WHEN Kirsty Belmont’s new boyfriend was left penniless after being mugged on a business trip to Istanbul, she agreed to help him out of a hole.
Desperate for cash to get home, Luke asked the businesswoman to log on to his bank and transfer £69,000 from one of his accounts to another so he could complete a sales deal.
Dealing with such a huge amount of cash, the mum-of-four was understandably nervous but online bank details showed the transaction had gone through without a hitch.
And as it was Luke’s own accounts, the request didn’t raise any red flags.
But the account was a cleverly executed fake, set up to win Kirsty’s trust in what went on to become one of Britain’s most elaborate romance scams.
It saw Kirsty, 43, conned out of £90,000 in just six months.
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Today she bravely tells her story to make other victims aware of just how sophisticated scammers have become.
She said: “This man took everything from me and left me totally financially and emotionally depleted.
“It all unravelled just before Christmas and my parents helped buy my children’s presents because I had given him so much and was in financial difficulty. I was totally bereft by that point.
“I was robbing Peter to pay Paul and I went without food so I could feed the children. Everything was on a knife’s edge.”
Romance-related fraud is on the rise in the UK, costing victims more than £400million over the past five years.
The Sun revealed how most are linked to Nigerian based gangs – known as the Yahoo Boys – who contact victims on social media, sticking to messages only.
In Kirsty’s case, she had little reason to doubt her new boyfriend who not only called her but spoke in a local accent and talked about the streets, pubs and restaurants around her home in North Yorkshire.
They met on dating app Plenty of Fish in June 2023 after Kirsty emerged scarred from an unhappy 14-year marriage.
She said: “I was feeling very vulnerable at the time because it hadn’t been a great marriage at all.
“As the months went by, my family and friends started saying I should try and get back out there and meet someone nice and that I deserved some happiness.
“My sister and a couple of my friends had found love online so, although it was all totally new to me, I thought I’d give it a go.”
Local lovebomber
When a handsome part-Cypriot businessman expressed interest, Kirsty couldn’t believe her luck.
Not wanting to take him on face value, she did a Google image search and used other technology to research his picture, to check he wasn’t a con artist. When nothing showed up she carried on messaging him.
It wasn’t long before he picked up the phone and charming, witty and intelligent, Luke love-bombed Kirsty, showering her with compliments and telling her how beautiful she was.
He claimed to live nearby in Leeds and talked about places near Kirsty’s home.
Within three weeks, he confessed he had fallen in love.
“I didn’t say it back,” says Kirsty. “I was very cautious and just said thank you. But I also hadn’t heard those sorts of things for a long, long time and I was flattered.”
Luke had already warned Kirsty he travelled a lot for his high-flying job selling machinery parts so it was no surprise when he said he was leaving for Istanbul in a few days to secure a deal.
When he arrived he sent a picture of himself in front of a mirror dressed in a dapper suit – then everything went quiet.
“I didn’t hear from him over the next few days,” says Kirsty. “I started to worry that I’d done something wrong, or he’d just changed his mind about us.”
Then came a call that he’d been mugged in the Turkish city along with a picture that showed him wearing a hospital gown, with his face bruised.
I felt like I had to help because I was the one that had caused him problems
Kirsty
“It didn’t cross my mind that it was a con,” said Kirsty. “He didn’t ask me to give him money but to log on to his bank and transfer 85,000 euros from one of his accounts to another.
“I was nervous because it was such a huge amount and even worried if what I was doing was illegal, but he said he trusted me to send it over.
“There was a lot of money in the account, around 600,000 euros and you could see transactions over a long period of time but I didn’t want to be nosey and pry.
“The transfer went through and the amount showed completed so I logged off.”
Money manipulator
It was then the scammer began to reel Kirsty in.
“He called to say I’d locked him out of his account by accident and he needed £6,250 to get by. I felt like I had to help because I was the one that had caused him problems.
“Then he needed money to pay the hotel he had stayed in so I transferred more, then it was food, then flights and then he said he couldn’t pay me back until he got to his head office in Cyprus and he needed cash for that as well.
“All the time I was haemorrhaging money. He veered between really grateful for my help and being angry because I’d supposedly locked him out of his account.
“It felt like I was on an elastic band because he’d go quiet for days, then come back asking for more.
“Over the course of six months I gave him about £90,000. The more money I gave him the more invested I felt in helping him get into a situation where he could pay me back.
“It was like being on a hamster wheel. I didn’t want to walk away from all the money I’d already given him.
“Looking back I realise he was playing mind games from the beginning. There was so much manipulation involved.”
The situation finally came to a head when Kirsty’s older sister became suspicious and spent weeks searching for Luke online. What she found left Kirsty shocked to the core.
“She sent me a link to a semi-professional football player in London, a man with a young family who clearly wasn’t the man I’d been talking to.
How to spot a romance scam
TO stop people falling victim to romance scams, police revealed the signs to look out for to help spot the scammers.
PROTECT YOUR INFO
Be wary of giving out personal information on a website or chatroom. Fraudsters will quickly contact you, often showing you glamorous photos of themselves and gaining your trust.
VAGUE INFO
A fraudster will make conversation more personal to get information out of you, but won’t tell you much about themselves that you can check or verify.
HIGH FLYERS
Romance fraudsters often claim to have high ranking roles that keep them away from home for a long time. This could be a ploy to deter your suspicions around not meeting in person.
DODGY SITES
Fraudsters will usually attempt to steer you away from chatting on a legitimate dating site that can be monitored. Stay on the platform that you started using initially, rather than switching to email, text or phone.
SOB STORIES
A fraudster may tell stories to target your emotions and get you to give them money.
They may claim they have an ill relative or are stranded in a country they don’t want to be in.
They may not ask you directly for money, hoping instead that you’ll offer it out of the goodness of your heart. Do not do this.
PRICEY PRESENTS
Sometimes the fraudsters will send the victim valuable items such as laptops, computers and mobile phones, asking them to resend them elsewhere.
They will invent a reason as to why they need the goods sent, but this may just be a way for them to cover up their criminal activity.
Alternatively they may ask a victim to buy the goods themselves and send them elsewhere.
MONEY PLOYS
Often, they will ask victims to accept money into their bank account and then transfer it to someone else using bank accounts, MoneyGram, Western Union, iTunes vouchers or other gift cards.
These scenarios are very likely to be forms of money laundering and you could be committing a criminal offence.
Source: Sussex Police
“I just couldn’t believe it. In fact I didn’t believe it until I saw a picture of him in hospital – the same image I’d been sent by Luke looking bruised and sick.
“It all came about just before Christmas and my family were devastated for me. We all had to get through Christmas day pretending everything was okay for the children.
“I remember sitting in the dark next to the tree that night with a bottle of whisky and a bottle of tablets in my hand, considering the worst.
“Then the phone rang. I couldn’t believe it was him. He said he would pay me back and was sorry he’d hurt me…then he said he’d been in an accident.
“I’d had enough. I just shouted b******* and threw the phone against the wall.”
Conman vanished
Kirsty’s family encouraged her to make a complaint to North Yorkshire Police and she is now fronting a campaign to make people more aware of just how advanced romance scams have become.
She never got a penny of her cash back, despite online bank Tide failing to contact her to ask where huge, rare transactions were going.
Tide, operated by ClearBank, says the matter now lies with the financial ombudsman watchdog.
Kirsty has no idea where her conman was based – whether he was genuinely British and operating from Yorkshire or was using a voice altering device from somewhere abroad.
Kirsty said: “I’ll never find out who it was but I want to turn a negative into a positive.
“I want my story to serve as a warning to other people who might find themselves at the centre of such a sophisticated fraud.
“The fallout has been immense. I flinch when the phone goes and a number pops up I don’t recognise and I hate getting emails from people I don’t know.
“It has crushed my faith in men but I want other victims to know that you can get through this – there is hope.”
Kirsty is far from alone.
With the rapid evolution of AI and digital tools, we’re likely to see more of these kinds of manipulative tactics in the future
Rachel Graham,
Romance fraud cost victims a colossal £99.4million last year, according to Action Fraud data.
Victims lose an average of £10,477 and 45 per cent are contacted through dating apps.
North Yorkshire Police’s financial abuse safeguarding officer Rachel Graham described Kirsty’s case as “incredibly sophisticated and deeply callous.”
She said: “The perpetrators manipulated her into thinking she was helping someone she cared about, but every penny they took drew her deeper into a never-ending cycle of giving, always under the illusion she would eventually get something back.
“To add to this, the technology used in this case was alarmingly advanced, and with the rapid evolution of AI and digital tools, we’re likely to see more of these kinds of manipulative tactics in the future.
“Fraud is often wrongly described as a victimless crime. In reality, it has affected every aspect of her life.
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“She is still fighting to recover the money she lost, and may never see a penny of it again, but the emotional toll, the suffering, the loss of trust, and the fear of forming relationships in the future, is likely to affect both her and her family for many years to come.
“Her courage in sharing her story, in the hope that it will protect others from going through the same ordeal, is nothing short of inspirational.”
