also said that he was part of a criminal network in Nigeria and that he cheats people for a living. He claimed that “I feel bad for deceiving you, but I have no choice.”

In one message, another message the scammer wrote “Normal jobs here are not like the ones in the States where everything is fine”, explaining how it “makes my soul dark and I hate it, but what choice do I have?”.

He, in fact, he continued the “tale” that he had fallen in love with her during his cheating saying “At one point I wanted to stop the whole cheating because I fell COMPLETELY in love with you. I began to deviate from my fake stories into my real life.”

But still, the tender demeanor appeared to be a ruse as she was again asked to deposit a $30,000 checkwhich Settingsgaard refused to do.

Settingsgaard eventually reached a settlement with her bank to wipe out the $85,000 debt, but says they only did so after being threatened by bad media coverage, and before that point they were completely indifferent to her case.